Married couples in the Catholic Church make a promise to a lifetime of holiness in the sacrament of matrimony. Then real life hits, often hard, and the couple focuses on the practicalities of family life.
The Houston, Texas-based St. John Paul II Foundation is helping couples respond to that challenge by offering a day to center themselves and their relationship.
Through the one-day Together in Holiness marriage enrichment conference for couples in the Philadelphia region, like those the foundation hosts around the U.S., couples find reflections of familial love through a eucharistic lens.
The conference is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 28 from 8:00 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. at St. Peter Catholic Church in West Brandywine. It will begin with Mass celebrated by Auxiliary Bishop Efren V. Esmilla.
Conference attendees also have the option of attending the 5 p.m. Saturday vigil Mass at St. Peter.
“Together in Holiness is geared towards that formation to assist the everyday couple strive for what Pope Francis referred to as ‘middle-class holiness,’ to answer that call to be saints in the home, to become that domestic church that God intends for them,” said Roland Millare, vice president of curriculum for the St. John Paul II Foundation.
“Helping couples to realize they need to show up and be attentive to the gift of love entrusted by our Lord that they’ve entered into with their spouse, and then to be open and to be honest, to see there’s been some deferred maintenance that we’ve maybe put off for a little too long.”
Millare says that the day is designed to respond to the incredible challenges that couples encounter in trying to focus their lives on greater holiness when a family to-do list seems longer than a grocery list.
“We all seem to suffer from the same problem, which is busyness. Everyone says that they’re busy,” he said. “This is a great day where we slow it down, and you spend a long runway with your spouse in formation and prayer, with the Lord and with one another.”
Millare recognizes that his foundation’s conferences offer a chance for married couples to do something many professions offer: Continual formation, whether a couple is newly married or past their 20th anniversary.
“I was in a high school classroom for over 15 years. I had to do continuing education hours every year. If you’re a lawyer, you’re an engineer, whatever the profession might be, you have to do continuing education hours to keep up with your profession,” he said.
“How much more is the most important vocation entrusted to us, which is the call to marriage? This is to help fill in that gap of sustaining the sacrament.”
He adds the conference will provide lots of fruit for the continuation of their marital sacrament if people are open to it.
“Some couples need that gift of time with one another, or the gift of interfacing with other couples, or time of prayer with our Blessed Sacrament, and then the presentations,” he said.
“They hear something either from an individual speaker, or a couple that speaks to their daily struggles, whether it’s their need to work on their communication, their need to work on praying together as a couple, being better examples to their kids, learning that art of forgiveness — all different ways that assist us in becoming the saints that God calls us to be.”
The talks during the conference will teach how the Eucharist symbolizes marriage in ordinary yet extraordinary ways, he said. He termed the Eucharist’s three main aspects – “presence, sacrifice, and communion” – as “transformative.”
“It is about showing up,” Millare said. “It’s about being present to your spouse, being present to your kids. Really present the same way our Lord is present to us. It’s about sacrifice: ‘This is my body given up for you.’ Or the sacrifice you make to die to self and show for your kids around the practices and everything else they need to do.
“Or it’s the spouse who makes that sacrifice because he or she’s had a long day at work, and instead of just vegging out from the computer or doom scrolling, they’re engaged. That dying of self for the sake of the other.
“Then finally communion, realizing there are times when there might be a lack of communion because of communication or maybe worse, and then that need to forgive and to reconcile. That is the hope that people begin to see their ordinary lives in light of the Eucharist.”
Catholic educators Ryan Hanning and Sara Hulse Kirby plus Catholic evangelist couple Steve and Becky Greene will present talks during the conference.
Beyond the speakers, there will be plenty of free time “just for couples to just enjoy that gift of time with one another, a gift that they don’t always give to themselves,” Millare said. “Then obviously, intentional prayer, Mass, time for confession, and then adoration with benediction.”
The St. John Paul II Foundation’s overall programs also include a year-round formation series connected to marriage and the family.
The foundation’s work focuses on “the family as domestic church, the family’s community prayer, the family as a school of virtue, as the place where evangelization and the teaching of the faith primarily occurs,” Millare said.
The conference costs $64 for couples, $40 for individuals, with $5 child care costs for children between 2 and 12 years old. Scholarships are available for people in financial need.
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