The diocesan Office of Marriage and Family offered its first Mentor Couple Day of Reflection on Saturday, March 8, at Hilliard St. Brendan the Navigator Church.
The event was open to all mentor couples who assist engaged couples in the diocese preparing for marriage. Fifteen diocesan mentor couples gathered for the occasion.
The morning event included Mass celebrated by Bishop Earl Fernandes and a presentation by the bishop. Mentor couples were given time to discuss and learn from each other’s experiences.
“This is just the start of many other initiatives that we’re hoping to do for marriage and family,” said Jason Spoolstra, associate director for the Office of Marriage and Family.
Offering a Day of Reflection earlier this month, the office wanted to give mentor couples time for fellowship.
“They assist so much in the parish with the engaged couples, and whenever we’re volunteering and doing ministry work, sometimes it can feel a little isolated,” Spoolstra said. “We wanted to provide an opportunity for them to come together so they know that they’re not alone.”
In Bishop Fernandes’ presentation, he told the mentor couples that, working alongside parish pastors, they are attempting to shape and form the hearts of engaged couples. By educating couples, mentors help them not to conform to the forces of society but to seek true happiness in Christ.
“It is my hope that, through authentic education, those preparing for the sacrament may, through your guidance and leadership, find happiness – satisfaction and perfection – in this life and the next,” the bishop said.
He explained that the “goal” of forming and educating couples is helping future generations grow in humanity, meaning intelligence and goodness as well as justice and solidarity. He said it means couples being open to and desiring to receive Christ.
The bishop also noted the importance of a mentor couple’s witness.
“Young people do not expect the clergy, teachers or mentor couples to be perfect people. God alone is perfect,” he said. “Nevertheless, they do expect that there would be a correspondence between the faith we profess with our lips and our lives and actions. If we are not rooted ourselves in the faith and offer poor witness, then the coherence of the faith as a whole will appear to fall apart in the eyes of young people.”
Going forward, the office will offer a day of reflection for mentor couples annually.
In 2023, the Office of Marriage and Family implemented the Fully Engaged premarital program. The Mentor Couple Day of Reflection gave couples time to dive deeper into the new materials they will cover with engaged couples.
“This allows us that chance to unpack it and to make them feel even more confident in how to utilize the materials and utilize Fully Engaged, and then … providing that opportunity for the couples to have roundtable discussion, to have conversations with each other, so they can learn from each other, to grow in wisdom and experience and everything that they can share,” Spoolstra explained.
He said the office chose the program in an effort to enhance centrality among engaged couples in the diocese. “Wherever an engaged couple is planning to get married in the Diocese of Columbus, they’re getting the same program no matter where they’re at,” he noted.
The program’s inventory, or questionnaire, for engaged couples corresponds to meetings with their mentor couple.
“We wanted to bring something that is catechetical, that’s also tying in the evangelization, sharing their witness of their mentor couple,” Spoolstra explained.
For mentor couples, he said, the program “does a wonderful job really guiding them through the process of discussing the content, discussing the inventory to be able to draw out very insightful questions from the engaged couple, to get the engaged couple to speak to each other, to grow deeper, not only, and hopefully, in love with each other but also in their relationship with Christ.”
Fully Engaged offers training and education for mentor couples.
Couples in the diocese interested in serving as mentor couples must go through a one-time training that lasts about four hours. Trainings in the diocese are offered in English and Spanish.
The Office of Marriage and Family offered trainings this month at Lancaster Basilica of St. Mary of the Assumption on March 1 and at St. Brendan the Navigator on March 8 after the Mentor Couple Day of Reflection.
Next month, new mentor couples can participate in a two-part online training offered April 1-2 via Zoom.
Trainings in Spanish will be offered to mentor couples on April 5 and June 7. Both Spanish trainings will be offered online.
“We walk them through the process of from the time that they make that initial phone call to the engaged couple to schedule the first meeting all the way to the end, where they’re celebrating, having a dinner with them and then providing feedback to the pastor on how the meetings went,” Spoolstra said.
He explained that a mentor couple’s role is not only to share their experience as a married couple but to hand on the truth, beauty and goodness of the Catholic faith. Unlike other premarital programs that might use a video to convey Church teaching, engaged couples learn through deep conversations with their mentors.
“Something that I’ve seen more and more, especially from engaged couples, they are craving for actual personal conversation with people,” he said.
“They want to be in a room with people to engage, to laugh, to share, to pray over, to pray with. Those experiences of interpersonal communication have been something that I’ve seen the demand has gone up.”
Along with the implementation of a new marriage preparation program, the diocese is restructuring marriage preparation as a “second catechumenate.” The steps a couple takes in preparing for marriage align with the catechumenate process of an individual preparing for baptism in the Catholic Church.
The intermediate phase, or reception of candidates, includes an inquiry and assessing a couple’s readiness. It is followed by a “ritual of welcome.”
A couple then begins the catechumenal phase. The first stage, proximate preparation, includes the Fully Engaged premarital program and Natural Family Planning (NFP) training.
“We now are asking couples to go through a full training – one-on-one training with an NFP instructor – and so, that way, they’re well equipped and educated on their body, on charting and where to go to find resources if they’re needing to seek fertility care or anything further in conception,” Spoolstra said.
Engaged couples also attend a one-day Pre Cana formation event run by the diocese. They can choose to attend before or after the ritual of welcome. Eight Pre-Cana events were scheduled in the diocese for this year.
The Rite of Betrothal, a sign of entry into the subsequent stage of final preparation, is held after proximate preparation is complete.
Final preparation, the second stage, includes a final intake or interviews, liturgy preparation, and the couple receives the sacrament of reconciliation.
“The reason why these have become maybe a little bit more thorough is because we understand the importance of the sacrament and the necessity to make sure that everything is covered and everything is fully understood for the bride and the groom,” Spoolstra said.
“The beauty of the sacrament, or what’s so unique of the sacrament of matrimony, unlike the other sacraments where it’s the priest or the bishop that is conferring and we’re recipients of it, only in the sacrament of matrimony it’s the bride and the groom that are conferring to each other. They’re still being receptive to the grace; they’re still receiving it, but they are proactive also in conferring the grace to each other.
“As a parish and as a diocese, we must do a thorough job on behalf and support of the bride and the groom. So when they’re standing up there, they know what they’re saying ‘I do’ to.”
Accompaniment is offered during the third and final stage: the first years of married life. Couples will receive follow-ups and access to enrichment opportunities.
Spoolstra said the Office of Marriage and Family does not want couples to feel abandoned after their wedding. The office wants to ensure newly married couples know that they are provided for on a parish and diocesan level.
Later this year, a marriage conference presented by the St. John Paul II Foundation, “Together in Holiness,” will be held in the diocese. Several diocesan parishes currently offer the foundation’s “Together in Holiness” formation series, a year-round marriage enrichment for small communities of spouses. Spoolstra said he hopes more parishes will provide opportunities for married couples to grow together.
This year’s conference is set to be one of various opportunities to be offered by the diocese to support families in coming years.
“That’s kind of my mission and what we’re trying to drive towards: to provide from womb to tomb those opportunities for marriage and family to grow together in holiness,” Spoolstra said.