Celebrating World Marriage Day 2023

 

Welcome to the World Marriage Day (February 12, 2023) and National Marriage Week 2023 web pages, the one-stop place for parishes and for married couples to honor the gift of marriage in the Diocese of Trenton.
 

World Marriage Day, the second Sunday of February, and National Marriage Week USA (February 7 – 14) are observed annually in dioceses and parishes throughout our country as an opportunity to focus on building a culture of life and love that begins with supporting and promoting marriage and the family. This year's theme, "Marriage...one flesh, given and received" highlights the one-flesh union of husband and wife that is willed by God. It also indicates the personal self-gift of each spouse, one to the other. These concepts point to Christ who gives Himself under the appearance of bread and wine—as real flesh and blood.

Here in the Diocese of Trenton, our parishes commemorate World Marriage Day and National Marriage Week in a variety of ways, but most importantly by incorporating prayers and blessings for marriage into the Sunday liturgy and by hosting various marriage-building activities in the parish.

In addition to our full set of resources for parishes, we also offer married couples and families their own set of World Marriage Day activities and tools to renew and strengthen their marriage and family. 

World Marriage Day is an outgrowth of Worldwide Marriage Encounter, an apostolate aimed at helping couples make good marriages even better. World Marriage Day began in 1983 and is celebrated every second Sunday of February in dioceses across the country. In 1993, his Holiness, Pope John Paul II, imparted his Apostolic Blessings on World Marriage Day. The purpose of World Marriage Day is to highlight the beauty of marriage and to honor husbands and wives for their faithfulness and sacrifices.

World Marriage Day does not emphasize marriage to the detriment of other vocations, however. The mission of its founding organization Worldwide Marriage Encounter is “to proclaim the value of Marriage and Holy Orders in the Church and in the world.”

The Worldwide Marriage Encounter organization also sponsors World Priest Day on the fourth Sunday of October. “We believe that building stronger relationships between priests and their people can rebuild our Church! We are together on our faith journey. World Priest Day (WPD) is a celebration and affirmation of the men who commit their lives to the Lord and the Church via the Sacrament of Holy Orders. It is an opportunity for Catholic Parishioners to thank, affirm and share their love and support for our priests.”

National Marriage Week USA, launched in 2010, is part of an international event seeking to mobilize individuals, organizations, and businesses in a common purpose to strengthen marriage in communities and influence the culture. The Secretariat on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops offers a full set of resources to bishops, priests, deacons, married couples, and lay men and women to help celebrate and live the great gift of married life.

Read this Great Article from Aleteia on the importance of World Marriage Day for Catholic married couples and for our Church.

Marriage: Called to the Joy of Love, by Bishop David O'Connell (Written for World Marriage Day 2022)

Each year, the Church in our country and in our own Diocese celebrate “National Marriage Week (February 7-14)” and “World Marriage Day (Second Sunday of February)” in tribute to husbands and wives as the foundation of the family, the basic unit of society.  When we think of marriage, words like love, faithfulness, trust, sacrifice, forgiveness and perseverance and many other values come to mind.  For us in the Church, the idea of sacrament and covenant embraces all those expressions as we consider the loving and graced relationship of one man and one woman in a union that is faithful, fruitful and forever.  No other partnership equals this blessed gift of our Creator, present from the beginning of the world.  

“World Marriage Day” began in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1981 and grew out of the experience of couples engaged in the “Worldwide Marriage Encounter,” a movement founded in Spain --- “Encuentro Conyugal” ---by the late Father Gabriel Calvo (1927-2021), who devoted his entire priestly ministry (1952-2021) to the pastoral care of married couples and families. "There is within each couple,” he reflected, “a divine energy of love. It has to be released by a deep sharing between husband and wife, through the communication of their feelings and of the whole of their lives together. It cannot be done in just one moment."

Pope St. John Paul II imparted his apostolic blessing to “World Marriage Day” in 1993 and it has been celebrated in the world’s dioceses ever since. Its purpose is to honor husbands and wives for their mutual sacrificial love and fidelity, embodied in “their own special sacrament.”  The Church has always believed and taught that marriage is the “image” of the union of Christ with his Church The late Pope noted that “marriage is an act of the will that signifies and involves a mutual gift which unites the spouses and binds them to their eventual souls with whom they make up a sole family, a ‘domestic church’.” That expression continues to be widely used and applied.   

Here in our own Diocese, following the lead of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “National Marriage Week” and “World Marriage Day” help us to focus on building a “culture of life and love” that begins with supporting and promoting marriage and the family.  The theme for this year’s celebrations is “Called to the Joy of Love.” The USCCB has produced a video-presentation of its “Pastoral Framework for Marriage and Family Life” which can be viewed on its website (www.usccb.org), link “Marriage and Family Life Ministries: National Marriage Week.”  Our Diocese has also produced excellent resources on its website (www.dioceseoftrenton.org), links “Building Strong Marriages” and “Marriage Strengthening Initiatives.”

Every year in October, I celebrate two Masses --- one for Burlington and Mercer counties at the Cathedral in Trenton and another for Monmouth and Ocean Counties at the Co-Cathedral in Freehold --- which honor married couples commemorating their first, twenty-fifth and fiftieth or more anniversaries.  These are wonderful, beautifully spiritual occasions for anniversary couples themselves and their families themselves as well as for their parish priests, the Diocesan staff and for me as well as their Bishop.  These are milestones of joy and faith for the entire Diocese and fitting recognitions of the couples’ lives of love.

In my homily for one of these Masses, I preached to the couples present:

You have chosen to be married in the sight of a generous God who so loved the world that he gave himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ.  And in the Spirit of this generous God, husband and wife are to give themselves to each another.  A spiritual life grows as love finds its center beyond ourselves: in God. Faithful and committed relationships offer a doorway into the mystery of spiritual life through which we discover this: the more we give of self, the richer we become in soul; the more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become our true selves and our spiritual beauty is more fully revealed. In marriage we are seeking to bring one another into fuller life and to belong to one another not as a “possession” but as a possibility for true, deep love (“Homily for Anniversary Blessings,” St. Robert Co-Cathedral, October 15, 2015).

This year, as the Diocese celebrates “National Marriage Week” and “World Marriage Day,” let us together thank God for the gift, vocation and witness of married life and all its many blessings, joys and even challenges within our beloved Diocese.  May married couples continue to mirror the love of Christ for his Church, always remembering his command to all of us, whatever our vocation may be: “Love one another as I have loved you (John 13:34).”

Prayer for World Marriage Day (Rev. William Dilgen, SSM):

Father, as we prepare for World Marriage Day, we thank you for your tremendous gift of the Sacrament of Marriage. Help us to witness to its glory by a life of growing intimacy. Teach us the beauty of forgiveness so we may become more and more One in Heart, Mind, and Body. Strengthen our dialogue and help us become living signs of your love. Make us grow more in love with the Church so we may renew the Body of Christ. Make us a sign of unity in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Brother. Amen.