Congratulations on your Engagement!
Couples often feel their wedding day is the most important day of their lives. That’s why you, your family, your friends, and your parish will strive to make it a very special day to remember. Your wedding day will be unique because it signals the beginning of a new stage in your relationship.
Throughout your marriage, you will have the chance to deepen and strengthen your love. In marriage, you will be free to share yourselves honestly and openly. Together you will face the future, which will both challenge and change you. You will find out new details about each other and adopt new values as you make decisions together.
As Christians, we believe God joins you on this wonderful marriage journey. The touch of your partner reassures you of their love. It can also reassure you of God’s love because God reaches out and touches us through the love of others. Your love for each other, in your Christian marriage, will be able to show the world a little something of God’s love for everyone. Yours is a love with no limits, just like Christ’s self-sacrificing love has no limits – your love shows what Christ’s love is like. So, in Christian marriage, your love is a ‘sign’ of God’s love.
What’s more, through living your marriage you can also make God’s love present in the world. Whenever and wherever you love – in your relationship with each other, your relationships with those around you, and in your attitudes and actions – God is there. You can bring the light of God to the world. During your wedding ceremony, as you declare your love for each other, God offers you his own supreme love to strengthen and sustain you.
In other words, God offers you a gift of ‘grace’ to help strengthen your love, and to help you share that love with the world. For all of these reasons, Catholics speak of marriage as a ‘sacrament.’ This means that on your wedding day, God offers you the gifts that will help you on your marriage journey – to love each other like Christ loves us, to help you be a sign of Christ’s love to the world, and to help you make God’s love present in every aspect of your lives. Your engagement begins this wonderful journey.
It is a time to think about what lies ahead. It gives you time to share your thoughts, expectations, and fears. It gives you time to think about and plan not only your special wedding day, but also your future life together as a married couple.
Marriage Law in the Republic of Ireland
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