Matrimony, An Invitation to Live in Love
Overview
Topical Content
Program Costs
Ordering Course Materials
Overview
Matrimony, An Invitation to Live in Love is a new and exciting progam of remote preparation for marriage designed for teenagers at the High School level, preferably grades 11 and 12, although younger teens may certainly benefit. It combines the authentic witness of a married couple who is striving to live out the Church’s vision of sacramental marriage with a comprehensive curriculum of skills based relationship education and experiential learning. The program is infused with Theology of the Body insights and life skills that the students learn and practice in their family of origin and close belonging relationships. These are the same skills that they will need to develop further as adults in order to enter into healthy, permanent, sacramental relationships as husbands and wives or vowed religious.
The Program is intended to be delivered in 11 one-hour sessions normally one week apart. This allows the students to assimilate content and practice the session’s life skill(s) for an entire week before returning to receive additional content and skills training. The timing is flexible and adjustable to the needs and availability of the student group.
Matrimony, An Invitation to Live in Love to most effectively taught on a parish basis in a living room setting although parish or school facilities may be used. Each student receives a colorful, graphics intensive personal take-home workbook containing brief summaries of the key content of each session, workspace for the experiential exercises done during class time, and homework assignments for the time inbetween classes.
Any married couple who has experienced the Living in Love Retreat Workshop is already familiar with the foundational concepts of the Program and is capable of teaching this Matrimony Course for teens. The unique paradigm of Matrimony, Jesus Invites Us to Love provides daily activites for the married couple to do with each other each day of the week leading up to the session with the students. Personal illustrations to be shared with the students are draw directly from these daily activities. The teaching couple continues to grow in their own relationship as a result of their daily preparation and have their immediate experiences to share with the students. A comprehensive Teacher’s Manual provides the daily couple activities and a bulleted sentence Outline from which to facilitate each session.
For more information, please contact the PMRC at 610-640-4105 or PMRCusa@msn.com
Topical Content
Session 1 – Marriage: a Vocation or a Situation
Provides an opportunity for students to meet and become comfortable with with each other and the Teaching Couple while getting in touch with the attitudes about marriage that they have already formed. Marriage is introduced as a “vocation” or “life’s work” with a vision for passionate, other-centered,self-donation.
Session 2 – The Gifts of Masculinity and Femininity
Uses the latest scientific research in the area of brain science and biology to highlight how wonderfully we are made as men and women while broadening the student’s understanding of “sexuality” and establishing masculinity and femininity as relationship terms unique to the individual.
Session 3 – The Power of Affirmation
Establishes the importance of affirmation in developing strong, healthy relationships while motivating the elimination of criticism. Introduces the concept of the vision of love as the closest image of the way God sees us.
Session 4 – Smart Loving
Enables students to identify their own “Love Languages” as well as those of family members closest to them. Draws distinctions between love on intimacy and love of benevolence.
Session 5 – Smart Messaging
Addresses verbal communication and teaches strategies to avoid mis-communication as well as enhancing personal communication including clarifying, alerting, and using “I” statements.
Session 6 – Making Emotional Connections
Introduces the value of communicating on a feeling level and teaches the students how to identify and describe their feelings.
Session 7 – Sacred Body Language
Addresses body language in the context of chaste relationships both celibate and conjugal connecting messages with actions and differentiating between sex as activity and sex as communication.
Session 8 – Sexual Sacrament
Illuminates how the passionate love of husbands and wives is an authentic living sign of the passionate love of Christ for the Church.
Session 9 – Love Means More Than Saying I’m Sorry
Helps students to identify how they typically deal with conflict and personal hurts and motivates forgiveness as the means to be free from emotional injuries.
Session 10 – Smart Dating
Acknowledges the pressures of the current dating scene while helping the students to reflect on the qualities they look for in someone they would be willing to date as well as in a future spouse.
Session 11 – What’s My Dream For My Life?
Looks at decision making in light of discerning a vocation for life allowing the students to put words on their dream for their life be it marriage, vowed religious life, or as a dedicated baptized man or woman.
Program Costs
Matrimony, An Invitation to Live in Love is an “out of the box” program; so that, the only costs are for program materials. The Teaching Couple materials consist of a Teacher’s Manual and Student workbook (for reference) which is available at a cost of $45.00. Each Student needs a personal Workbook which costs $15. The Program can be presented by any married couple who is sincerely trying to live a sacramental life with no additional training, but it is highly recommended that any Teaching Couple experience the Living in Love Retreat Workshop for married couples which is available nationally at a nominal cost of $100 per couple.
Depending on the venue, it is generally recommended that refreshments of some kind be available to the students. This provides a welcoming environment as well as an atmosphere that encourages the students to socialize with each other and to engage the Teaching Couple in discussion of course content.
