Amoris laetitia: Marriage is a shared commitment to nurture each day

By Francesco Ricupero

“The Church’s pastoral conversion therefore calls us to listen closely to the experience of young married couples: to how they speak about what they are learning together, or about what prevents them from learning and growing; the resources they discover in the sacrament of marriage; what they expect from Christian communities; and how they understand their own missionary responsibility.”

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life, offered this reflection on Saturday morning, October 10, as he introduced the fourth day of the meeting, “Ten Years after Amoris laetitia: Proclaiming the Gospel with Families Today,” in the Paul VI Hall.

The gathering, which runs through October 14, brings together Pope Leo XIV, the heads of the Eastern Churches, presidents of Bishops’ Conferences, married couples, and experts.

A decisive time

Introducing the day’s theme, “Married life. The first years of marriage: a decisive time,” Cardinal Farrell highlighted the considerable pastoral efforts made since the Second Vatican Council to enrich marriage preparation.

These efforts, he said, have drawn on the experience of married couples and offered engaged couples the opportunity to experience fellowship and prayer within the Christian community.

“Yet we see that this is not always enough to help newly married couples understand and deepen the conjugal love that is taking shape within them during the first years of marriage, or to face the difficulties that may arise with the birth of children or as they come to know one another more deeply.”

The need for ongoing accompaniment

Cardinal José Cobo Cano, Metropolitan Archbishop of Madrid, reflected on how to listen to and accompany couples at the beginning of married life.

He emphasized that Amoris laetitia has “helped us to view the reality of marriage in a different light and has opened up new pastoral horizons. However, the first challenge is not to design new programmes. The question comes before and is more decisive: do we truly understand, right from the start, the reality of the couples we wish to accompany?”

According to the Cardinal, the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation invites the Church to rediscover marriage as both a sacrament to celebrate and a vocation to live and nurture throughout life.

Getting married means choosing to give oneself to another, building a shared future, and learning to love amid the joys and difficulties of everyday life. Marriage ministry therefore needs to make a fundamental shift: from preparation focused primarily on the wedding to accompaniment that supports couples before, during, and after their wedding.

Dialogue, patience, and forgiveness

“Amoris laetitia highlighted two focus points from the moment a couple approaches the Church: accompaniment and discernment,” Cardinal Cobo Cano said.

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“The question: ‘What do they need to know in order to get married?’ is different from the deeper question: ‘What do they need to discover in order to know whether they are called to commit themselves definitively to one another?’”

Providing engaged couples with the knowledge needed to celebrate the sacrament is not enough. They also need help understanding the choice they are making, discerning their vocation, and getting to know one another.

Marriage is a journey that continually develops. The early years, the birth of children, work responsibilities, financial difficulties, illness, and personal changes all call for dialogue, patience, forgiveness, and a renewed commitment to remain united.

The “engaged couples’ clock”

“As in many dioceses, here in Madrid we are trialing, alongside pre-marriage courses, initiatives such as El reloj de los novios (The engaged couples’ clock),” Cardinal Cobo Cano explained.

These are “based on a simple insight: a couple needs to set aside quality time for each other to talk, reflect on their story, recognize their strengths and weaknesses, pray and discern.”

The questions raised by these experiences, he continued, go beyond any particular method and concern how to make genuine discernment possible.

“This too influences the decision to get married. If a couple comes to us, after eight or ten years of being together, with a planned wedding, is there room left for discernment? If we state that marriage is a vocation, then, how do we discern vocation to marriage within the Church?”

A well-conducted pastoral conversation at such moments, together with training for those accompanying couples, can open new paths, he said, “but the question is still with us.”

Building a “we” while preserving each person’s identity

One of the greatest challenges is learning to build a “we” without erasing the identity of either person. This requires quality time, mutual listening, shared faith, and the ability to address conflict without allowing it to weaken the relationship.

“Christian marriage is not merely a story of two people; it is also an ecclesial vocation, called to grow and flourish within a community,” Cardinal Cobo Cano said.

“This raises a fundamental pastoral question: What type of communities do our married couples need today? What is the role of the diocese, parish, movements and, in particular, other married couples in fostering communities capable of welcoming, accompanying and sustaining married life?”

Here, he explained, other couples can play a vital role by accompanying spouses “not as experts, but drawing on their personal lived experience that is also discerned and shared.”

Providing continuity in pastoral care

The Church’s main challenge, therefore, is to move from pastoral care focused on isolated moments to ongoing accompaniment throughout a couple’s vocation to marriage.

Marriage is a precious good to safeguard, a vocation that requires daily commitment, and a bond built over time. Preparing for the wedding is only the beginning.

The real challenge is helping spouses live the sacrament they have received, making their union a tangible witness to love, fidelity, forgiveness, and hope.

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From celebrating the sacrament to living it

Argentine theology professor María Marcela Mazzini then addressed the mystagogy of the sacramental bond, inviting participants to “view the first years of marriage as a true mystagogy of the sacrament that has been celebrated”—a gradual entry into its mystery.

“The early Church named mystagogy this progressive introduction into a mystery already received sacramentally: what had been celebrated was true and effective, but it needed to be understood from within and turned into a living reality,” she explained.

Something similar happens in marriage, she said: “The agreement starts up a real bond, a communio personarum called to progressively receive its own truth: the transition from the sacramentum celebratum to the sacramentum vivendum, without separating the gift from the task, nor grace from freedom.”

Mazzini recalled that Amoris laetitia describes the spouses’ “yes” as the beginning of a journey, rather than something already complete.

The early years of marriage, she noted, require couples to reorganize finances, work, household tasks, relationships with their families of origin, sexuality, and, often, life with children.

Sources of crisis

“Four key areas of crisis illustrate the everyday Paschal dimension,” Mazzini said. She identified “communication and conflict management,” “the organization of shared life,” and “finances and life plans.”

The fourth is “sexuality and intimacy, where differences in desire, fatigue, fertility, and ways of expressing affection are intertwined with the overall quality of the bond.”

According to the theologian, “The ‘we’ does not arise automatically simply because two people love one another; nor is it the sum of two individuals, nor a merger, but rather two family cultures giving rise to a third, new and unique one.”

The visible sign of a greater Love

Accompanying spouses in their early years of marriage means “recognizing that we are not merely accompanying two single individuals, but a nascent bond—a ‘we’ that is still fragile yet full of possibilities,” Mazzini said.

“At its very core, sacramental marriage can be understood in this way: two types of freedom which, supported by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, turn their mutual acceptance into the visible sign of a greater Love.”

“This is also a message for the Church and for the world,” she concluded. “Unity does not mean abolishing differences; belonging does not mean possessing; caring does not mean dominating; and faithfulness enables us to navigate transformations without abandoning the covenant.”