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Monthly Archives: August 2012

Marriage Preparation: Training for a Lifetime

Posted on 30 August 2012 by Bernard

Part of my work is in the area of marriage and family so I have long seen the importance in undertaking a pre-marriage preparation course. I realise that some engaged couples (and most often the men) can think it is a bit of a waste of time but I have never really understood that logic. After all we put years of education into the field we desire to work in, we undergo courses in personal areas of interest, we read self-help books by the millions, but yet when it comes to marriage, the largest single life investment a person can make, we think “no worries, it’ll be right”.

Being in love and being engaged is a wonderful thing, but all this new found joy can give a false sense of reassurance, that the mere ‘feeling’ of being in love is what will keep a couple going for fifty years. Even a young couple who are active in their faith and have the right idea of what marriage is about are not completely prepared. The fact of the matter is that a couple at the starting line of marriage cannot possibly foresee or completely understand how life changes after the honeymoon is over and the wedding gifts are unpacked (and I willingly put myself in this category; these past three months of engagement have been lesson after lesson). It can be too easy to ignore discussing what marriage will be like and instead hide behind the fun of being together and planning a wedding and honeymoon. Putting time aside to think about the vocation of marriage is without a doubt the most foundational and important task an engaged couple need to put on their ‘to-do’ list. Read the rest of this entry →

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Who to invite?

Posted on 22 August 2012 by Bernard

Marriage is a very public event and that is the way it is meant to be. Marriage is the public joining of one man and one woman and it is recognised not just by the Church which blesses it as a sacrament but also by the State. Why does the State concern itself with marriage? Simply because marriage (and the family that will most often flow from it), is absolutely essential for a healthy and functioning society. Every wedding celebration then is actually a celebration that life will continue, that children will continue, that society will continue. It is the ultimate celebration and so of course married couples have guests to celebrate with them at their wedding.

Many, many years ago, and for all time before that, Jane and I would have most likely been from the same village and so making a guest list would not be that hard. We would simply invite the entire village to a massive celebration in the town square. If we were to invite our entire suburbs to join us nowadays we would need a place slightly bigger than the town square so we sat down to craft yet another list, the guest list. Read the rest of this entry →

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Changing friendships

Posted on 15 August 2012 by Bernard

Over the years I have been blessed to cross paths with some wonderful men and women who I have had the privilege of calling friends. Among those friends, the connection I have made with certain female friends have been some of the most rewarding. They often included regular lengthy conversations about the deep issues of life and faith. However as these young women have married, the nature of our friendships changed. I remember when my first very close female friend married.  While I was very happy for her and her husband I did feel the loss of our friendship not being able to continue at the same depth and frequency. And now that I am engaged I find myself having to look at friendships in a new way.

To cite one example; I have a female friend that I met close to 15 years ago and for a good proportion of those years we have caught up every other month for a movie and a meal. Our friendship is a purely platonic one and while I enjoy having a movie buddy once I got engaged I found myself having to consider in what way this friendship would exist into the future. My fiancé Jane is a wonderful and trusting woman and she has never given me instructions on who I could or could not see, but of my own accord I began to wonder if my movie friend and I had seen our last film together.  Read the rest of this entry →

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The Reception Venue: A Place to Celebrate

Posted on 8 August 2012 by Bernard

With all this talk of becoming engaged and our families meeting and engagement blessings you may have been wondering if we had made any plans for a reception venue…well rest assured, we did. I have known some people who have needed to book a reception venue up to two years before the actual date but we managed to find a good selection of choices still available. Perhaps 29 December is a less popular date being between Christmas and New Year’s Eve but whatever the case it seemed to work for us.

So where does one begin in locating a reception venue? Of course the answer is Google. Jane and I sat down one afternoon, sent a raft of enquiry emails and receiving back responses, we compiled a spreadsheet of where, how much and what was included.

We discovered that in considering a venue we had to ask ourselves some questions about what was important to us. Some couples choose venues that have stunning views overlooking the water or some other natural wonder, other couples choose venues that are renowned for their five-star menus and other couples choose venues that are significant to them or their families. And then of course most couples need to balance all that against their budget and find a happy compromise.  Read the rest of this entry →

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Sealed with a Blessing…Byzantine Style

Posted on 1 August 2012 by Bernard

Jane and I opted not to have an engagement party, after all there was not a whole lot of time until the wedding date and now there are less than 150 days to go! However I was keen to have an engagement blessing of some sort. I had been to engagement parties where the priest comes along and in a simple ceremony blesses both the ring and the couple. In the Middle Eastern region the idea of an engagement blessing seems to be bigger than it is in the West and an added Eastern tradition is that the man would also have an engagement ring. Even though I don’t have ring we did arrange to have the blessing at my Melkite parish last Sunday evening after the Divine Liturgy (i.e. Mass). We didn’t want to turn the event into an engagement party in itself so we only invited our immediate family and a few very close friends for the Liturgy and then to join us afterwards for dinner.

For Jane’s family and all of our friends the evening was a more novel event as it was of course a Byzantine Liturgy. The Sunday night Liturgy is in English, which is just as well as I don’t speak Arabic. The Liturgy was beautiful as always with its ongoing chant, incense and processions, with the iconastasis (icon screen) reminding us that we worship amidst all the saints and the angels. A touching homily was preached by our archdeacon who is actually a full born ‘Australian’ but who came over to the Melkite Church many years ago. While the Divine Liturgy was taking place Jane’s engagement ring sat on the altar which was a lovely blessing in itself, that the offering of my love to her was placed on the altar at which the ultimate showing of love takes place. Read the rest of this entry →

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