"Friends, let's not trivialize love, because love is not just emotion and feeling, this in any case is at the beginning. Love is not having it everything and fastdoes not respond to the logic of the disposable. Love is fidelity, gift, responsibility". This is how Pope Francis addressed the young people in the meeting with them that he kept on his trip to Slovakia.
Growing together in a Christian engagement is a challenge for those who are on this path and also for the pastoral care of the family which, on many occasions, has tiptoed over these moments, limiting itself, in the best of cases, to the pre-marriage course. However, in recent years, there have been many and increasingly varied projects of schools for engaged couples, or groups of engaged couples who, bearing in mind the reality of today's world, accompany couples during the time of engagement.
The impetus of Amoris Letitia
The publication of Amoris Laetitia was a further step in the updating of family pastoral care in the Catholic Church. The apostolic exhortation dedicates several paragraphs to the time of courtship and encourages, especially in the pastoral care of this stage. Not in vain, it points out that "all pastoral actions aimed at helping married couples to grow in love and to live the Gospel in the family are an invaluable help for their children to prepare themselves for their future married life and points out that "premarital and marriage pastoral care should be above all a pastoral care of the bond, where elements are contributed that help both to mature love and to overcome difficult moments. These contributions are not only doctrinal convictions, nor can they be reduced to the precious spiritual resources that the Church always offers, but must also be practical ways, well-incarnated advice, tactics taken from experience, psychological orientations".
Amoris Laetitia together with the Itinerary of formation and accompaniment of engaged couples "Together on the Road, + Q2 " published by the Spanish Episcopal Conference have been a starting point or reinforcement of this line of pastoral accompaniment.
At present we find examples such as the bride and groom groups in the diocese of Vitoria, Road to Cana in the Diocese of Cordoba or the various experiences addressed to engaged couples of the family delegation of the Archdiocese of Madrid.
All of them agree on one point: it is a path of accompaniment for the time of engagement without necessarily approaching the wedding date. It is a time of affective maturation, human formation, dialogue and reflection with the objective of affirming the basis of the future marriage and providing spiritual support tools to live one's own vocation as a married couple.
Bride and Groom 3.0
Social networks have become one of the main means used in formation for young people. Accounts such as Catholic Bride and Groom offer reflections, formation, prayers and testimonies of engaged couples who live this time in a Christian way on networks such as Youtube or Instagram.
In addition to these, there are personal accounts of young people or engaged couples who naturally offer their testimony of Christian life in courtship. Among them we find that of Ana Bini Sesé, from Barcelona. @princespequitas or Teresa García Ledesma from Seville. @teregl99 who share moments of their lives and answer with simplicity the doubts of engaged couples like them.
