“Date kits” help Catholic couples connect during National Marriage Week
By Christina Gray
Date nights for Melanie Salazar and Jerry Sharp III have been relatively few and far between lately. Married almost three years and first-time parents to a baby boy, the pair enjoyed Valentine’s Day at their favorite vegan restaurant on Feb. 14. At their table they looked through the contents of a marriage “date kit” put together by the Office of Marriage and Family Life.
The kits included candy and an interactive dice game that invited spouses to “roll the dice” to express love for their spouse in a dozen loving ways. A “snake eyes” roll, for instance, was a prompt to pray a blessing for your spouse. Roll a four and a two, to make your partner laugh, or a deuce, to hold your spouse’s hand during the next two rolls.
Ed Hopfner, director of the office of marriage and family life, told Catholic San Francisco he put together the kits to help local couples celebrate the U.S. Bishops’ National Marriage Week, Feb. 7-14, following World Marriage Day on Feb. 9. The observances are an opportunity to celebrate, support and promote marriage and the family. This year’s theme was “Marriage: Source of Hope, Spring of Renewal. Pursue a Lasting Love.” He was also inspired by the Radiate Love initiative of the California Catholic Bishops (www.radiatelove.info ).
Hopfner said he specifically assembled the contents of about 100 date kits in his small office as a “pilot” project for parishes to support World Marriage Day. A number of parishes offered them to couples for a date night prelude to the Archdiocese’s Wedding Anniversary Mass on Feb. 22 at St. Mary’s Cathedral.
One of those parishes was Star of the Sea Parish in San Francisco where Sean and Christina Sullivan, spouses of 13 years, run a marriage and family apostolate. Hopfner had asked the Sullivans if they would host a date night for parish couples, provide free childcare, and offer the dating kits to married couples.
“Knowing that it is difficult to afford a babysitter, but how important it is to continue “dating” one’s spouse, we were eager to provide a space for kids to play together while their parents enjoyed time together,” said Christina. Two couples participated.
Other date kit components included a brochure on how to make a Holy Hour for and with your spouse, marriage resources from the U.S. and California Bishops, a discount code for a Building a Eucharistic Marriage course, and an article on “eutrapelia” by Catholic speaker, Chris Stefanick.
“Read about it! It’s a real thing” said Hopfner, about the Greek term for the virtue of good humor, playfulness and fun — important qualities to a happy marriage. Both Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas wrote about the virtue.
Stefanik writes that “like any virtue it is a spiritual muscle, a power of soul, that enables us to do hard things more easily.” In the case of eutrapelia, he said, “it allows us to more easily avoid the worldly anxiety and lure of riches that choke the Word of God.”
Hopfner said that the date kits were his way of encouraging couples to take the time to reconnect and invest in their marriage — as a long-range strategy.”
“Most parents would do “anything” for their children, yet, studies show, the best thing they can do for their children is to have a good marriage,” he said. “When children see their parents acting in a loving way to each other, they themselves feel loved.”
Photo: Jerry Sharp III, left, and his wife, Melanie Salazar, who attend St. Mary’s Cathedral and Our Lady of Fatima Russian Byzantine Parishes, look through a “date kit” for married couples on their Valentine’s Day dinner out. (Photo courtesy of Jerry Sharp III)