Registration open for marriage enrichment retreat
SALT LAKE CITY — The Diocese of Salt Lake City’s Family Life Office will host a marriage enrichment retreat with the title “The Wedding Feast of Cana – Making Your Marriage Extraordinary.”
The retreat will be presented by Bob and Peg Hensler. Peg Hensler is the director of the Department of Youth, Marriage and Family Life of the Catholic Diocese of Trenton, N.J. The couple, who have been married since 1982, have been conference and exhibitor coordinators at the National Association of Catholic Family Ministers, and Peg Hensler has been the president of the New Jersey Council of Family Life.
At the retreat, they will present a theme “that is well-known by all married couples, since most likely it is the reading that they had at their wedding,” said Veola Burchett, director of the Salt Lake diocese’s Office of Marriage and Family Life, who is organizing the retreat.
The Wedding Feast at Cana (John 2, 1:12) is the first miracle attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of John.
At the retreat, couples will explore what they were trying to say to their guests and themselves on the day of their wedding, and what meaning the story has for them today, Burchett said. “It is such a story of transformation – new couples transforming from singles to a married couple. … It’s really a story of transformation and growth.”
For Peg Hensler, the retreat is an opportunity for exploration for the married couples.
“We are going to be exploring the fruits of the wedding feast of Cana; we are going to talk about how this connects to married couples nowadays,” she said.
Among the questions to be explored will be how the reading makes sense in today’s world, how Jesus transforms ordinary marriages and lives into extraordinary ones, and what God is saying to the married couples now.
In addition, “We are going to do a dedication of each individual couple for their marriage life,” Hensler said.
The hope is that most of the married couples at the retreat “are in some way serving in a ministry or are actively involved in their parish, and if not, hopefully it [the retreat] will lead them to do it,” she said.
After the retreat, Bishop Oscar A. Solis will celebrate a Mass at which the longest-married couple in the diocese will be recognized.
“We are looking for the longest-married couple because they serve as an example,” Burchett said. “In their long years together they have been through health issues, they have been through deaths, they have been through, probably, financial problems, they have struggled with their kids, … maybe struggled through job losses, and through it all they’ve managed to love each other, to stay together and to provide an example to the rest of us of what marriage is,” Burchett said.
All married Catholic couples in the diocese are eligible for recognition; if they are unable to attend the Mass their names will be read, Burchett said.
To submit names for the longest-married couple in the diocese, contact Burchett at 801-328-8641 ext. 324 or veola.burchett@dioslc.org.
WHAT: Diocesan Marriage Enrichment Retreat
WHEN: Saturday, Feb. 17, 1-4:30 p.m.
WHERE: St. Vincent de Paul Parish’s Benvengnu Center, 1375 E. Spring Lane, SLC
COST: $40 per couple
A Mass celebrated by Bishop Oscar A. Solis will follow the retreat. An optional dinner, with dancing, will run from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. The cost for the dinner dance is $30. Register online at https://www.dioslc.org/about-us/diocese-calendar/marriage-enrichment/32-diocesan-marriage-enrichment-retreat or contact Veola Burchett, 801-328-8641 ext. 324 or veola.burchett@dioslc.org.
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