Couples who pray together before the wedding find it natural afterwards. A simple pattern that works for engaged couples, including those separated by distance.
Almost every couple preparing for marriage agrees that faith is important to them. Rather fewer have ever prayed together out loud. The gap between the two is worth closing before the wedding rather than after, because a habit that does not exist at the altar rarely appears afterwards on its own.
Why it is awkward, and why that passes
Praying aloud with another person feels exposing in a way that praying alone does not. You hear yourself. So does the person you are about to marry. Most couples find the first two or three attempts uncomfortable and the fourth unremarkable. Getting past the third is the whole task.
A pattern that works
Ten minutes, at a fixed time, is better than an hour that never happens.
- Begin with the Sign of the Cross and a moment of silence. The silence matters more than it sounds.
- Read the day's Gospel. It is short, it is the same passage the whole Church is reading, and it means neither of you has to choose.
- Say one thing each you are grateful for from the day just gone. Specific, not general.
- Say one thing each you are asking for. This is where couples learn what the other is actually worried about.
- Close with a decade of the Rosary or an Our Father.
When you are in different countries
Very many engaged Kerala couples are. Fix a time that works in both places and keep it even when the call is short. Read the same Gospel passage, say the same decade. Couples who do this through a year of engagement arrive at the wedding already practised in the one habit most likely to hold the marriage together later.
A few particular prayers
- The Rosary — one decade is enough to start. Kerala families have prayed it together in the evening for generations.
- St Thomas the Apostle, who brought the faith to this coast and whose name the Church here carries.
- St Alphonsa and St Kuriakose Elias Chavara, Kerala's own saints, who understood these families from the inside. Read about them on our saints pages.
- The Holy Family, for the household you are about to begin.
Bring it to the pre-marriage course
Most Kerala dioceses run a two or three day course, and the chaplains there are used to couples who want to pray together and do not know how to start. Ask. It is the question they most like being asked.