“Authentic married love is caught up into divine love.”
Why Unveiled
From beginning to end, Scripture is full of spousal imagery. Genesis, the Song of Solomon, the Prophetic books, the Gospels, and the Epistles speak about God as the Lover and His chosen people as the beloved. Sacred Scripture uses spousal love and marital imagery over and over as one of the primary ways to communicate God's relationship with His people. In other words, there is something in the nature of married love that reflects God, who is love.
The program prepares Christian couples for the human reality of married life, with all its potential joys and sorrows, and unveils the mystery of married love as an icon of divine love. The witness of authentic married life lived as a sacrament - that is, an indissoluble, faithful, creative, and complete love exchanged between man and woman - is a compelling testimony that presents the Mystery of Christ to the world anew.
“...to the extent that the Christian family accepts the Gospel and matures in faith, it becomes an evangelizing community...particularly today, the Christian family has a special vocation to witness to the paschal covenant of Christ by constantly radiating the joy of love and the certainty of hope for which it must give an account.”
Unveiled Origins
In September of 2013, the Diocese of Richmond's Center for Marriage, Family, and Life responded to the needs of the diocese by revising the Guidelines for Marriage Preparation and standardizing the marriage preparation process. A working group was assembled to develop the curriculum and formation program for engaged couples within the diocese.
After deciding on a video-based program, the Center for Marriage, Family, and Life partnered with Spirit Juice Studios to produce the video segments. Unveiled was launched within the diocese in September 2014. Since then, within the Diocese of Richmond, over 1,000 participants have been through the program and their comments have been overwhelmingly positive.
Unveiled was designed with evangelization in mind. Marriage preparation is the first encounter with the Church many couples have in their adult life. As such, we wanted to create a space for couples to interact with one another and the Church in a meaningful way. Unveiled has proved to be such a powerful resource for evangelization within our own diocese, we have decided to share it with you.