Braiding God into relationships

Faith and marriage are gifts from the Holy Spirit that require nurturing

By Bee Goodman

While some adore it, others trudge through Valentine’s Day because of the commercialism it has turned into. Pink glitter, chocolate, and teddy bears are not equal to the value of someone’s love.

St. Valentine didn’t become well known because he had the biggest bouquet of roses; it’s because he fought for what’s hidden under all the candy-coated commercialism: the sacrament of love.

There’s a long history tied to the February date we know as Valentine’s Day; it began long before St. Valentine. A fertility festival called Lupercalia took place each year in Rome. Women of Rome would place their names in a large urn and the city’s bachelors would then draw a name and the matches would often lead to marriage.

Around 270 A.D., Emperor Claudius II outlawed young men from getting married, thinking that single men made better soldiers. This is when the patron of love, St. Valentine, stepped up and began to marry couples in secret.

Claudius had him imprisoned and sentenced to be executed. According to legend, Valentine helped to heal a young woman—possibly his jailer’s daughter—and grew very fond of her.

Before his death, St. Valentine was said to have written the jailer’s daughter a letter, signing it “Your Valentine.”

The Lupercalia festival continued until Pope Gelasius I deemed it un-Christian in the fifth century and declared Feb. 14 to be Valentine’s Day, though the day wasn’t closely associated with love and romance until much later.

During the Middle Ages, it was believed in France and England that birds’ mating season began on Feb. 14, and many thought of this as a romantic association.

It’s quite possible that legends are nothing but passed-down stories that developed into a part of what we see Valentine’s Day is today. But the reality is that no legend or special chocolate-box holiday would exist if not for the efforts to preserve the sacrament of marriage by the saint. Those efforts are carried on through the Church today.

The Church celebrates Catholic Marriage Week the week before Valentine’s Day, and many events are celebrated throughout the Diocese of Knoxville. All Saints Church in Knoxville annually hosts married couples for a special Mass and vow renewal, followed with a wedding reception.

Other events hosted through the diocesan Office of Marriage and Family Life are held throughout the year to prepare for marriage, teach, and remind couples what the sacrament of marriage is, and be a recourse to couples entering into a family union with God.

The Office of Marriage and Family Life is led by director Carolyn Krings, who often has the privilege of meeting young, engaged couples as they prepare to begin their lives together as well as couples who have enjoyed wedded happiness for many years.

Fixed-up by Father Harvey

Mrs. Krings talked about a young couple she met two years ago during their engagement.

“Their story highlights the gift of the Holy Spirit working through a good shepherd and his call to support the community,” Mrs. Krings said.

Leigh and Brandi Smith, parishioners of St. Alphonsus in Crossville, were married on Sept. 7, 2024.

They grew up in the same circle but really found each other in 2020 when then-St. Alphonsus pastor Father Jim Harvey told parishioners to call on their neighbors to check on them during the pandemic. Brandi (then Disidoro) felt compelled to reach out to Leigh and check on his family.

Father Harvey is now pastor of Holy Trinity Parish in Jefferson City.

Mr. Smith shared that his biggest role models for marriage are his adoptive parents, his biological grandparents. The parents dated for six months before approaching a priest for marriage. Mr. Smith’s father had not yet converted to Catholicism and was part of another denomination, while his mother was a cradle Catholic.

Because of this, and the short time the couple had been together, the priest didn’t feel marriage was appropriate at that point. But the Smiths persevered and continued their relationship, eventually marrying.

During their wedding, a rope was used to separate his father from the priest inside the church because he was not yet Catholic. Mr. Smith’s parents were married 56 years before his mother’s death in 2021.

Sitting at the kitchen table in his father’s house, Mr. Smith shared another story of his parents during the early years of their marriage.

“They had joined a bank and requested a loan to build the house. The bank said no because they hadn’t been with them long enough. A few years later the bank reached out to the couple asking if they were still interested in the loan and dad said no because they’d already built it. He just worked and did a bit here and there until it was done,” Mr. Smith recalled.

Despite challenges, the couple never let anything stop them from moving forward in their 56 years of marriage.

Mrs. Smith shared quite the opposite as a role model for marriage: her single, divorced mother.

Mrs. Smith shared that her parents divorced very early in her life, but her mother had made it a point to never let Brandi think divorce was an option. Her mother instilled in her from a young age that marriage is an important sacrament and shouldn’t be discarded so easily.

“Even though my parents were divorced, my mother was always the first to say divorce was not OK, and divorce was never something she wanted,” Mrs. Smith explained.

She continued, “It was always instilled that if I did get married, it is supposed to be with one person for life…it’s supposed to be forever.”

The different backgrounds never tainted the couple’s combined view of marriage. It helped instill the importance of marriage as a sacrament and why it’s so important to braid God into their relationship.

“People like to say fate, and they always like to use it as a magical term. But this is divine intervention. I can’t say COVID was bad for me when this happened because if COVID wouldn’t have happened, Father Jim wouldn’t have made that call,” Mrs. Smith said.

“We’d always been around each other, in the same church, the same building. We like to joke that the Lord got tired of waiting for us to do something, so He decided to just say, ‘Let’s help these people out.’ Then Father Jim made the call,” she said, laughing.

High-school sweethearts

Warren and Shawna Hunt might be a familiar face around the community as they are dedicated to the marriage ministry. They’ll celebrate 50 years of marriage in August. Since their wedding day, Warren and Shawna have stuck together and have continued to give their marriage to God from the beginning.

The two are sort of high-school sweethearts. They dated in high school but agreed that since they would be thousands of miles apart in college, they’d see other people. But as high-school sweethearts often do, they struggled to really stay apart and reconnected. They married in August 1977.

The couple quickly added two children to the family and found themselves swamped in day-to-day life with working and parenting. About 15 years into their marriage, they began to struggle.

“We kind of felt like we were living on two separate tracks. I’d called it married singles. And Shawna’s mom thought it would be beneficial for us to get some marriage enrichment help,” Mr. Hunt remembered.

Mrs. Hunt’s mother offered to take their kids for a weekend while the two participated in a Marriage Encounter weekend. They shared that the weekend changed their marriage completely.

For the next 10 or so years, the couple worked in marriage ministry together and presented at Marriage Encounter weekends a few times every year. Even after they stopped actively working in marriage ministry, the couple still found themselves involved.

Through several moves from Pittsburgh, now to Lenoir City, they stayed involved in the ministry and met more couples along the way.

“At one church, we started an empty-nesters group for couples whose kids were grown. We found some studies that were focused on them, and we found that a lot of those marriages felt emptiness,” Mrs. Hunt said.

Mr. and Mrs. Hunt can offer much advice for couples of any age or time spent together. In fact, their dedication to marriage ministry is what brought them to Knoxville.

“We were looking for a good, strong Catholic church. … Knoxville had this great opportunity because we looked on the website and found the Office of Marriage Preparation and Enrichment (now Marriage and Family Life). Most times you’ll see an office of marriage prep, but they actually had enrichment in the title,” Mr. Hunt said.

“So, we spoke to Marian Christiania, who was the director at the time, and she was excited about our background and excited to have us involved in marriage enrichment. …We’ve done this program called Couple Prayer, helping couples learn to pray together,” Mr. Hunt continued.

Now the couple has shifted focus to adult formation, which they’ve been doing for the last six to seven years. They shared that one thing they learned through Marriage Encounter is how to appreciate working together as a team.

“Shawna’s working on a program now that she’s leading and I’m helping her. That’s just how we operate as a couple now,” Mr. Hunt said, expressing pride as he spoke of his wife’s work.

Mrs. Hunt grew emotional when talking about the formation program for returning adults.

“I feel like God’s using us right now in that way to reach people to come back to the faith of your childhood,” she said.

She also shared that while she is leading the Landing program, Mr. Hunt is always there to jump in whenever needed.

“I wouldn’t be able to do this without him. Our faith just plays a huge role in what we do and who we are,” she said.

Backing each other in whatever their current projects are doesn’t begin to show how much these two work together in the faith. Each morning, they dedicate time to pray, go through the readings, and “pray for each other and for the things that we need. It’s a simple prayer but we say, ‘God, I give my day to you.’ That’s how we start our day,” they shared.

Mr. Hunt also noted that knowing a partner’s gifts makes a big difference.

“I tend to be more structured, organized, and make an outline of everything. But Shawna is very compassionate and good at filling in details. I’m the forest and Shawna deals with the trees,” he said.

Knowing each other’s gifts and talents makes working together much easier but also more joyful because it allows each person to observe God working through a person they love. The Hunts said that finding a marriage-enrichment activity to share is important, more than just taking a break like going to the beach or having a weekend without kids or work. Their point: Do something productive.

Mr. Hunt compared marriage to a car, saying that just like a vehicle, marriage requires maintenance and tune-ups.

“You don’t think your marriage needs a tune-up? Don’t wait until the car breaks down,” he advised.

Mr. Hunt pointed out that divorce rates spike after kids leave the home. Couples spend so much time on their children that when they do grow up and leave, many couples are left to find out they don’t recognize the person they married.

Dedicating time for marriage enrichment allows couples to stay bonded with the knowledge of each other throughout their marriage.

Mrs. Krings described marriage as a vocation that calls upon two people to form a special relationship.

“Marriage and the covenant between a couple are deeply connected to the teachings of the Catholic faith. Seek the wisdom of the Church and its teaching in times of struggle and pain,” she said.

According to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops website, “A sacramental marriage is a means of grace, giving strength to the husband and wife to live out their commitment, and to help each on the path to holiness.”

“God placed at the center of the covenant promise will be the breath of life that is needed in a marriage and family life,” Mrs. Krings explained.

The vocation of marriage is a hot topic for Catholic young adults, resulting in many events catered to engaged couples. While the Church does require couples to go through counseling before marriage, the preparation often leads couples to think about subjects that may have been forgotten when discussing their future together.

The Smiths shared that when they began counseling in preparation for their marriage they were partially surprised by the questions they were asked. There were a few topics that they’d never thought to ask each other but nothing major. The counseling covered financial discussions, communication pillars, and parenting styles, and examined their dedication to faith.

For a well-grounded couple, these topics are less likely to pose an issue. But for a less-experienced pair, the topics can make or break a marriage. Exploring these discussions before approaching the altar creates a stronger foundation for a couple.

Just as the Hunts suggested, re-examining these same topics later in marriage before hitting a speed bump can help prevent issues in a marriage.

“Be present, go through the tough seasons, and come out stronger. Recall these moments together. God can work with an open heart. I encourage couples to recognize the amazing presence and love of God in their spouse and the circumstances of each day,” Mrs. Krings advises couples.

Catholic Marriage Week falls just after Valentine’s Day, perhaps to serve as an extended celebration of St. Valentine’s effort or to allow more time to focus on the sacrament.

Catholic Marriage Week is meant to showcase the important details of the vocation and its purpose provided by the Lord.

“This week is set aside to highlight the vocation of marriage as a foundational keystone to our society. Married couples are called together for a specific reason and purpose; the eternal purpose of marriage is to get each other to heaven,” Mrs. Krings said.

“This week is a good time to intentionally take a pause to honor the gift of your spouse. Marriage is a sacrificial gift to another. A choice to love, to show honor and respect to one another, to be a partner in caring for the children produced from your own love story,” Mrs. Krings said.

“Oftentimes, we focus only on the difficulties and the challenges that come within a marriage. We need to remember why we fell in love in the first place. Being intentional and focusing on recalling your love story strengthens the commitment between spouses,” she added.

In a culture that often reduces love to grand gestures and fleeting feelings, the stories of St. Valentine, the Smiths, and the Hunts remind us that real love is quieter and far more courageous.

It is found in secret vows whispered under threat of persecution, in phone calls made during a pandemic, in decades of choosing one another through life’s hardships and joys.

Valentine’s Day may be wrapped with ribbon in a pretty box, but its truest meaning is written in sacrifice, shown through couples who pray together each day, who persevere when banks say no, and when life feels like “married singles.”

The key for couples is to seek enrichment before crisis, and to commit to helping one another reach heaven.

The world may celebrate Feb. 14 with roses and chocolate. The Church celebrates something deeper: a vocation, covenant, and a daily decision to love. Real love is far more enduring than any bouquet of red roses.