Marriage and Parish Family Ministries
Village's Clergy Couples Retreat Featured on AFR
Ancient Faith Radio's newly released podcast in their series "Ancient Faith Presents" features Bobby Maddex interviewing Fr. Charles Joanides and Pres. Kerry Pappas about the upcoming Orthodox Clergy Couples Retreat. Hosted by Antiochian Village, the retreat will take place May 22-24 in Ligonier, Pennsylvania.
In the interview, Fr. Charles and Pres. Kerry provide a brief overview of the retreat, titled "Protecting and Growing Our Marriages," with a description of the sessions and how clergy couples can benefit from the workshops. Couples may still register here.
Conciliar Releases Marriage Book by Fr. Constantine Nasr
An important new resource has just been produced for Orthodox couples. In Mastering the Art of Marriage: Staying Together When the World Pulls You Apart, Antiochian priest Fr. Constantine Nasr (St. Elijah, Oklahoma City) writes about the love, commitment and hard work involved in making marriages last. "As a pastor for the last 38 years," he notes, "I have had many young couples discuss their plans for marriage with me. I have seen their joy, their excitement and their eagerness to enter into marriage. During the same 38 years I have had many married couples come to me with their marriages in trouble. These same young couples that had been filled with happiness were now filled with anger, distrust and pain. It is staggering to hear that two out of three marriages will end in divorce. It is not the statistic that staggers me. It is the massive pain of divorce that staggers me."
Fr. Constantine continues, "The old signs that guided couples are gone. Today young couples head off in any number of directions hoping it will lead to happiness. Sadly, those roads most often lead to divorce."
Bishop Michael Dahulich of the Orthodox Church in America calls the book "...a resource masterpiece (which) combines the wisdom of the Scripture and the Holy Fathers throughout the centuries and the guidance of modern scholarship and marriage counseling from our own time."
Midwest Antiochian Women's Retreat + May 13-15, 2011
The Antiochian Women of the Diocese of Toledo and the Midwest invite women to their sixth annual retreat Friday-Sunday, May 13-15, 2011 at Dormition of the Mother of God Orthodox Monastery, located at 3389 Rives Eaton Road in Rives Junction, Michigan. On Saturday, Kh. Maggie Hock will present the retreat program on the Holy Myrrhbearing Women. She will talk about who the Myrrhbearing Women are, what they did in the early Church and how we can be “Myrrhbearing Women” today. Kh. Maggie is North American Director of the Antiochian Department of Marriage and Parish Family Ministries.
For more information, including schedule and registration form, please download the retreat flyer (PDF).
Recommended Resource: FOCCUS Pre-Marriage Inventory
Statistics on marriage state that couples who go through adequate pre-marital preparation have a 66% better chance for an intact marriage. The FOCCUS Orthodox Christian Edition is a pre-marital program which has been used by Kh. Maggie Hock, Director of the Department of Marriage and Parish Family Ministries, to train clergy and seminarians in pan-Orthodox settings. It is a complete program which, if used as designed, provides adequate preparation for couples approaching marriage. It is not a counseling program, but it does include an inventory that the couple completes, and it generates a report based on their answers that is an excellent guide.
FOCCUS requires a training time of approximately eight hours. Kh. Maggie is presently the only Certified Orthodox trainer and she has been given the blessing to do this with Antiochian clergy by Metropolitan Philip. The only way clergy can receive the Manual and Inventories is to work through the training under Kh. Maggie's guidance. She may be reached at: 402.445.0150, or at maggiehock@aol.com.
For details about FOCCUS: visit www.foccusinc.com. Here is some basic information:
