Building holy marriages, holy families and holy vocations

“Bishop Agustín Román prepared us for marriage,” he noted, adding that Miami’s much loved auxiliary bishop viewed the relationship between father and mother as the foundation of the family. “For us it has been important to work on our relationship, so that she (his wife Jennifer) is most important to me and I am most important to her, and that we may be the best parents for our children.”

That’s what they and the more than 50,000 other couples who have attended Camino retreats have learned during the movement’s 50 years in the Archdiocese of Miami.

“Fifty years. It seems impossible, doesn’t it? Fifty years of graces poured out on this archdiocese, on the families of this local Church,” said Archbishop Thomas Wenski as he celebrated the commemorative Mass April 16, 2023 — also Divine Mercy Sunday — in the chapel of St. John Vianney Seminary in Miami.

The archbishop thanked God for the five decades of “this fruitful movement that has done so much good for so many families, for so many couples.” And he remembered Bishop Román for being “inspiration and support for this and many other ministries in our archdiocese.”

He also recognized Camino’s founders, approximately 10 couples who were active in Cursillo retreats, and had the initiative to establish a movement aimed at helping young couples on their way to receiving the sacrament of marriage; as well as all the collaborators who for five uninterrupted decades have ensured that Camino “continues to reinvigorate itself and acquire a renewed energy with the new generations.”

During the Mass, one of the founding couples, Pedro (Papucho) Peláez and his wife Martha (Mamucha), presented a photograph of the first Camino retreat, which took place on May 4 and 5, 1973. The Camberts presented a poster with the number 955 for the retreats that have been held so far. 

Camino is one of two programs officially approved by the archdiocese as preparation for young couples who want to be married for the first time in the Catholic Church. The other is Transformed in Love.

Camino consists of a two-day retreat, held on Saturday and Sunday, where the engaged couples receive talks on home economics, family planning, the psychology of marriage, the meaning of the sacraments, and other topics, all presented by young and not-so-young married couples.

They tell participants, “This is what we are doing: we are following God’s path and if you want to be together forever, you must have God in your lives, you must listen and remain in community,” said Loren González. She and her husband, Luis, have been participating as couples’ coordinators since they were married five years ago.

“We strive to bring the joy we have as a married couple to the people who are getting married. We want our experience to be helpful for their future,” said Gabriel Rodríguez, who joined the movement in 1997.

NEW GENERATIONS, CHANGES, CHALLENGES

Camino volunteers now include the children and grandchildren of early participants.

“We see couples who participated in the first Camino, and also the third generation — our children who now work in the movement,” said Fernando Gómez, Camino’s lay coordinator.

Gómez and his wife, Laura, began working with Camino in 1990, a year after getting married, “and from then on we fell in love with it. We are trying to build holy marriages, holy families, out of which can come holy marriages, holy families and holy vocations,” said Fernando, whose son, Father Matthew Gómez, is the director of the archdiocesan Vocations Office. 

Gómez also said that in these five decades, an average of 19 retreats per year have taken place, including 28 held by Zoom during the coronavirus pandemic. Camino has served 50,615 couples and is present in 89 of the 109 parishes of the archdiocese.

Since its beginnings, the movement has revised the topics that are addressed at the retreats, in keeping with the new challenges facing the Church. Some of those changes include the use of new technologies and delivering the talks in English since 2017. But the biggest challenge was delivering the talks during the COVID shutdown.

“We immediately had to reorganize and figure out how to meet the needs of couples who were asking for retreats, even in the midst of the crisis,” said Gabriel Cambert, who is also director of Continuing Development for the archdiocesan Office of Schools. “We kept the mission and message of the movement throughout the pandemic.” 

In January 2022, in-person retreats returned. They now take place at Msgr. Edward Pace High School in Miami Gardens, which allows more couples to participate – as many as 80 in one, an average of between 60 and 70 in most. 

Of the 20 Caminos each year, “sometimes 12 are in English and eight are in Spanish, because we are seeing a great need for them in English,” Gabriel noted. “We are completely bilingual and the manuals are completely bilingual as well.”

TRANSCENDENCE

The 50th anniversary Mass was attended by many “Caminantes” who shared their memories of the experience.

“Camino has had a tremendous impact on marriages and on my family, in particular with the children and grandchildren,” said Silvia González, who along with her husband, Deacon Jorge González, attended a Camino retreat in the late 1970s.

They moved to Atlanta and started “Llamados A Ser Uno” (Called To Be One), a version of Camino. It’s been 30 years since they returned to Miami and the program is still going strong. “It’s a very effective program,” she said.

“It’s important for the children to see the commitment of the parents because today it’s very easy to say, ‘if something breaks, I change it.’ In this age, marriage is disposable,” lamented Lizeth de Cárdenas, who with her husband, Alberto, became active in Camino in the 1980s. “There is no commitment.” 

“For me, Camino is the fruit of the maturity of evangelization in the Archdiocese of Miami. The couples themselves took on the responsibility of evangelizing other couples who were preparing for marriage. It was what Bishop Román was asking us to do, repeating, ‘Woe to me if I don’t evangelize,’“ said Father Rafael Capó, vice president for Mission at the University of St. Thomas and spiritual director of the movement since 2012.

In the future, the movement must respond to the needs of couples in the context in which they live. And for that, there should be “young couples who evangelize other young couples,” the priest said.

“We were one among those who started, and after 50 years, thousands of couples have participated and are happy; it has been wonderful,” said Papucho Peláez. “As long as there are people who want to get married, there have to be others who prepare them to reach that joy. I hope this never ends.” 

Couples who are interested in attending a Camino del Matrimonio retreat can register through www.caminodelmatrimonio.org, call 305-226-4664 or email caminodelmatrimonio@gmail.com.