As national divorce rates climb and societal standards for marriage change, the Willwoods Catholic community wants to keep faith in marriage alive through retreat and prayer.

The Faith and Marriage ministry of the Willwoods community helped to rejuvenate relationships by inviting married couples to a retreat on April 13 at St. Joseph’s Abby in Covington, La. The opportunity was to reintroduce faith and God into the foundation of marriage.

“The retreat helps remind couples of the vows they took at the beginning of their marriage and then gives them space to breathe, to pray and to love together,” Jason Angelette, director of the Faith and Marriage ministry, said.

During the weekend of April 13, Willie and Alyson Leonard shared their journey in finding God within their marriage during the first married couples retreat of 2013.

“If you don’t spend time with your best friend, the relationship would lose its strength. Spending time with friends is like prayer, and it is crucial to your relationship with God,” Willie Leonard said.

The retreat is free of charge and funded through donations of participants. Attendees participate in prayer and mass and hear other couples discuss their experiences with truth, crisis and the sacraments.

“We welcome and open the doors to everyone. We tell them that we are not going to force Catholicism on them, but we are just going to give them the opportunity to dive deeper into their faith and we’d hope that they will enjoy the journey with us,” Angelette said.

As views on matrimony are changing in society, the ministry wants to reiterate the importance of having a personal relationship with God as a foundation to marriage.

Angelette explained that exploring faith in your own life is the first step to solidifying all good relationships.

“When you look at jails and you see how many people that come from broken homes and you see the struggles in people lives that stem from a broken family and broken relationship at home, it can’t be stressed enough how tragic divorce is for a persons well-being or a child,” Angelette said.

“If I am trying to love someone, then I need to have love in me first,” Angelette said. “Marriage is about giving oneself to the other for the sake of that other persons soul.”

The Faith and Marriage ministry offers six annual retreats, including a family retreat and a married couples retreat to Napa Valley.

Jessica DeBold can be reached at [email protected]