Congratulations!

Congratulations on your engagement! We are most excited and honored to support you in your preparation for this beautiful, life-long commitment to each other, in which God Himself joins you together as husband and wife through the Sacrament of Matrimony.

As part of your engagement, the Church requires a process of marriage preparation (sometimes referred to as “Pre-Cana”).  Marriage preparation is meant to form you in and inform you about God’s plan for marriage so that you can fully make this extraordinary decision.  Through this process, you’ll learn more about yourselves and one another as together you discern this path in your lives.  We hope that marriage preparation also helps you appreciate the beauty of getting married in the Catholic Church – for in this sacrament, God bestows His grace to enable you to live out joyfully the responsibilities and duties of married love through mutual self-gift. You’ll be encouraged to know that sociological studies have demonstrated that couples who engage in marriage preparation have a significantly lower risk of divorce than couples who do not, and have more satisfying marriages (e.g. Stanley, “Premarital Education,” 2006).

On this page are listed the requirements in order to complete marriage preparation at St. Francis Xavier Parish in the Diocese of Harrisburg. The first step in this process is to complete the form below in order to get in touch with a priest and to schedule your first meeting.

Please note that before a wedding date can be scheduled, it is necessary for you to begin marriage preparation (either here or at your local Catholic parish) by meeting with the priest first.