Priest’s retirement ministry helps couples through Marriage Encounter

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

 A retired priest spoke with The Catholic Free Press about advances in his ministry with couples last Saturday, as National Marriage Week (Feb. 7-14) began. World Marriage Day was celebrated Feb. 8.  
Father Laurence V. Brault retired from being a pastor July 1, 2025. He is in residence at Divine Mercy Parish in Blackstone, and still has what he calls a full-time volunteer job – helping lead Worldwide Marriage Encounter in North America. He also co-authored what has become another way for Marriage Encounter to help couples, in addition to its traditional weekend.
Marriage Encounter is an independent lay movement within the Catholic Church, run by married couples and priests, Father Brault explains. Popes have praised it and its members have been included in special events at the Vatican, according to the website wwme.org. This non-profit movement is present in almost 100 countries, the website says.  
It says the “weekend” is an “experience” led by a priest and three couples, which gives each couple attending an opportunity to dialogue privately with each other and God, to better understand “what it means to be married.”  
Husbands and wives of any denomination, mixed faith or without religious affiliation are welcome to participate in a weekend or briefer sessions (typically on weeknights), in person or using video conferencing software. Follow-up sharing groups are also available.
Priests attending “learn communication tools to grow in love with their ‘spouse’ the Church,” explains the website.
Marriage Encounter’s connection with World Marriage Day is explained on the website this way.  
“The idea of celebrating marriage began in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1981, when couples encouraged the mayor, the governor, and the bishop to proclaim St. Valentine’s Day as ‘We Believe in Marriage Day.’ The event was so successful, the idea was presented to and adopted by Worldwide Marriage Encounter’s National Leadership.
“By 1982, 43 governors officially proclaimed the day, and celebrations spread to U.S. military bases in several foreign countries. In 1983, the name was changed to ‘World Marriage Day,’ designated to be celebrated each year on the second Sunday in February.” In 1993, Pope John Paul II gave World Marriage Day his blessing.
But Father Brault says Marriage Encounter’s focus is not just on one day.
“The ultimate mission of Worldwide Marriage Encounter is to proclaim the values of matrimony and holy orders in the Church and in the World,” he says. “For 50-plus years, the major way that Worldwide Marriage Encounter did that was through its traditional weekend experience.” He says that “millions of couples, priests and religious have experienced a revitalization of their sacraments through that experience.”  
Father Brault says he attended a Marriage Encounter weekend in April 1977, a couple months before his priestly ordination, and again 1979, and began helping lead weekends in 1980. He was also in leadership for the diocese, state and region.
In August 2024, he says, he was asked to be on the North American Ecclesial Team, succeeding Bishop Michael W. Warfel, who was named to the International Ecclesial Team. Father Brault worked with Tony and Sue Morris, the couple then on the North American Ecclesial Team, from Waterloo, Illinois, through July 2025, when their term ended. He resumed his position for three years, now with the new couple on the Ecclesial Team, Peter and Sheila Oprysko, from Oakland, New Jersey.  
Father Brault calls this ministry full time. The biggest thing about retiring is that he now has one full-time job instead of two, he says. That’s in addition to service in the diocese. (Bishop McManus names him and other retired priests in his Page 4 letter about the Ash Wednesday collection to help support them.)
“I look back at my 33 years as pastor” in Upton, at Holy Angels Parish, then at St. Gabriel the Archangel Parish, Father Brault says. “I look back at the graces ... the things I was able to accomplish ... directed by God.”
He retired last year, when turning 75, but still celebrates Masses, leads a Bible study, hears confessions, offers spiritual direction, ministers to the sick, and continues his healing ministry, among other things.
“I’m happy not to have to worry about budgets and snow plowing and heating ... all the stuff a pastor has to worry about,” he comments. Now he can enjoy the pastoral aspect of his priesthood without administrative concerns.  
He’s especially excited about his part in the Marriage Encounter ministry he co-authored, which he described to The Catholic Free Press.
The Marriage Encounter weekend did not provide “a deeper understanding of the spirituality that couples can live in their marriage,” he says. “One of the questions that I raised … over three years ago was, ‘How do we provide couples with this spiritual foundation that will enable them to engage in the evangelizing work of the Gospel?’ … I used Benedict XVI’s encyclical ‘Deus Caritas Est’ as the springboard … looking not only at the Father’s love that is an agape love,” but also eros love – God’s desire to be one with his children and for his children to be one with him.
As Father Brault and the Opryskos were writing what became “God Chose You For Me,” they offered its individual chapters as enrichment sessions for couples. He called it “the Holy Spirit’s inspiration” that they brought the chapters together as a “seven-hour experience.” They presented it to North American and world leaders, who embraced it for Marriage Encounter to offer, he says.
He says some couples who attend it sign up for the weekend, and some who’ve made the weekend first describe the seven-hour experience as icing on the cake.  
Through the latter, he says, “we help the couple connect with how God is working in their relationship and how this God is revealing himself to others through that relationship, and it calls them to a deeper commitment to their Catholic faith.”
A priest or deacon, a married couple and a widow or widower give presentations, and each couple writes their own prayer to pray together daily, Father Brault says. The Scriptural book “Song of Songs” is also used.
God calls them to holiness and, as a married couple, to be a sacrament – “the visible sign of God’s love for his whole world.”  
When one spouse dies, that sacramental bond is no longer present, but death doesn’t destroy the spiritual connection between spouses and God, Father Brault says. There is a yearning to be rejoined with each other in heaven.
Father Brault says he and others first offered the whole seven-hour experience in October 2023 at St. Gabriel’s, and have taken it to several states.
“It is ultimately our hope that we can start giving this in all the dioceses of the United States and throughout the whole world,” involving family life offices, he says.