Mississauga, Ont.’s Merciful Redeemer Parish’s young adults program is encouraging Catholic adults to rediscover Holy Matrimony in a new light, not as a worldly coming-of-age checklist event, but rather a Christ-centred path to true joy, fulfilment and discernment. 

Taking place on Jan. 8, young adults aged 18 to 35 were invited to take part in “And the Two Shall Become One Flesh: A Night on Holy Matrimony,” the first Redeemed offering of the new year. There, after Holy Mass at 7 p.m., a brief fellowship period and a catechesis talk on marriage and the challenge young adults face in discerning its call seriously took place in the parish basement. 

It’s an event months in the making, and one well attended by young adult parishioners, with Redeemed program coordinator Adeolu Ireyomi sharing its inspiration as one pulling from a variety of direct sources. 

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“ Last year we had a similar night as part of our speaker series on the topic of dating and relationships, which was one of our more successful nights, but the leaders of Redeemed also met at the beginning of this year to see which topics would be edifying for young adults, and we believed marriage is perhaps a neglected area,” he said. 

“ I think perhaps we don't hear enough about whether young adults are called to marriage, how to discern that, what the purpose of marriage is and how it edifies the Catholic Church as a whole. It's also good to challenge these young adults to think about putting that discernment into the broader context of how it serves the Church, Christ and their spiritual life as a whole.” 

The talk and subsequent Q&A is led by Andrew and Joann Lesiuczok, a married couple since 2008 and leaders of the parish’s  marriage preparation course. For Ireyomi, the event’s core themes in the context of Holy Matrimony return to the idea of a Christocentric focus in relationships as the answer to common, secular misconceptions on the topic of marriage. 

“ It is the person of Christ who is the proper end of all our earthly actions, activities and human engagements, and so sacramentally in the Church, if you're going to get married, Christ should be at the forefront,” he told The Catholic Register.

He poses the important questions of how a partner will make someone more like Christ, whether marriage will be a union that makes someone more like Christ and even if Christ calls someone toward a different type of life as main points attendees will be faced with. 

“These are things (young adults) might want to think about. For the broader Church at large, marriage is not just about sentimentality, but there is a value, commitment and self-sacrifice for somebody else that follows as well — this is something people may have forgotten.” 

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Perhaps it is this lapse in proper discernment and education on marriage, amplified more than ever by today’s secular and consumerist tilt on the subject, that is to blame for the decline in Catholic marriages as a whole in recent years. 

A 2017 article from The B.C. Catholic highlighted that, according to the Vatican’s statistical yearbook of the Church, there had been a 71-per-cent decline in Canada’s Catholic marriages from 1975 to 2008, which amounted to more than double the decline of total weddings. In the U.S., Catholic marriages had decreased by around 54 per cent from 1975 to 2010.

More recent data underscores the same problem, with Catholic News Agency highlighting data from Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate showing Catholic marriage rates having dropped by nearly 70 per cent between 1969 and 2019.

Further, a 2018 study by Cardus found that in the 20 to 34 age group, the number of singles rose from 52.5 per cent to 58.8 per cent, while the number of married Canadians dropped from 33.2 per cent to 22.8 per cent from 1996 to 2016.

Declines in vocations, be it in marriage, priesthood or alternative religious life and in the West, is something that’s been observed by the Redeemed team as well. It’s another reason Ireyomi hopes that the discussions reveal, in some way, the peace so often masked by today’s outlook on marriage. 

“ Underpinning those declines might be a better understanding of the joy that awaits us when we truly say yes to what Christ is calling us to do.  It is about finding where you will be fulfilled and will find your purpose in life,” he said. “Entering into marriage with the desire to become configured to the person of Christ is setting yourself up for a better likelihood of having the type of marriage that will truly fulfill you, at least that's my hope.” 

Becoming one flesh out of two goes further than personal satisfaction, but also practically translates to the broader role and benefits for the Catholic Church and community as a whole, often through being a visual example or the fruits of marriage in the form of children and family. 

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Redeemed organizers are hoping that its first of many events in 2026 re-establishes Holy Matrimony as a path to true fulfillment and witness for the Church, even in a time of uncertainty and social neglect. 

For more on Redeemed, see mercifulredeemer.org/young-adult.