By: Jay Sorgi
Ralph and Brigitte Desimone have centered tens of thousands in God to move them forward in loving matrimony
Yes, Brigitte and Ralph Desimone still hold hands at Mass after 50 years of marriage.
“And everywhere else,” Ralph shares with infectious laughter.
That’s just one example of their belief in the fruits of the sacrament of marriage. So are the 10,000-plus couples they have invested their life within through their leadership in Catholic marriage preparation over the years.
That legacy led the Diocese of Oakland to award Ralph and Brigitte – or as someone dubbed them, the “R&B School of Marriage Preparation,” a title which they accept with the same hearty laughter – with the Diocesan Medal of Merit, following a lifetime dedicated to the vocation of helping marriages and lots of other selfless service in the faith.
“I think the first thing that came to our mind was, ‘That’s nice, and we know that it’s important to do that,” said Ralph, the more verbose of the couple.
“But one person going to confession on our retreats, or us bringing holy Communion to one elderly person in their homes or us bringing a rosary with someone – any of those individual items give us way more joy than the accolades.”
The Desimones, members of St. Bonaventure Parish in Concord, share a wealth of experience in teaching a plethora of marriage and sacramentally related topics, but the thing they share first, and share as the bedrock of their 50-plus years of marriage, is their prayer life which includes a daily rosary.
“The night of our honeymoon, when I was wiped out, entirely exhausted, Ralph looked at me and said, ‘How about we pray a rosary and then go to sleep? We’ll pick up tomorrow morning,’” said Brigitte. “From there on, it snowballed.”
“Father John Hardon, SJ, who was a spiritual advisor of ours, said something so simple, ‘You can’t do anything good without God’s grace, and the way you get that grace is through prayer.’ It’s so easy to get caught up with the business and forget that we have to remain faithful to whatever our prayer routine,” said Ralph, whose day job has been in the finance world.
“We have a prayer routine in our home. We pray the Morning Offering. We pray before meals. We go to daily Mass. We pray the Angelus at noon. We pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet at 3 p.m. We’ve come to realize that those times of prayer are the most important thing that we do, especially at our age now.”
Their journey of understanding God’s calling to marriage also serves as an example to married couples. Ralph’s journey came through three and a half years of dating Brigitte, as he was simultaneously discerning the priesthood.
“I still hadn’t gotten the answer from God. I went to the cathedral where my grandparents were married, and I had the entire cathedral by myself. I said, ‘This is it, God. It’s been enough years, I really need to know, and I’m going to stay here until I get the answer from you.’ I put him on the spot,” Ralph admitted.
“The night of our honeymoon, when I was wiped out, entirely exhausted, Ralph looked at me and said, ‘How about we pray a rosary and then go to sleep? We’ll pick up tomorrow morning. From there on, it snowballed.”
Brigitte Desimone
“Before the Blessed Sacrament, I said, ‘This is what I would like, these are my preferences, here’s my fears, here’s my concerns, here’s my thoughts, but I want to do exactly what you want, what you are inviting me to.’ It was almost like that final kind of surrender had to be there. But then I had clarity, real peace, real certainty that that was his invitation for me, that marriage to Brigitte was that invitation from him. I never looked back.”
They shared how their marriage preparation was a simple visit to their parish priest, where each of them shared individually why they wanted to marry each other. That, by far, is no longer the recommended pathway for sacramental marriage prep.
Perhaps that was a reason why, when they entered a Marriage Encounter retreat five years after they said “I do,” they dived into being a presenting team for Marriage Encounter.
“In Humanae Vitae, we read that the Holy Father (Pope St. Paul VI) said that the apostolate of couple to couple is particularly important in this time of humanity,” Ralph said. In time, he and Brigitte activated that importance as a presenting couple for both married and engaged couples, but the diocese asked them to specifically work with engaged couples.
“We’re still doing retreats, about 10 retreats a year,” he said. “We work with individuals, not just through retreats. There’s multiple types of programs that we do, depending on the couple’s needs.”
The Desimones both believe that even as society and technology change, and as the challenges to marriage change over the years, the core of successful sacramental marriage remains with God as the root of everything.
“The need to pray together and worship together, to share your faith, that has never been changed. The challenge is to try to accept, to live out maybe even without full understanding, with the beautiful and dignified teaching of the Church on the nature and dignity of the sacrament of matrimony and God’s natural plan for marriage from the beginning,” Ralph says.
“It takes humility. It takes a sacrifice. It literally is picking up your cross and following our Lord. I want to love this person, and they’re worth loving no matter how hard it is. I want to follow God’s way of marriage and of matrimony because I love God. I want to help participate in His mission for the salvation of humanity and my family.”
That’s precisely what Brigitte and Ralph do daily, and what they do in helping tens of thousands across the country grow their sacramental marriages.
And they still hold hands while doing it.
Photos courtesy Brigitte and Ralph Desimone