CHRIST IN THE HOME
http://www.ewtn.com/library/FAMILY/CHRISTH1.TXT
BY RAOUL PLUS, S.J.
a Translation from the French
FREDERICK PUSTET CO., INC. Publishers NEW YORK AND
CINCINNATI
Nihil Obstat:
JOHN M. A. FEARNS, S.T.D., Censor Librorum
Imprimatur:
+FRANCIS CARDINAL SPELLMAN,
Archbishop of New York
New York, June 19, 1951
MARRIAGE
STRANGE PROFANATION
MARRIAGE as a sacrament which should be based on love, looks to the
conjugal act as an expression of love. And since this embrace is in
the nature of the closest of intimacies, everyone understands that it
demands unity of the couple. We have spoken of that before. But it is
essential to be convinced of it on account of the objections that
come up frequently in conversations and the arguments advanced by
certain modern authors like Blum, or Montherlant or Lawrence. This
last mentioned writer gives us a scene like the following:
Jack who is married to Monica by whom he has several children makes
advances to Mary:
"Oh, Jack! You are married to Monica."
"Am I? But she doesn't belong entirely to me; she has her babies now.
I shall love her again when she is free. Everything in season, even
women. Now I love you after going for a long time without ever
thinking of you. A man is not made for a single affair."
"O God," she cried. "You must be crazy. You still love Monica."
"I shall love Monica again later. Now I love you. I don't change, but
sometimes it is the one, sometimes it is the other. Why not?"
Yes, Why not? Simply because the rule as regards marriage is not the
mere caprice of man and the satisfaction of his sensual desires;
because woman has a right to respect and to the pledge that has been
given her; because marriage is made not for the individual but for
the family, the social unit, and to carry on in such a fashion is the
break down of the family.
But Jack--or rather Lawrence--hears nothing of all that.
"Mary, all alone, was incomplete. All women are but parts of a
complete thing when they are left to themselves . . . They are but
fragments . . . All women are but fragments."
Where does such a theory originate if not in the unbounded sensuality
of man? But Jack listens to nothing. What do judgments other than his
own mean to him? As he said, "He hated the thought of being closed up
with one woman and some youngsters in one house. No, several women,
several houses, groups of youngsters; a camp not a home! Some women,
not one woman. Let the world's conventions be ignored. He was not one
of those men for whom one woman was enough."
Why doesn't the logic of sensuality accord woman what man so brutally
claims for himself? Are there two Moral Laws?
Here is another character, Helen. She is a doctor's wife and his most
devoted assistant. But she divorces him for a snob whose life is all
race horses and receptions. There she is, soaked in worldliness. She
gets another divorce to marry a young poet, the latest rage, and
transforms herself into an intellectual . . . Marvelous richness of
the feminine soul! Says your sophisticate, she is like a fountain of
glistening water which catches its coloring, green, red, or blue
according to the men she chooses in turn!
Are we dreaming? That's the kind of thing we are likely to hear in
certain gatherings and cocktail parties.
What a profanation of love!
Complete oblivion of the significance of the conjugal act! It is not
only two distinct physical acts, but, through the medium of the body,
a most ineffable exchange between two souls.
MARRIAGE AND THE EUCHARIST (3)
MARRIAGE as a sacrament that should be based on love in the beginning
and that must foster love in those who receive it together expects
the mutual presence of a respectful and devoted cohabitation. From
the very nature of marriage there devolves the duty of union and of
procreation.
Marriage requires still more . . . mutual sacrifice. And here again
its similarity to the Eucharist is remarkable.
Our Lord instituted the Eucharist not only to give us His Presence,
not only to provide us with the benefits of Holy Communion. Rich
though these benefits be, they do not constitute the culminating
benefit. What is the great wealth of the Eucharist?
On Calvary, Our Lord offered Himself all alone to His Father. But by
His sacrifice He merited for us the grace to be grafted on Him.
Stretched upon the bloody Arbor of Calvary Christ's Hands and Feet
and Side were cruelly notched; through the benefits of these divine
openings we have gained the privilege, we wild offshoots since the
time of Adam, branches deprived of divine life, to be set, to be
grafted to the single Vine, the only Possessor of sanctifying sap.
Made other Christs that day, all Christians . . . Christiani . . .
received the power, each time that the Lord Christ Jesus would repeat
His sacrificial oblation of Calvary through the hands of His priest
for the glory of the Father and the salvation of the world, to offer
it with Him. This repetition of that offering is the Mass. Jesus, the
divine Mediator, assumes again His attitude of Mediator; held between
heaven and earth by the hands of the priest, He reiterates the
dispositions of the complete immolation of Calvary.
On Golgotha, He was alone to carry through the sacrifice, the bloody
sacrifice. Having been made that day by Him into Christ, we, since we
are inseparable from Him except by sin, have the mission, whenever
Christ renews His oblation, to offer it and to offer ourselves to
Him. Effective participation in Mass is to be united with the Divine
Head and all members of the Mystical Body in the intimacy of the same
oblation renewed.
Jesus brings to us the benefits of His very own sacrifice; we bring
to Him the offering of our own sacrifice. It is this part of the
offering that the martyr's relic in the altar stone and the drop of
water into the wine at the Offertory represent; the union of two
sacrifices in the unity of the same sacrifice.
Marriage will have to reach heights like that to succeed in
satisfying the utmost demands of love. The husband must be ready to
sacrifice all for his wife; the wife must be ready to sacrifice all
for her husband. From these conjoined sacrifices, love is made; love
likewise demands these conjoined sacrifices.
What shall I do to show my wife that I love her? What fine deed can I
accomplish, what prowess display, what humble, noble act perform?
That is the spirit of chivalry.
And the wife: What shall I do to make my husband happy? What will
give him pleasure?
This is the nourishment and the condition of love, the relish for
mutual sacrifice.
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Lord, may everything we do begin with Your inspiration and continue
with Your help,
so that all our prayers and works may begin in You and by You be happily ended.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
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on your Mobile <*}}}><
<*}}}>< <http://www.halfthekingdom.org/wordpress/>Half the Kingdom!
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<*}}}>< <http://www.halfthekingdom.org/>Half the Kingdom! Main Site
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Kingdom! By the by <*}}}><
Lord, may everything we do begin with Your inspiration and continue
with Your help,
so that all our prayers and works may begin in You and by You be happily ended.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
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