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
A FATHER'S ANSWER TO HIS DAUGHTER
IN THE book "My Children and I" byJerome K. Jerome, which is as full
of humor as of common sense, a young girl tells her father that she
is frightened at the possibility of love's brevity.
"Love," she says, "is only a stratagem of nature to have fun at our
expense. He will tell me that I am everything to him. That will last
six months, maybe a year if I am lucky, provided I don't come home
with a red nose from walking in the wind; provided he doesn't catch
me with my hair in curlers. It is not I whom he needs but what I
represent to him of youth, novelty, mystery. And when he shall be
satisfied in that? . . ."
Her father answers, "When the wonder and the poetry of desire shall
be extinguished what will remain for you will be what already existed
before the desire. If passion alone binds you, then God help you! If
you have looked for pleasure only, Poor You! But if behind the lover,
there is a man (let us add a Christian); if behind this supposed
goddess, sick with love, there is an upright and courageous woman
(again let us add Christian); then, life is before you, not behind
you. To live is to give not to receive. Too few realize that it is
the work which is the joy not the pay; the game, not the points
scored; the playing, not the gain. Fools marry, calculating the
advantages they can draw from marriage, and that results in
absolutely nothing. But the true rewards of marriage are called work,
duty, responsibility. There are names more beautiful than goddess,
angel, star, and queen; they are wife and mother.
Marriage is a sacrifice.
In order to live these four last words, "Marriage is a sacrifice," it
is not enough to have started off on a good footing, to be
enthusiastic about fine ideals, to put all hope in mutual tenderness.
Since marriage calls for more than ordinary sacrifice, it will be
necessary in order to remain faithful to the habit of sacrifice, to
have more than ordinary helps.
We have already meditated on the similarity between the Eucharist and
marriage; we have seen that not only is there a bond of resemblance
between these two sacraments but that there is in the Eucharist,
above all in participation in the Eucharistic sacrifice and in Holy
Communion a singular help for the married.
Prayer together must also be a help. Someone has rightly said, "The
greatest sign of conjugal love is not given by encircling arms in an
embrace but by bended knees in common prayer.
In his "Confessions," Saint Augustine describes his last evening with
his mother at Ostia. It is worth quoting. When a husband and wife
have reached such a degree of soul-union in God, they can face all
life's tempests without trembling.
"Forgetting the past and looking toward the future, we pondered
together in Your Presence, O my God, the living Truth, on what the
eternal life of the elect would be like. . . . We came to this
conclusion: The sensible pleasures of the flesh in their intensest
degree and in all the attractiveness that material things can have,
offer nothing that can compare with the sweetness of the life beyond,
nor do they even deserve mention. In a transport of love, we tried to
lift ourselves to You there...."
I must understand more clearly than in the past how essential it is
to be rooted in prayer and if possible in prayer together.
I will meditate on this again.
TRANSPORTED TOGETHER
WE ARE not considering the word "transported" in its emotional and
rapturous sense, not as a paroxysm of exaltation, but rather in the
sense of an ascent in a vehicle toward a determined destination.
Marriage is a trip for two. A trip. They travel ahead, enjoying
mutual happiness on earth even as their destination gets nearer; and
farther on, over there, up yonder, they shall both have the happiness
of paradise.
Do I have my destination, our common destination, sufficiently before
my eyes . . . sanctity here below, then death; then in the next life,
the reward for our mutual efforts on earth?
How quickly we slip along hardly noticing our advance; I am scarcely
aware of having started on the way. How distant the end seems; it
escapes my sight; I am all taken up with what is right before me; I
can't see the forest for the trees.
Am I advancing? In sanctity? In union with God? In patience? In
purity? In charity? In generosity?
How many questions? Am I really asking them of myself? And if I am,
how must I answer them if I want to be honest?
But I am not alone. This is a trip in company with others. We are
several; we are two not counting the children.
How do I conduct myself toward this company, my co- travelers?
How do I act toward the partner of my life?
A recent "before and after" cartoon gave a series of pictures
indicating changes in attitude toward one's life companion: During
the engagement period, the young man is holding the umbrella very
solicitously over his fiancee's head with no regard for the rain
pouring down on him. Shortly after marriage, he holds the umbrella
between them so that each receives an equal share of the raindrops. A
long time later in marriage, the husband is no longer concerned about
his wife; he holds the umbrella over his head and lets his wife get
soaked to saturation.
Is that a reality or only an accusation? Selfishness so quickly
regains its empire. It is not always bad will; inattention, perhaps,
plain and simple. Yes, but isn't even that too bad?
What happened to all the little attentions of courtship and the
honeymoon days? Those countless delicate considerations? The constant
thought of the other?
There is the root of much suffering especially for the wife who is
keener, more affectionate, more sensitive; she thinks she is cast
off. She lets it be known on occasions. Oh, not bluntly, but with
that subtle art she has for allusions, implications, and expressive
silences. She might upbraid: "If you were in such a situation, if you
were with such and such a person, I am sure you would be so obliging,
so engaging, so attentive. But it is only I. Consequently you don't
have to bother, isn't that so?" And, little by little, bitterness
creeps in. It was nothing at all to start with. They made something--
matter for friction.
I know a priest who wanted to preserve until he was at least eighty
all the freshness of his priesthood: "I shall never let myself get
used to celebrating Holy Mass." I should be able to say the same
thing in regard to the sacrament I have received, the sacrament of
marriage: "I will preserve my love in all its freshness. I shall
remain considerate, delicately attentive. I shall do everything in my
power to travel forward together not only in peace but in light and mutual joy.
SINGLE THOUGH TWO
ANNA DE NOAILLES, a French poetess, summed up her unhappy married
life in the words, "I am alone with someone.
It is an expressive but sinister remark.
People marry in order to be two, but two in one, not to continue to
be alone, alone although with someone.
Aloneness for two can have a double cause:
1. Waiting too long to have children through a mutual agreement at
the beginning of married life.
2. Loving each other too much perhaps. Too much, selfishly of course.
Man and wife united, together, yes; and in this sense, it is not the
solitude of which Anna de Noailles spoke. But if their union for two
deserves rather to be called selfishness for two, it is not a true union.
These are the reefs upon which many a marriage has been wrecked.
Granted that if they do nothing to prevent generation, they do not
sin . . . at least not against the law of chastity for marriage; but
besides going counter to the law of fecundity, they are running the
risk of sterility.
If they wait too long to have their brood, the nest hardens, loses
its softness and adaptability. They get so accustomed to being only
two that the presence of a third, even though the fruit of their
union, does not seem desirable. There will always be time later,
later! Let us enjoy each other first.
Selfishness for two: conjugal solitude. And let us add, a risk for
later on. The wife will probably suffer from not being able to be a
mother; the husband gets used to seeing in her only a wife. "It is in
springtime," the proverb picturesquely says, "that the father bird
learns to do his duty." The wife is very imprudent if she lets her
husband prolong unduly a sort of bachelorhood; let her teach him how
to assume his duties without too much delay.
There can be another reason more harmful still for this being alone
though two and that is born of opposition of characters.
Generally it does not appear in the first years of married life.
Everything is marvelous then, sunshine and moonlight. Though there
may be exceptions, they are rare.
But there comes a time when tension creeps in, more or less
restrained, then hidden resentment, finally opposition if not with
weapons at least by tongue lashings, sullen silences, disagreeable
attitudes. There is in every man, even a married man the stuff of an
old bachelor; in every woman, even a married woman, something of . .
. well, a person shouldn't really use that word to speak of unmarried women.
When husbands and wives notice their rising irritability, they should
take hold of their hearts with both hands so to speak and refrain
from words they will regret soon after. If they have the courage, let
them have an understanding with each other as soon as possible. They
should learn not to notice every little thing; to forget with
untiring patience all the little pricks; to remember only the joys
they lived through together; to make a bouquet of them, not a faded
bouquet like dried out artificial flowers that are kept in a drawer,
but alive and fresh, beautiful enough to be put in full view on the
mantlepiece.
Everything that is typical of the single life is taboo. They are
united. They are to remain united. Two in one. In one: It is not
always easy; it is always necessary.
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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.
<*}}}>< <http://halfthekingdom.mofuse.mobi/>Half the Kingdom!
on your Mobile <*}}}><
<*}}}>< <http://www.halfthekingdom.org/wordpress/>Half the Kingdom!
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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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