Pagan Love & Christian Love ~ Pope Pius XII

by Pope Pius XII, Dear Newlyweds

LOVE AND CHRISTIAN LOVE

While strolling through Rome, dear newlyweds, you must have been struck by the way in which, in this unique city in the world, the relics of its pagan past and the realities of its Christian past and present are mingled, combined and super-imposed.

More especially, in contrast to your mutual love as Christian spouses and your Christian families yet unborn, the ruins of the magnificent palaces and ancient temples must have called to mind the morals of Imperial Rome. Despite the splendor of its arts and literature, when the ancient integrity and austerity of life decayed, corruption spread to such an extent that the poet Horace was driven to exclaim:

“Our times, in sin prolific, first

The marriage-bed with taint have cursed,

And family and home;

This is the fountain-head of all

The sorrows and the ills that fall

On Romans and on Rome.

The ripening virgin joys to learn

In the Ionic dance to turn

And bend with plastic limb;

Still but a child, with evil gleams,

Incestuous loves, unhallowed dreams,

Before her fancy swim.” (Horace, Songs 3, 6)

Shocked by such thoughts, your minds surely preferred to turn to the memories of those ancient Roman families, strong and austere, who forged the power and grandeur of the city which was mistress of the world. You pictured them as they live in the narrations of Livy, those rough fathers of families with absolute and undisputed authority, faithful custodians of the traditions of their tribes, totally dedicated to public service; and at their sides, nobly submissive, those irreproachable matrons; dedicated to the care of their homes, who, like Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, displayed their children as their most beautiful ornaments, their most precious jewels.

There could still be found, even in the Imperial Era, examples of families in which husbands and wives lived in happy accord and mutual preference of each other to self, families in which the virtues of a good wife deserved the greater praise just as the bad incurred heavier censure (Tacitus).

Women who, even in those times of terror, were tried and put to death merely for having wept over the death of their children were nonetheless models of courage and sacrifice for their husbands.

There were mothers who accompanied their fleeing sons, wives who followed their husbands into exile, chaste wives, such as Ostoria, whose elegy, “A woman of incomparable chastity,” is carved in a sarcophagus recently unearthed deep in the Vatican Grottos.

And yet, when you turn your eyes from these pagan families to those families whom you all know—greatly, magnificently Christian families—you feel instinctively that in the former something is lacking. It is something even stronger than the ancient strength of the Quirites; it is a more interior strength and at the same time warmer, more penetrating, better, and more profoundly human.

Is not this shortcoming the incurable ill of the pagan or semi-pagan societies? They failed to remain active and strong while preserving at the same time a truly human heart capable of true and pure affection and compassion.

Look at those ancient Roman families whose austere qualities we have just now recalled. The day they came in contact with the delicacy and refinements of Greek or Oriental civilization and were seized by the lust for pearls and other precious stones and gold, they relaxed their discipline and in great numbers ran headlong towards that corruption of which the Apostle to the Gentiles was the indignant witness.

The disappearance of rigid standards was not followed by a true love. “Without love, without mercy” (Rom. 1:24), as St. Paul characterized the pagan world of his time. Rather it was followed by the unleashing of the lowest passions which the great emperor Augustus, truly worried for the public good, sought in vain to hold in check through his laws among which remain the Julian Laws—in order to restore to the family the strength and cohesion which only faith in Jesus Christ could bring back.

True affection without harshness and without weakness, true affection inspired and elevated by Christ, is what we can glimpse in those first families of converted Romans such as the Flavians and the Acilians at the time of the Domitian persecution; and we can admire its brilliant splendor around a St. Paula or a St. Melania.

But why go back to such distant centuries? There was seen in times closer to our own, in these very streets of Rome, another wife whose life is, or should be, well known to every mother of a family: Blessed Anna Maria Taigi.

We do not intend to describe here her visions and the abundance of extraordinary gifts which God showered upon her. Look at her only as the wife of Dominic, the honest but rough and grouchy porter of Casa Chigi.

She was always good and smiling. She would wait until the late hours of the night for her husband’s return, and when he arrived tired, impatient, angry at everything, she took care of him humbly and tenderly, putting up with everything, accepting everything with angelic sweetness.

And, yet she was firm in maintaining order among the numerous persons of her household and in curbing her husband’s habit of bad language. An energetic, provident housekeeper, she found a way even in her poverty to support, besides her own children, her mother and later on the families of her daughter and her daughter-in-law; and she was always able to be to all of them, even strange, difficult and rude characters, a loving daughter, a devoted wife, mother, mother-in-law, and grandmother.

The secret of such a life? Always the same, the secret of all holy lives: Christ living and radiating, with His grace sovereign in a soul which docilely follows His inspirations and promptings.

Our Lord alone has been able to implant in poor human hearts wounded and led astray by original sin, a love which remains pure and strong without stiffening or hardening, a love sufficiently spiritual to unshackle itself from the brute instincts of the senses and to master them, while at the same time preserving intact its warmth and delicate tenderness.

He alone, by example and the interior acts of His Heart inflamed with love, has been able to fulfill the promise made long ago to Israel: “I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and will give you a heart of flesh” (Ezech. 36:26).

He alone knows how to arouse and sustain in souls a true affection, tender and at the same time strong, because He alone by His grace can free them from that innate egoism which more or less unconsciously poisons purely human love.

And this is why, dear sons and daughters, we ceaselessly exhort you and all who come to ask our paternal benediction for their new families: always give first place in your homes to Christ, the Savior, the King, the Lord of your families, the Light which brightens them, the flame which warms and gladdens them, the omnipotent Custodian who will keep them in peace.

This love which joins you and upon which God has wished to place the seal of His sacrament will last as long as it remains Christian, and, far from weakening or dissolving, it will become deeper and stronger as hand in hand you move together through life. Defend it against everything that might tend to paganize it.

How many baptized souls, alas, know how to love each other only in a pagan way! Losing sight of the true purpose of their union which their faith had taught them, they exempt themselves from the severe but helpful and beneficial duties of Christian law and in this manner reach the point where they gradually change that marriage which Christ’s blessing had made so great and beautiful into a kind of vulgar partnership of pleasure and self-interest, slaying every vestige of true love within themselves.

It will not be this way with you, dear newlyweds. Your love will live and endure. It will fashion your happiness, even in the midst of life’s inevitable difficulties because it will remain Christian and because you will never cease to preserve its interior strength by drawing on its true source in a profound spirit of faith, in a constant observance of the religious practices which the Church commands and counsels, and in an inviolable adherence to all the duties of your state.

Let him know you appreciate all the little things he does. It is easy to just expect things from him, with nary a thanks or a smile. This is not the way to nurture a relationship. Go the extra mile….always be grateful…..and let him know that you are!

Scruples are the source of anxiety or sadness, of many organic ailments, bashfulness, and many personality disturbances. If not controlled in time, scruples can become the occasion of despair, moral relapses, and even moral perversion.

🌺🌺Surrender Novena Prayer Card and Wire Wrapped Chaplet🌺🌺

Available here.

This chaplet is designed to be prayed with the Surrender Novena, which was given to Servant of God, Fr. Don Dolindo Ruotolo.
Each link is handmade and wrapped around itself to ensure quality.

SURRENDER TO THE WILL OF GOD ~ “Jesus, You take over!”

Prayer by Father Dolindo Ruotolo 1882-1970 – Servant of God, Man Who Padre Pio Called a Saint!

Great prayer against worry, fear, anxiety, depression and stress!

Many miracles have been obtained through this novena.

Three Religious Rebels, Forefathers of the Trappists ~ Available here.

REVIEW: This is the first of four books from the “Saga of Citeaux”. The history of the making of the trappist religious order. A book you cannot put down when you read what they suffered and sacrificed to reach their goals. I cannot praise it enought, you must read, easily written and great for young and old. Highly recommend.

Angels in Iron ~ Available here.

The year is A.D. 1565 and the tiny island fortress of Malta, defended by an anachronistic crusading order called the Knights of St. John Hospitallers, is all that stands between the war machine of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and the very heart of Christendom. Pitifully outmatched and against impossible odds, the indomitable Grand Master Jean Parisot de La Valette nevertheless inspires his knights to “strike a blow for Christ” and sacrifice their lives to halt the invading Turks at the gates of Europe. Nicholas Prata relates the actual events of the Great Siege in riveting and graphic prose which brings the extreme heroism of the knights and the horror of combat sharply into focus.

This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.