Mealtime ~ Is Conversation a Lost Art? / Restoring Home and Family to Christ ~ Catherine de Hueck Doherty

Article by Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Nazareth Family Spirituality, Madonna House Publications

Catherine was brought up in Russia and had many fond memories of her life there….a life that reflected simplicity, family, religion. After fleeing Russia during the Communist Revolution, she eventually came into the Catholic Church. Catherine prayed much that her motherland would be freed from Communist rule so that people could once again openly practice their faith.

Mealtime—Is Conversation a Lost Art?

Good conversation stems from a quiet heart, an open mind, and a soul that lives before the face of God. Let us examine a little what the art of conversation is all about.

The essential requirement is an interest in others and their lives. Then an ability to express one’s thoughts (which means that one has some thoughts worth expressing), an ability to listen, and a developed imagination (one can develop one’s imagination quite a bit)—these are all ingredients of good conversation.

Conversation is not a monologue, one person taking the floor and keeping it. It is always a dialogue, alternating speech and silence, listening with all one’s attention and interest.

Here are some more ingredients of good conversation:

• Have a wide-open mind. Cultivate an imaginative approach to life, not seeing things in black and white, or only in a utilitarian fashion. Have interests outside of yourself, which help you to learn complete self-forgetfulness. Learn to plunge life’s depths.
• Observe the people and activities that go on around you. Share your observations and listen in turn. Develop this ability to listen, as well as an ability to speak. Be spontaneous, simple, joyful in expressing yourself; learn to let go of self-consciousness.
• Have patience and charity as others learn how to express themselves, and help them to do so. Also, a good conversation can deal with simple things that all participating can understand.
• Do not use the pronoun “I” too much, nor try to “show-off”. Have a desire to learn and share, not to dominate or give a lecture. Life can be rich in topics for conversation: daily happenings, funny little incidents, situations in our area, country, the world; what someone is reading or listening to—the possibilities are endless.

Our spirit is deepened by good conversations, including discussing God and the things of God. Our conversations can be unlimited, as God himself is limitless. Let us not allow the art of good conversation to die, especially in our families.

Gossip, of course, is not conversation. It is a terrible wound of charity to judge, to gripe about someone behind their back, to share one’s misjudgment with others. There is sadness in gossip. As with gossip, snide remarks are not of God.

God has given us laughter to relax us, to sing him a song of joy. The devil hates laughter, and wants to snatch it away from God. So he uses it as a hurtful thing, by provoking it with some wounding joke, or an unpleasant truth said in jest, that hurts someone and need not be told.

Argumentativeness, or wanting one’s own point of view only, has no place in conversation. Nor has sullen silence, the sort of withdrawal from the general discussion that is felt by everyone. That too is a break in charity.

We need to watch all our conversations, because charity grows or dies in them. Remember that politeness and good social manners really stem from love. Your concern should be for the other person.

Restoring Home and Family to Christ

Dear Parents, Why was a particular home brought into being? Because two young people loved one another and came together through the beautiful portals of the most holy sacrament of Matrimony.

Putting it another way: The home is a partnership of a man, a woman, and God, from whom all love and fecundity stem. Let me repeat this, for we can never have enough clarity in this vital matter.

Home is the loving place of man, woman, God, and the fruits of that love—children! Remember, it takes three to bring forth a child—God, a man, and a woman.

Home is a loving place. Where love is, God is, and where God is, all things should be his. For all have their beginning in him and hence, in him should have their ending. Life is a reaching toward that glorious ending.

All of life should be a school of love, a novitiate. But above all others, the home should be the primary school of love, the novitiate of love, since its very beginnings were rooted in love.

The home should prepare those who are the fruits of love—children—for all other novitiates, which are schools of love. It should serve quite naturally, as it alone can, as the novitiate for the married state. All other novitiates draw on this first novitiate, which is the home. Without it, all others would die out.

Let us bear that clearly in mind. How wondrous and holy, then, is married life! What a tremendous responsibility too, yet what an infinite joy! But, alas, how few of us, even Christians, fully understand the duties, responsibilities, and joys of marriage and parenthood!

Because we don’t, we are faced with what appear to be insurmountable problems. Yet almost all of the answers can be found in that very home circle, and in its heads and foundations, the parents.

A child, from the very moment of its birth, needs the love, security, help, warmth, tenderness, and understanding of both parents. This is important.

He also needs the immense tranquility of God’s order, reflected in his daily life and routine. He needs to feel that all is well between those two beings most precious and important to him. They are his universe, emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually.

He needs a home as a place where all these wants of his are taken care of, and also a place of being loved and being allowed to love, first on the natural level, then on the supernatural.

Consider modern homes, whose goal is wealth, success, social standing and recognition, the endless “keeping up with the Joneses”, and anything and everything else but the primary needs of the family.

Is it a wonder, then, that children can’t get answers to their unspoken questions in the one book they can read before their infant eyes can absorb the light of the sun—the book of parental harmony, mutual love, and the constant example of peaceful following of God’s design for them and their children?

Some answers to the problems of today’s families are hidden deeply. They are hidden in the breaking up of God’s pattern for holy married life, in His being relegated to second place, with all the tensions, tragedies, and miseries that follow.

Neither poverty nor riches has anything to do with all this. But love has—love of parents for God and each other. Obedience to his commandments of love. These reveal the answers in big, legible letters to every mother and father. Is the home a loving place of man, woman, and God? Is it functioning according to the tranquility of God’s loving order? Or is it not? Each set of parents must answer these questions for themselves. If they do, truthfully, lovingly, and without fears, they will be able to answer all other questions their children may ask them, for they will have graduated from their own school of love and love knows all answers.

To synthesize, the answers to questions put to us by bewildered parents all over lie in this: the parents’ full and complete living of their most holy vocation to love in the married state. They do this through the great power that is theirs in the sacrament of Matrimony. If they do this, then most of their questions won’t have to be asked.

The children will understand love, and then the little-needed academic details on sex, which is the chalice of the sacrament of Matrimony, will be answered easily and happily too.

I cry for parents so engrossed in giving their children all the material benefits of our affluent society that they neglect to give them the only thing that matters—God.

Just as importantly, sincere encouragement deepens his affection and trust toward his parents, forming a close bond of love and security. That closeness becomes a safeguard for him as he faces the struggles and temptations of youth. Sadly, many parents underestimate how deeply a boy needs affirmation. Some young men endure a childhood filled mostly with correction and very little praise, but not all come through unharmed. Along the way, there are heartbreaking losses—young souls with great promise who might have become steady and shining men, but instead drift away discouraged and unseen. ~Finer Femininity

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Make a statement with this lovely and graceful “St. Zaelie” handcrafted apron….fully lined….made with care. Aprons tell a beautiful story…..a story of love and sacrifice….of baking bread and mopping floors, of planting seeds and household chores. Sadly, many women have tossed the aprons aside and donned their business attire. Wear your apron with joy….it is a symbol of Femininity….”Finer” Femininity! 🌺 💗

Leading the Little Ones to Mary ~ Available here.

I used this book when my children were young. It was a valuable tool in helping them to incorporate True Devotion to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort into their little lives…. “PREFACE: This Marian program has but one purpose, to imbue the little ones with a genuine devotion to Mary. It is a copying of Mary- a way of life. It is the De Montfort Method simplified for young minds.” 

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