Having once established the fact that marriage is a topflight career, it naturally follows that the same rules govern its success as govern those of other careers. Every successful career demands adequate preparation, intelligent earnestness, persistent industry, and the will-to-win, but marriage demands all these, plus the
anointed strength of love.
If every couple would but bring to marriage one half the consuming zeal for success that Thomas A. Edison brought to his scientific career, how different many of them would be!
As a youth, Edison spent long dreary hours practicing on the tiny telegrapher’s key, learning the code and manner of sending and receiving messages. There was a four-day walk from Port Huron to Boston in search of work. There was the penniless arrival in New York and a chance job repairing a telegraphic communication system in a stock exchange on Wall Street that led to financial betterment, but it was dogged determination to succeed that made him so outstanding as a scientist.
Take, for instance, Edison’s work on the carbon filament. In October, 1879, he determined to make his experiment work if it was the last thing he ever did. So convinced was he that the carbon filament was utilizable that he refused to leave his laboratory until he completed his work.
On the second night he said to his associate, Charles Batchelor, “We will make a lamp before we sleep or die in the attempt,” and make it he did, though it took four sleepless days and nights before the now famous Edison incandescent light was invented and the whole lighting system revolutionized in the world.
Edison’s career was successful solely because he brought to it a determination to succeed no matter what the cost. Success in any field rarely comes without great sacrifices. One has only to read about the life of Madame Curie and her devoted husband and follow the discovery of radium to evaluate the cost of success in a
career.Madame Curie’s sufferings as she worked in the smoke-filled shed, cold in the winter and stifling hot in the summer, defy description. The work of days became months and years, and failure dogged her every minute of the time, but Marie Curie, with terrible patience, continued to treat kilogram by kilogram the tons of
pitchblende residue.
Poverty hampered her in the acquisition of adequate equipment. The obstacles seemed insurmountable in the forty-five months of experimentation, but in the end the Curie work produced radium.
Who could look at the great Marie Curie as she lay on her deathbed, after thirty-five years’ work with radium, and see her tired, burned, scarred hands without realizing the awful cost of success in a career?
Success in marriage depends upon acceptance of the fact that it is a career and upon the readiness and willingness to bring to it all the determination possible to overcome every difficulty and obstacle on the road to success. If a marriage breaks up, it is not because a man or woman must accept defeat but because the defeat is willed.
A kite cannot be made to fly unless it goes against the wind and has a weight to keep it from overturning. No marriage will succeed unless there is readiness to face and overcome difficulties and a willingness to accept the responsibilities of a parent, for parenthood is the weight that keeps most marriages from somersaulting.
When Divine Love Incarnate came to Cana of Galilee to sanctify forever pure conjugal love, He came to that marriage fresh from His terrible bout with Satan.
Since the first man and his wife had succumbed to temptation in the Garden of Eden, it was divinely planned that Christ, the New Adam, should permit the same tempter to attack Him and be ignominiously defeated and thus set a pattern for all to follow in the resistance of temptation.
His sacred presence at the wedding was ever to be an earnest of the help and special graces He would grant those called to the marriage career who would likewise resist the onslaughts of Satan. Yea, more, Our Lord would elevate matrimony to the dignity of a Sacrament and make of it a veritable channel of special graces.
It is worthy of note, however, that while en route to Cana, the Master called His first five apostles, one of them being Nathanael (St. Bartholomew), a native of Cana of Galilee. The timing of Nathanael’s call to the apostolate was, doubtless, to indicate the primacy of dignity and honor of the priesthood and religious life over marriage, and that, in that very order, they would form a trinity of top-flight careers.
It was only after choosing a nucleus for His priesthood that Christ went down to the marriage at Cana of Galilee.
“Happiness in marriage must be earned. It is something you must work out for yourself, chiefly by forgetting yourself and serving others. No marriage is a success unless less you make it so, and that takes persistent effort and, still more, a constant and humble reliance on God.” – Fr. Lawrence G. Lovasik. The Catholic Family Handbook
We’ve heard the term before….Domestic Monastery. I understand the sentiment and I think it is a lovely term that is loaded with possibilities within the home. Personally, my home couldn’t be mistaken for a monastery at any given time…
Doilies by Rosie! These are beautiful, lacy, handmade doilies made with size 10 crochet cotton. They have been blocked and starched and are ready to decorate and accent your home decor. “The quality & workmanship of this crocheted doily is suburb! And the beauty even more so–I am so happy to be able to purchase a handmade doily just as lovely as my grandma used to make…” Available here.
To the modern mind, the concept of poverty is often confused with destitution. But destitution emphatically is not the Gospel ideal. A love-filled sharing frugality is the message, and Happy Are You Poor explains the meaning of this beatitude lived and taught by Jesus himself. But isn’t simplicity in lifestyle meant only for nuns and priests? Are not all of us to enjoy the goodness and beauties of our magnificent creation? Are parents to be frugal with the children they love so much?
For over half a century, Catholic families have treasured the practical piety and homespun wisdom of Mary Reed Newland’s classic of domestic spirituality, The Year and Our Children. With this new edition, no longer will you have to search for worn, dusty copies to enjoy Newland’s faithful insights, gentle lessons, and delightful stories. They’re all here, and ready to be shared with your family or homeschooling group. Here, too, you’ll find all the prayers, crafts, family activities, litanies, and recipes that will help make your children ever-mindful of the beautiful rhythm of the Church calendar.This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
Having once established the fact that marriage is a topflight career, it naturally follows that the same rules govern its success as govern those of other careers. Every successful career demands adequate preparation, intelligent earnestness, persistent industry, and the will-to-win, but marriage demands all these, plus the
anointed strength of love.
If every couple would but bring to marriage one half the consuming zeal for success that Thomas A. Edison brought to his scientific career, how different many of them would be!
As a youth, Edison spent long dreary hours practicing on the tiny telegrapher’s key, learning the code and manner of sending and receiving messages. There was a four-day walk from Port Huron to Boston in search of work. There was the penniless arrival in New York and a chance job repairing a telegraphic communication system in a stock exchange on Wall Street that led to financial betterment, but it was dogged determination to succeed that made him so outstanding as a scientist.
Take, for instance, Edison’s work on the carbon filament. In October, 1879, he determined to make his experiment work if it was the last thing he ever did. So convinced was he that the carbon filament was utilizable that he refused to leave his laboratory until he completed his work.
On the second night he said to his associate, Charles Batchelor, “We will make a lamp before we sleep or die in the attempt,” and make it he did, though it took four sleepless days and nights before the now famous Edison incandescent light was invented and the whole lighting system revolutionized in the world.
Edison’s career was successful solely because he brought to it a determination to succeed no matter what the cost. Success in any field rarely comes without great sacrifices. One has only to read about the life of Madame Curie and her devoted husband and follow the discovery of radium to evaluate the cost of success in a
career.Madame Curie’s sufferings as she worked in the smoke-filled shed, cold in the winter and stifling hot in the summer, defy description. The work of days became months and years, and failure dogged her every minute of the time, but Marie Curie, with terrible patience, continued to treat kilogram by kilogram the tons of
pitchblende residue.
Poverty hampered her in the acquisition of adequate equipment. The obstacles seemed insurmountable in the forty-five months of experimentation, but in the end the Curie work produced radium.
Who could look at the great Marie Curie as she lay on her deathbed, after thirty-five years’ work with radium, and see her tired, burned, scarred hands without realizing the awful cost of success in a career?
Success in marriage depends upon acceptance of the fact that it is a career and upon the readiness and willingness to bring to it all the determination possible to overcome every difficulty and obstacle on the road to success. If a marriage breaks up, it is not because a man or woman must accept defeat but because the defeat is willed.
A kite cannot be made to fly unless it goes against the wind and has a weight to keep it from overturning. No marriage will succeed unless there is readiness to face and overcome difficulties and a willingness to accept the responsibilities of a parent, for parenthood is the weight that keeps most marriages from somersaulting.
When Divine Love Incarnate came to Cana of Galilee to sanctify forever pure conjugal love, He came to that marriage fresh from His terrible bout with Satan.
Since the first man and his wife had succumbed to temptation in the Garden of Eden, it was divinely planned that Christ, the New Adam, should permit the same tempter to attack Him and be ignominiously defeated and thus set a pattern for all to follow in the resistance of temptation.
His sacred presence at the wedding was ever to be an earnest of the help and special graces He would grant those called to the marriage career who would likewise resist the onslaughts of Satan. Yea, more, Our Lord would elevate matrimony to the dignity of a Sacrament and make of it a veritable channel of special graces.
It is worthy of note, however, that while en route to Cana, the Master called His first five apostles, one of them being Nathanael (St. Bartholomew), a native of Cana of Galilee. The timing of Nathanael’s call to the apostolate was, doubtless, to indicate the primacy of dignity and honor of the priesthood and religious life over marriage, and that, in that very order, they would form a trinity of top-flight careers.
It was only after choosing a nucleus for His priesthood that Christ went down to the marriage at Cana of Galilee.
“Happiness in marriage must be earned. It is something you must work out for yourself, chiefly by forgetting yourself and serving others. No marriage is a success unless less you make it so, and that takes persistent effort and, still more, a constant and humble reliance on God.” – Fr. Lawrence G. Lovasik. The Catholic Family Handbook
We’ve heard the term before….Domestic Monastery. I understand the sentiment and I think it is a lovely term that is loaded with possibilities within the home. Personally, my home couldn’t be mistaken for a monastery at any given time…
Doilies by Rosie! These are beautiful, lacy, handmade doilies made with size 10 crochet cotton. They have been blocked and starched and are ready to decorate and accent your home decor. “The quality & workmanship of this crocheted doily is suburb! And the beauty even more so–I am so happy to be able to purchase a handmade doily just as lovely as my grandma used to make…” Available here.
To the modern mind, the concept of poverty is often confused with destitution. But destitution emphatically is not the Gospel ideal. A love-filled sharing frugality is the message, and Happy Are You Poor explains the meaning of this beatitude lived and taught by Jesus himself. But isn’t simplicity in lifestyle meant only for nuns and priests? Are not all of us to enjoy the goodness and beauties of our magnificent creation? Are parents to be frugal with the children they love so much?
For over half a century, Catholic families have treasured the practical piety and homespun wisdom of Mary Reed Newland’s classic of domestic spirituality, The Year and Our Children. With this new edition, no longer will you have to search for worn, dusty copies to enjoy Newland’s faithful insights, gentle lessons, and delightful stories. They’re all here, and ready to be shared with your family or homeschooling group. Here, too, you’ll find all the prayers, crafts, family activities, litanies, and recipes that will help make your children ever-mindful of the beautiful rhythm of the Church calendar.This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
My children are not afraid of marriage. They know that is a profession that it is most worthy of praise. They know that the marriage vocation is of the loftiest value and if that is what is God’s will for them, they are very blessed.
Our girls understand that the “M.R.S. Degree” is the highest degree they can attain, besides the religious life. They understand the dignity, the beauty, the distinct and splendid nobility of being a wife and mother.
There is something formally prohibitive about a sign on a door reading “No Admittance Except on Business,” and it usually gets results. There would be fewer disappointing marriages if none entered the sacred relationship but those bent on serious business. Believe me, marriage is serious business.
It is no lark, no adventure in the vacuous emotion of youth; it is a decision that will affect for life, and perhaps for eternity, not only oneself but one’s partner and any children God may send.
Marriage is a career, one so vital and so splendid that it ranks next to the priesthood and religious life in the trinity of top-flight careers in the world. All other careers are incidental to them. The fact that marriage was the first career ever to be embraced by man is most significant.
And our common Father, Adam, when his pure gaze fell upon the first incarnation of unalloyed womanhood, Eve, proclaimed the inviolable law that was to bind all his descendants until the end of time: “Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh.” (Gen. 2:24.)
The etymological meaning of the word “career” is interesting. It comes from the Latin word carrus–“wagon”–and means literally something that carries one along a road. In this sense, marriage is truly a career–one instituted by God Himself to carry a man and his wife and their children along life’s highway to heaven.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “career”: “As a course of professional life or employment which affords opportunity for progress or advancement in the world.” According to this definition marriage certainly qualifies as a career. History bears this out.
There was hardly ever a great deed done by man that did not somewhere bear the fingerprint, no matter how faint, of a fond mother or a loving wife. How often have we not heard successful men humbly proclaim that the Herculean feats they have accomplished they owe to a devoted, saintly wife.
Indeed, not only is marriage a career that affords opportunity for spiritual and temporal progress and advancement in this life, but it reaches far into the next. “Marriage,” said Taylor, “is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and heaven itself.
The state of marriage fills up the number of the elect and hath in it the labor of love and the delicacies of friendship, the blessing of society and the union of hands and hearts. It is indeed the very nursery of heaven.”
The nature of man’s career in marriage consists primarily in a permanent union for the procreation and education of children, the provision of a home, support of his wife and his offspring, constant vigilant care for the spiritual and temporal welfare of his household.
The nature of a woman’s career in marriage consists in the bearing and education of children, insoluble union, homemaking and housekeeping. These are not matters of choice but of obligation.
A married man may give proof of power to rule an empire, master abstruse sciences, write immortal tomes–yet if he fulfills not the primary ends of the marriage career he is a failure.
A married woman may win by her particular capabilities and capacities the plaudits of the world for her contribution to medical and scientific research, or for works of art that grace the greatest museums and art galleries in the world; yet if she fulfills not the primary ends of her marriage career, she is indeed a failure. Her first duty is to be a wife and mother and homemaker.
Failure to realize that marriage is a career is one of the tragedies of our day and the chief cause of the countless broken homes. People readily accept law, teaching, medicine, nursing, singing and advertising as careers, but neglect to include matrimony among the top-flight careers.
Important as all careers may appear to be, only two were elevated to the dignity of sacraments—the priesthood and marriage. That consideration above all else should merit for the matrimonial state special veneration.
No one would deny that for Gainsborough painting was a career, after feasting one’s eyes on his famous Blue Boy. But what comparison is there between the colored oils skillfully blended on canvas by the hand of the artist and a tiny, lovely infant born to an adoring mother and father whose union had been sanctified in marriage? If painting the picture of a child is a career, dare we deny that parenthood is a career?
What artist could reproduce the faint azure blue of a baby’s eyes or gather rays of pale dawn and distill therefrom the delicate pink that graces a baby’s dimpled cheek? Who but God, in using human agencies, could put such innocence and trust into a baby’s smile or bless such frail little hands with enough terrible strength to help weld two hearts into one until death do them part?
No one would think of denying that teaching is a high career, but, by far and large, the first and most important school is the home, and the most influential teachers, all mothers and fathers.
Nursing is a career, but a mother’s untaught hands can often heal and nurse with such latent skill that they can coax a waning life back to strength when it has slipped beyond the reach of a registered nurse and even the physician.
If entertaining an audience from the stage, screen, or over the radio is a career, creating joy and happiness in a home is also a career.
Diplomacy is a career, but where is diplomacy so necessary and so frequently required as in marriage? Indeed, the keeping of a husband or a wife for life demands more consummate diplomacy than that ever exercised by Richelieu and Churchill together.
The author of the “Lady of the Lake,” Sir Walter Scott, sums up for husbands the most contradictory and salient characteristics of all wives in a single verse thus:
“Oh woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou.”
Some careerists are successful though they may only practice the virtues requisite to their own particular vocations. Thus, it is quite possible for a doctor to be successful in medicine or surgery without having to practice the subtle arts of the diplomat.
When a traffic officer stops your car and roars at you that highly original greeting, “Pull over, Buddy. Where’s de fire?”, it is evident that his career as such does not require the sympathy and gentleness of the mortician.
Marriage as a career differs from all others inasmuch as it demands for its success a great combination of many virtues and qualities peculiar to many particular careers.
Marriage demands the patience of the teacher, the training of the psychologist, the diplomacy of the statesman, the justice of a Supreme Court judge, the sense of humor of a good comedian, the self-sacrifice of a good doctor, “the-customer-is-always-right” attitude of the successful department store salesman, the mercy of the confessor, and so on, ad infinitum.
Marriage is of the greatest importance for the whole human race. This state of life has very many weighty and permanent duties and burdens. On this account married people need special graces, and they receive them through Christ’s raising marriage to the dignity of a sacrament. -Fr. Lasance, My Prayer Book
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The rosary, scapulars, formal prayers and blessings, holy water, incense, altar candles. . . . The sacramentals of the Holy Catholic Church express the supreme beauty and goodness of Almighty God. The words and language of the blessings are beautiful; the form and art of statues and pictures inspire the best in us. The sacramentals of themselves do not save souls, but they are the means for securing heavenly help for those who use them properly. A sacramental is anything set apart or blessed by the Church to excite good thoughts and to help devotion, and thus secure grace and take away venial sin or the temporal punishment due to sin. This beautiful compendium of Catholic sacramentals contains more than 60,000 words and over 50 full color illustrations that make the time-tested sacramental traditions of the Church – many of which have been forgotten since Vatican II – readily available to every believer.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Published 80 years ago, this Catholic classic focuses on the Christian family and uses as its foundation the1929 encyclical “On Christian Education of Youth” coupled with the “sense of Faith.” Addressing family topics and issues that remain as timely now as they were when the guide was first published, “The Christian Home” succinctly offers sound priestly reminders and advice in six major areas…
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
An excellent article reminding those who are contemplating marriage on what to look for and those who are already married on what they can do to rekindle love.
Romantic love is such a subtle thing that human intelligence must be assisted by divine grace to be able to discern the true from the false. Few realize that true love is, as defined by Webster, “a desire for and earnest effort to promote the welfare of another,” and not simply another name for external manifestations of affection and sex satisfaction.
Nuptial love that is built on passion alone is doomed to failure. Almost all passions are temporary by nature. We know from experience that the passion of anger, for instance, is rarely able to be sustained at a high pitch. Once we “get even” with our enemy, the force of the rage is spent.
The same is true of love as a passion, for from this point of view the chief pleasure is in anticipation and once its object is attained it may wane and even pall. Marriage must be built on a much firmer basis.
A happy marriage depends on one’s early education in what real love is and what it is not, and what its end and object are. A happy marriage depends too on one’s capacity during courtship to discern true love from mere infatuation. Love whets the appetite; infatuation leaves hunger still.
“Love hath its seat
In reason and is judicious,”
says Milton, while infatuation directs action without reason and precludes judgment.
Love is a learned quality; infatuation is a play of humor in the blood. Infatuation can even be a one-sided affair, but not so, love, for as the Italian proverb says, “To love and not be loved is time lost.” One strives in vain to light a cigarette from a dead coal.
A doctor of medicine, a close friend of mine, and I were discussing a young man, a problem child, in whose case we had both become concerned. I ventured to suggest that what really ailed the boy was that “he had a touch of love.”
“You ought to know better than that,” said the doctor. “Love is like diabetes. There is no such thing as a touch of it. You have it or you don’t have it.”
Granted that one knows when he or she is in love, is there no infallible way of telling the genuine from the unreasonable facsimile? I’m afraid not, but I hasten to say that you can be morally certain your love is true and genuine if you find gentleness, beauty, refinement, generosity and intelligence and a reciprocal love made up of all these qualities and one that outdistances your love, day by day, month by month.
What? No sex? Yes, indeed, but when two persons are really in love and that love is genuine, the sex feelings are so controlled that, without realizing it, they find great pleasure merely in being in one another’s company.
Newell W. Edson of the American Social Hygiene Association, in a pamphlet entitled “Love in the Making,” has listed the following signs as indicative of true love:
A genuine interest in the other person and all that he or she says or does.
A community of tastes, ideals, and standards with no serious clashes.
A greater happiness in being with this one person than with any other.
A real unhappiness when the other person is absent.
A great feeling of comradeship.
A willingness to give and take.
A disposition to give fair consideration to the other party’s judgment.
A pride in the other person when comparisons are made.
A wealth of things to say and do together.
Mr. Edson neglected to mention something that I consider a most indicative sign of love, and that is a willingness to sacrifice oneself for another–to sacrifice something prized by the giver.
Sacrifice stimulates love while expressing it. It was Antoine deSaint-Exupery, I think, who said: “The mother gives nourishment from her own body for her child. By her giving she creates her love. To create love we must begin by sacrifice. Afterwards it is love that makes the sacrifices. But it is we who must take the first step.”
Emerson sums up the whole problem in his own inimitable way as follows: “All that is in the world, which is or ought to be known, is cunningly wrought into the texture of man and woman:
The person love does to us fit
Like Manna, has the taste of all in it.”
Upon parents, teachers, and clergy alike falls the grave obligation of forewarning and forearming teen-age youths against the folly of permitting themselves to “go steady” during high-school years.
Youth must be taught the dangers of this procedure well in advance of its actuality, for once the love-bug gets them they become blind to reason and deaf to admonition. Teen-agers must be shown that the wisdom of nature must be respected and that ventures into love demand maturity–physical, intellectual, and emotional maturity.
The bird does not leave the nest until its wings are grown strong enough to carry it. The chrysalis does not tear open until there are wings to take the tiny insect aloft. Teenagers likewise ought to wait until they are of proper age before going steady or being allowed to do so.
My experience with adolescents has been that under ordinary circumstances, they react favorably to logic. For instance, few teenagers would let themselves fall in love during their highschool years if they knew that more than sixty-nine per cent of those who were madly in love during that period of their lives did not marry the object of this youthful affection at or after the age of twenty-one. This proves simply that a person at twenty-one has a different sense of values than at, say, sixteen or seventeen.
No, youth would fail to condemn the folly of a sixteen-year-old lad who had set his heart on a red convertible coupe and had gone so far as to have a car salesman give him several road demonstrations, but who at the same time had no money to buy a car, no money for its upkeep, no place to keep a car, and, lastly, couldn’t drive a car.
Now, applying the same reasoning to steady company-keeping by minors, it is easy to point out the utter folly of permitting themselves to fall in love until they are old enough to distinguish real love from mere infatuation; until they are mature enough to assume the complex and responsible duty of parenthood; and until they have the income sufficient to establish and maintain a home.
Teenagers should ponder the wisdom of the words of Owen Felltham, who warns that “love is never lasting which flames before it burns.”
A person may not vote until his twenty-first birthday has been reached. Now, this legislation was enacted simply because the politicians felt that anyone younger lacked mature judgment.
Anyone who is too immature to vote is too immature to choose a life partner. There are physical reasons also involved in such a decision. The Germans, according to Julius Caesar, ruled that the act of reproduction in marriage was not permitted to anyone under twenty-one without incurring infamy: and to this he attributed the great strength and fine stature of that simple people.
But is it possible to keep from falling in love? It is, if kissing and petting are not indulged in, no endearing terms expressed through little intimacies, no gifts exchanged, and no confession of love made. It’s just as simple as all that.
Ovid, a writer in ancient times, said “Love gives place to business. Attend to business and you will be safe.”
It is a wise thing to have a few, good, well-founded principles to guide you when about to choose a mate. One of those principles should be that beauty of face and figure will not be the sole motivating factor in your choice.
Remember that “you can never tell the depth of the well by the length of the handle on the pump.”
A ready smile, a bright mind, a pleasing personality, a courteous manner are all more important than a pretty face. All the flaunted beauty of certain screen actresses and actors has not served so well in keeping them happily married.
To those who are intellectually, physically, vocationally, and emotionally mature enough to fall in love, we say emphatically that enduring love is ever built on virtue which cannot be seen in the other person at once.
Long acquaintanceship–one to five years–has better prospects than “love at first sight.”
Above all, we remind them that many more qualities than the severely practical go into the composition of married life and home building. Abstract traits are beautiful and indispensable, but:
“Will the love that you are rich in
Build a fire in the kitchen
Or the little god of Love turn the spit, spit, spit?“
Flour is the chief and most quantitative ingredient in a good cake, but flour alone won’t make a cake. You also need baking powder, salt, sugar, shortening, eggs and milk, a lot of sifting and mixing, a smooth batter, and just the right amount of heat.
Love is the chief ingredient requisite for a happy marriage but not the only one. A good many other things go into the making of a happy marriage, especially in these modern times with changing attitudes. Speaking of recipes, here is an old grandmother’s recipe that has a lot of wisdom in it:
“When once you have made your selection, let it remain forever settled and give your entire thoughts to preparation for domestic use. Some wives keep their husbands in pickle, others in hot water.
Even poor varieties may be made sweet, tender and good by garnishing with patience, well sweetened with smiles and flavored with kisses. Wrap in a mantle of charity, keep warm with a steady fire of domestic devotion. Serve often with peaches and cream. When thus prepared, husbands will keep for years.”
But getting back to our main topic–love–most readers will agree wholeheartedly with what we have stated thus far. There will be perfect agreement with the tenet that a person ought to know what real love is and be so well grounded in the knowledge that the true can be easily detected from the false.
Sound advice, all this is, for those who have not yet entered holy wedlock, but what about those already married who find the fires of love reduced to but smoldering embers, if not, as some protest, gone out completely?
To such persons we say that were it not within the power of man to “will to love,” there would be no solution to such a problem and most marriages would rarely remain happy for more than a few years at best. That it is not impossible to foster love for one’s husband or wife is being proven daily by thousands of thoughtful men and women who, while disillusioned as to the fitness of their match, nevertheless have forced themselves to look for the good and noble in each other, with the amazing result that a new understanding and respect has grown up between them.
No matter who it is, there is some loveliness in everyone that lurks undiscovered, and patient, kindly exploration will render it easily discernible and upon this a new comradeship can be born and fostered.
Always remember that the great bridge that now spans Niagara Falls first began with the spreading from side to side of a tiny wire. The wire was used to haul across a rope and at the end of the rope was a heavy cable, and so on until a bridge was begun that today supports the traffic of trains, cars, and honeymooners.
The point is that someone had to will that a bridge be built across Niagara Falls and from that will flowed the determination that provided the means for overcoming what appeared at first to be insurmountable obstacles.
The same holds true in marriage, and while one or both parties may not experience all the rapturous moments of happiness that they might have had had they chosen their life partner more wisely, consider that few marriages are a tale of uninterrupted bliss.
That everyone has within him the power “to will to love” is proved by the fact that in certain countries, in the past, there was no free choices of mates, and yet such a deep sense of the duty of loving was taught in the home–and not only a great and high sense of duty but the grandeur of loving–that the husband and wife usually managed to make a good job of mutually respecting one another.
So successful was this sort of thing that some wag–Lyttleton or Shaftesbury, I think–said: “Marriages would be happier if they were all arranged by the Lord Chancellor.”
The person who says, “I do not love my wife or my husband any more,” acknowledges simply that “the will to love” is absent. Such a person lacks good sportsmanship too, for a good sport will take pride in succeeding in every adventure, and marriage is one of life’s chief adventures.
Morton puts it this way: “In love, as in religion, faith worketh miracles.”
Whatever you do, give love time. “Love,” says Blucher, “is the river of life in this world. Think not that ye know it who stand at the little tinkling rill, the first small fountain. Not until you have gone through the rocky gorges and not lost the stream; not until you have gone through the meadow and the stream has widened and deepened until fleets could ride on its bosom; not until beyond the meadow you have come to the unfathomable ocean, and poured your treasures into its depths–not until then can you know what love is!”
And the measure of love? Mrs. Browning gave the world a wondrous formula:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use,
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith;
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,–I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!–and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
There is every reason to believe that all the ancient Jewish customs were observed at the marriage in Cana. If that be true, Our
Blessed Lord and His Virgin Mother witnessed a most significant reminder of the fragility of love.
According to custom, from time to time during Jewish wedding feasts, someone would put somewhat of a check on the joyous festivities by shattering the wine glasses of the happy pair. The idea was to remind the bride and the groom that all felicity is subject to instability, and that love, like a glass once dashed to the ground, could be shattered into a thousand pieces–and were repair possible, the cracks would always show.
In this, as in so many other ways, the lessons of Cana are tremendous and Cana Is Forever.
“Your most powerful ally in your noble struggle for decency is your religion. It takes you by the hand, guiding you over the pitfalls that beset your way, and puts your feet safely upon the paths that lead to the sunlit mountain peaks of nobility of character and purity. Not only does it make clear the moral law and supply sanctions for its observance, but it offers you aids to carry out that law.” -Clean Love in Courtship, Fr. Lovasik https://amzn.to/2rk4yFl (afflink)
Make a statement with this lovely and graceful “Virgin Mother” 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! 🌺 💗
Women historically have been denigrated as lower than men or viewed as privileged. Dr. Alice von Hildebrand characterizes the difference between such views as based on whether man’s vision is secularistic or steeped in the supernatural. She shows that feminism’s attempts to gain equality with men by imitation of men is unnatural, foolish, destructive, and self-defeating. The Blessed Mother’s role in the Incarnation points to the true privilege of being a woman. Both virginity and maternity meet in Mary who exhibits the feminine gifts of purity, receptivity to God’s word, and life-giving nurturance at their highest.
You’ll learn how to grow in wisdom and in love as you encounter the unglamorous, everyday problems that threaten all marriages. As the author says: If someone were to give me many short bits of wool, most likely I would throw them away. A carpet weaver thinks differently. He knows the marvels we can achieve by using small things artfully and lovingly. Like the carpet weaver, the good wife must be an artist of love. She must remember her mission and never waste the little deeds that fill her day the precious bits of wool she s been given to weave the majestic tapestry of married love.
This remarkable book will show you how to start weaving love into the tapestry of your marriage today, as it leads you more deeply into the joys of love.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
Lord Bacon, one of the great English philosophers and essayists, tells us: “He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question–when a man should fall in love and marry–‘a young man not yet, and an older man not at all.'”
I, for one, cannot dismiss the feeling that the formulator of that answer was either once in love and was jilted, or he was married and his wife beat him.
Love is the wine of existence and marriage is an honorable estate, or, should I say, for some it is an imperative one, and go along with Saint Paul, who fiercely puts it:
“For it is better to marry than to be burnt.”? (I Cor. 7:9.)
In the second chapter of the Book of Genesis we are told that when the world was in its freshness of new beauty and Adam was master of it all, God saw the need of making a companion for him. One thing was lacking: “for Adam there was not found a helper like himself” and “it was not good for man to be alone”; and so God made Eve.
Strange as it may seem, falling in love means searching and finding in another, the partner who will make it easier for you to fulfill your destiny and realize God’s plan for yourself. At least, that is one conception of love.
A clear-cut definition of love is not as easy to find as one might imagine. Few encyclopedias even carry the word. They devote pages to economics, art, and music, but ignore love.
The writers of books on marriage either avoid giving a definition of it or frankly admit that it is indefinable.
Cole Porter went so far as to set the question “What Is This Thing Called Love?” to music, yet he gave no satisfying answer. The inimitable George Bernard Shaw, when invited to contribute to a book on marriage replied: “No man dare write the truth about marriage while his wife lives.”
Perhaps that answer may supply a key to the problem of why so few have dared to define love. There may be as much “dare not” as “cannot” involved in this complex matter.
The gifted St. Thomas Aquinas had no inhibitions on the subject and boldly declared that “to love a person is to wish him well.” .
Sir Walter Scott says:
True love’s the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven.
It is not fantasy’s hot fire
Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire–
With dead desire, it doth not die.
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can find.
To Scott, then, love is a composite thing which, laying hold upon one’s nature, binds it with another in secret sympathy. Like grace, the effects of love are easier to treat than its nature.
Love, like death, is the universal leveler of mankind. It is nature’s motive and reward. “We are all born of love,” said Disraeli, “and it is the principle of existence and its only end.”
It is only natural that since love was to be the mainspring of man’s existence it would be the very thing Satan would endeavor to counterfeit.
Thus true love, like every genuine thing of value, has numerous imitations. The cruel task for many is to sift the wheat from the chaff, to distinguish the true from the false, the precious metal from the slag.
There is but one thing against which genuine love is helpless and that is time. Love is like wine in that age improves the good and sours the bad.
If we are to accept modern songs, novels, the radio, and movies as our criteria, we shall believe that love comes at first sight and with such a crushing force that one is powerless to resist.
Such, however, is not the case. If love were always to strike like lightning, then no one would be safe. Your mother might be smitten by the paper boy and your father by John’s Other Wife.
Momentary attraction must not be confused with love, for love needs time.
Love at first is fancy, then there follows admiration, joined with respect and devotion. In this mélange of emotions there occurs, sometimes, violent agitation, but more often there is a gentle simmering, a confused but agreeable mingling, until gradually all becomes transfused into a vital feeling called love.
“The introduction to this felicity,” says Emerson, “is a private and tender relation of one to one, which is the enchantment of human life; which, like a certain divine rage and enthusiasm, seizes a man at one period and works a revolution in his mind and body; unites him to his race, pledges him to the domestic and civic relations, carries him with new sympathy into nature, enhances the power of his senses, opens the imagination, adds to his character heroic and sacred attributes, establishes marriage and gives permanence to human society.”
“You will keep a watchful eye on their steps; you will not suffer the whiteness of their souls to be stained and contaminated by corrupt and corrupting company; you will inspire them with a high esteem and jealous love for purity, advising them to commend themselves to the motherly protection of the Immaculate Virgin. Finally, with the discretion of a mother and a teacher and thanks to the open-hearted confidence with which you have been able to inspire your children, you will not fail to watch for and to discern the moment in which certain unspoken questions have occurred to their minds and are troubling their senses. It will then be your duty to your daughters.” -Pope Pius XII
NEW! CHEERFUL CHATS FOR CATHOLIC CHILDREN PODCAST ~ Catholic Mother Goose…Jack Be Nimble, Etc.
Join me as we read some delightful poems from Catholic Mother Goose….highlighting the beautiful traditions of our Faith. The Children will be reminded of such things as the sacramentals, the timeless truths of the Catholic Religion, the Works of Mercy, etc. What a fun and easy way to turn those little minds to what is most important in their lives….their Catholic Faith!
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Penal Rosaries!
Penal rosaries and crucifixes have a wonderful story behind them. They were used during the times when religious objects were forbidden and it was illegal to be Catholic. Being caught with a rosary could mean imprisonment or worse. A penal rosary is a single decade with the crucifix on one end and, oftentimes, a ring on the other. When praying the penal rosary you would start with the ring on your thumb and the beads and crucifix of the rosary in your sleeve, as you moved on to the next decade you moved the ring to your next finger and so on and so forth. This allowed people to pray the rosary without the fear of being detected. Available here.
October & November 2021! Printable Traditional Catholic Planner~Meal Menu/Homeschool Page~Daily Gratitude/Spiritual Checklist/Daily Goals
This book describes the great spiritual power of the Mass, how it holds back the wrath of God, its wonderful eternal and temporal benefits, and several excellent ways to pray at Mass. Hidden Treasure is the prototype book on the Mass for all other books on the same subject; others basically repeat what this small book contains.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
An excellent article reminding those who are contemplating marriage on what to look for and those who are already married on what they can do to rekindle love.
Romantic love is such a subtle thing that human intelligence must be assisted by divine grace to be able to discern the true from the false. Few realize that true love is, as defined by Webster, “a desire for and earnest effort to promote the welfare of another,” and not simply another name for external manifestations of affection and sex satisfaction.
Nuptial love that is built on passion alone is doomed to failure. Almost all passions are temporary by nature. We know from experience that the passion of anger, for instance, is rarely able to be sustained at a high pitch. Once we “get even” with our enemy, the force of the rage is spent.
The same is true of love as a passion, for from this point of view the chief pleasure is in anticipation and once its object is attained it may wane and even pall. Marriage must be built on a much firmer basis.
A happy marriage depends on one’s early education in what real love is and what it is not, and what its end and object are. A happy marriage depends too on one’s capacity during courtship to discern true love from mere infatuation. Love whets the appetite; infatuation leaves hunger still.
“Love hath its seat
In reason and is judicious,”
says Milton, while infatuation directs action without reason and precludes judgment.
Love is a learned quality; infatuation is a play of humor in the blood. Infatuation can even be a one-sided affair, but not so, love, for as the Italian proverb says, “To love and not be loved is time lost.” One strives in vain to light a cigarette from a dead coal.
A doctor of medicine, a close friend of mine, and I were discussing a young man, a problem child, in whose case we had both become concerned. I ventured to suggest that what really ailed the boy was that “he had a touch of love.”
“You ought to know better than that,” said the doctor. “Love is like diabetes. There is no such thing as a touch of it. You have it or you don’t have it.”
Granted that one knows when he or she is in love, is there no infallible way of telling the genuine from the unreasonable facsimile? I’m afraid not, but I hasten to say that you can be morally certain your love is true and genuine if you find gentleness, beauty, refinement, generosity and intelligence and a reciprocal love made up of all these qualities and one that outdistances your love, day by day, month by month.
What? No sex? Yes, indeed, but when two persons are really in love and that love is genuine, the sex feelings are so controlled that, without realizing it, they find great pleasure merely in being in one another’s company.
Newell W. Edson of the American Social Hygiene Association, in a pamphlet entitled “Love in the Making,” has listed the following signs as indicative of true love:
A genuine interest in the other person and all that he or she says or does.
A community of tastes, ideals, and standards with no serious clashes.
A greater happiness in being with this one person than with any other.
A real unhappiness when the other person is absent.
A great feeling of comradeship.
A willingness to give and take.
A disposition to give fair consideration to the other party’s judgment.
A pride in the other person when comparisons are made.
A wealth of things to say and do together.
Mr. Edson neglected to mention something that I consider a most indicative sign of love, and that is a willingness to sacrifice oneself for another–to sacrifice something prized by the giver.
Sacrifice stimulates love while expressing it. It was Antoine deSaint-Exupery, I think, who said: “The mother gives nourishment from her own body for her child. By her giving she creates her love. To create love we must begin by sacrifice. Afterwards it is love that makes the sacrifices. But it is we who must take the first step.”
Emerson sums up the whole problem in his own inimitable way as follows: “All that is in the world, which is or ought to be known, is cunningly wrought into the texture of man and woman:
The person love does to us fit
Like Manna, has the taste of all in it.”
Upon parents, teachers, and clergy alike falls the grave obligation of forewarning and forearming teen-age youths against the folly of permitting themselves to “go steady” during high-school years.
Youth must be taught the dangers of this procedure well in advance of its actuality, for once the love-bug gets them they become blind to reason and deaf to admonition. Teen-agers must be shown that the wisdom of nature must be respected and that ventures into love demand maturity–physical, intellectual, and emotional maturity.
The bird does not leave the nest until its wings are grown strong enough to carry it. The chrysalis does not tear open until there are wings to take the tiny insect aloft. Teenagers likewise ought to wait until they are of proper age before going steady or being allowed to do so.
My experience with adolescents has been that under ordinary circumstances, they react favorably to logic. For instance, few teenagers would let themselves fall in love during their highschool years if they knew that more than sixty-nine per cent of those who were madly in love during that period of their lives did not marry the object of this youthful affection at or after the age of twenty-one. This proves simply that a person at twenty-one has a different sense of values than at, say, sixteen or seventeen.
No, youth would fail to condemn the folly of a sixteen-year-old lad who had set his heart on a red convertible coupe and had gone so far as to have a car salesman give him several road demonstrations, but who at the same time had no money to buy a car, no money for its upkeep, no place to keep a car, and, lastly, couldn’t drive a car.
Now, applying the same reasoning to steady company-keeping by minors, it is easy to point out the utter folly of permitting themselves to fall in love until they are old enough to distinguish real love from mere infatuation; until they are mature enough to assume the complex and responsible duty of parenthood; and until they have the income sufficient to establish and maintain a home.
Teenagers should ponder the wisdom of the words of Owen Felltham, who warns that “love is never lasting which flames before it burns.”
A person may not vote until his twenty-first birthday has been reached. Now, this legislation was enacted simply because the politicians felt that anyone younger lacked mature judgment.
Anyone who is too immature to vote is too immature to choose a life partner. There are physical reasons also involved in such a decision. The Germans, according to Julius Caesar, ruled that the act of reproduction in marriage was not permitted to anyone under twenty-one without incurring infamy: and to this he attributed the great strength and fine stature of that simple people.
But is it possible to keep from falling in love? It is, if kissing and petting are not indulged in, no endearing terms expressed through little intimacies, no gifts exchanged, and no confession of love made. It’s just as simple as all that.
Ovid, a writer in ancient times, said “Love gives place to business. Attend to business and you will be safe.”
It is a wise thing to have a few, good, well-founded principles to guide you when about to choose a mate. One of those principles should be that beauty of face and figure will not be the sole motivating factor in your choice.
Remember that “you can never tell the depth of the well by the length of the handle on the pump.”
A ready smile, a bright mind, a pleasing personality, a courteous manner are all more important than a pretty face. All the flaunted beauty of certain screen actresses and actors has not served so well in keeping them happily married.
To those who are intellectually, physically, vocationally, and emotionally mature enough to fall in love, we say emphatically that enduring love is ever built on virtue which cannot be seen in the other person at once.
Long acquaintanceship–one to five years–has better prospects than “love at first sight.”
Above all, we remind them that many more qualities than the severely practical go into the composition of married life and home building. Abstract traits are beautiful and indispensable, but:
“Will the love that you are rich in
Build a fire in the kitchen
Or the little god of Love turn the spit, spit, spit?“
Flour is the chief and most quantitative ingredient in a good cake, but flour alone won’t make a cake. You also need baking powder, salt, sugar, shortening, eggs and milk, a lot of sifting and mixing, a smooth batter, and just the right amount of heat.
Love is the chief ingredient requisite for a happy marriage but not the only one. A good many other things go into the making of a happy marriage, especially in these modern times with changing attitudes. Speaking of recipes, here is an old grandmother’s recipe that has a lot of wisdom in it:
“When once you have made your selection, let it remain forever settled and give your entire thoughts to preparation for domestic use. Some wives keep their husbands in pickle, others in hot water.
Even poor varieties may be made sweet, tender and good by garnishing with patience, well sweetened with smiles and flavored with kisses. Wrap in a mantle of charity, keep warm with a steady fire of domestic devotion. Serve often with peaches and cream. When thus prepared, husbands will keep for years.”
But getting back to our main topic–love–most readers will agree wholeheartedly with what we have stated thus far. There will be perfect agreement with the tenet that a person ought to know what real love is and be so well grounded in the knowledge that the true can be easily detected from the false.
Sound advice, all this is, for those who have not yet entered holy wedlock, but what about those already married who find the fires of love reduced to but smoldering embers, if not, as some protest, gone out completely?
To such persons we say that were it not within the power of man to “will to love,” there would be no solution to such a problem and most marriages would rarely remain happy for more than a few years at best. That it is not impossible to foster love for one’s husband or wife is being proven daily by thousands of thoughtful men and women who, while disillusioned as to the fitness of their match, nevertheless have forced themselves to look for the good and noble in each other, with the amazing result that a new understanding and respect has grown up between them.
No matter who it is, there is some loveliness in everyone that lurks undiscovered, and patient, kindly exploration will render it easily discernible and upon this a new comradeship can be born and fostered.
Always remember that the great bridge that now spans Niagara Falls first began with the spreading from side to side of a tiny wire. The wire was used to haul across a rope and at the end of the rope was a heavy cable, and so on until a bridge was begun that today supports the traffic of trains, cars, and honeymooners.
The point is that someone had to will that a bridge be built across Niagara Falls and from that will flowed the determination that provided the means for overcoming what appeared at first to be insurmountable obstacles.
The same holds true in marriage, and while one or both parties may not experience all the rapturous moments of happiness that they might have had had they chosen their life partner more wisely, consider that few marriages are a tale of uninterrupted bliss.
That everyone has within him the power “to will to love” is proved by the fact that in certain countries, in the past, there was no free choices of mates, and yet such a deep sense of the duty of loving was taught in the home–and not only a great and high sense of duty but the grandeur of loving–that the husband and wife usually managed to make a good job of mutually respecting one another.
So successful was this sort of thing that some wag–Lyttleton or Shaftesbury, I think–said: “Marriages would be happier if they were all arranged by the Lord Chancellor.”
The person who says, “I do not love my wife or my husband any more,” acknowledges simply that “the will to love” is absent. Such a person lacks good sportsmanship too, for a good sport will take pride in succeeding in every adventure, and marriage is one of life’s chief adventures.
Morton puts it this way: “In love, as in religion, faith worketh miracles.”
Whatever you do, give love time. “Love,” says Blucher, “is the river of life in this world. Think not that ye know it who stand at the little tinkling rill, the first small fountain. Not until you have gone through the rocky gorges and not lost the stream; not until you have gone through the meadow and the stream has widened and deepened until fleets could ride on its bosom; not until beyond the meadow you have come to the unfathomable ocean, and poured your treasures into its depths–not until then can you know what love is!”
And the measure of love? Mrs. Browning gave the world a wondrous formula:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use,
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith;
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,–I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!–and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
There is every reason to believe that all the ancient Jewish customs were observed at the marriage in Cana. If that be true, Our
Blessed Lord and His Virgin Mother witnessed a most significant reminder of the fragility of love.
According to custom, from time to time during Jewish wedding feasts, someone would put somewhat of a check on the joyous festivities by shattering the wine glasses of the happy pair. The idea was to remind the bride and the groom that all felicity is subject to instability, and that love, like a glass once dashed to the ground, could be shattered into a thousand pieces–and were repair possible, the cracks would always show.
In this, as in so many other ways, the lessons of Cana are tremendous and Cana Is Forever.
“Your most powerful ally in your noble struggle for decency is your religion. It takes you by the hand, guiding you over the pitfalls that beset your way, and puts your feet safely upon the paths that lead to the sunlit mountain peaks of nobility of character and purity. Not only does it make clear the moral law and supply sanctions for its observance, but it offers you aids to carry out that law.” -Clean Love in Courtship, Fr. Lovasik https://amzn.to/2rk4yFl (afflink)
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Women historically have been denigrated as lower than men or viewed as privileged. Dr. Alice von Hildebrand characterizes the difference between such views as based on whether man’s vision is secularistic or steeped in the supernatural. She shows that feminism’s attempts to gain equality with men by imitation of men is unnatural, foolish, destructive, and self-defeating. The Blessed Mother’s role in the Incarnation points to the true privilege of being a woman. Both virginity and maternity meet in Mary who exhibits the feminine gifts of purity, receptivity to God’s word, and life-giving nurturance at their highest.
You’ll learn how to grow in wisdom and in love as you encounter the unglamorous, everyday problems that threaten all marriages. As the author says: If someone were to give me many short bits of wool, most likely I would throw them away. A carpet weaver thinks differently. He knows the marvels we can achieve by using small things artfully and lovingly. Like the carpet weaver, the good wife must be an artist of love. She must remember her mission and never waste the little deeds that fill her day the precious bits of wool she s been given to weave the majestic tapestry of married love.
This remarkable book will show you how to start weaving love into the tapestry of your marriage today, as it leads you more deeply into the joys of love.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
Since so much depends on love for abiding happiness in marriage, it stands to reason that a comprehensive understanding of what real love is takes on paramount importance.
There is nothing so misunderstood and no word so abused as the word “love”. Little boys and girls “love” candy; women “love” mink coats; trees in every village and in every lane have “love” carved in their bark, and fences on every back street proclaim that A.B. “loves” C.D., while recapped Romeos whisper it gently and its magic is supposed to make liberties righteous.
Ignorance of the development of love, as well as the multitudinous forms love takes, makes for the misunderstanding of it.
A great many people imagine that all children are born with an innate love for their parents and their immediate family; that, later, puppy love develops; and finally that they will quite naturally go through the process of dating, courting, and then marry.
Would that it were quite so simple!
Under the most favorable conditions everyone’s love life develops through five stages.
The first stage comes in infancy when, as Dr. Vladimir G. Eliasberg, a psychology professor at Rutgers University, says, we begin by being narcissistic–that is, lovers of ourselves.
Next comes our love for our Parents–then a love for our playmates–then a crush on a companion of the same sex (for example, a girl’s crush on her teacher)–finally, as teen-agers, we show the usual interest in the opposite sex, with thoughts of finding a life mate and marriage.
During any one or all of these stages, external forces may hinder or help the growth of love. Let us examine some of these hindrances or helps in detail.
For instance, in the first stage of narcissism, a child in the normal home learns to depend upon its parents and finds it easy to transfer some of its love from itself to its parents.
In those homes, on the other hand, where the child is definitely not wanted and lacks love, that child is a cheated individual and because he is not loved he refuses to love in return.
In order to acquire a fine personality, a child must feel himself a worthy and wanted member of the family. A child needs to feel secure. Without security he is cheated, and a cheated child is a future delinquent.
Parents who really love one another and who are considerate of one another and avoid harshness naturally provide the best background for the child’s security.
The shrewish, nagging, domineering mother will stunt the growth of a child’s life.
The proud, arrogant, sawdust-Caesar-like father, who rules his home with dictatorial edicts, will set a pattern for his child’s later love life.
Knowingly or unknowingly, we become like those with whom we live and associate.
Another extremely important matter in the growing love life of a child is the proper attitude toward sex. The vast majority of children will grow up, choose a mate, and find in marriage the fulfillment of a real vocation.
How successful this venture will be will depend upon a sensible sex education in the home.
Growing up in a home where there are condemnation and embarrassed looks when the child asks the normal questions about sex and questions concerning life’s beginnings, as if it were something terribly unclean and sinful, tends to make of it a personality problem.
Curiosity is merely whetted by such mid-Victorian attitudes and the child will seek information elsewhere.
Parents actually warp a child’s sex life by their attitude of evasion or embarrassment when sex is mentioned.
It suffices to say here that the best Catholic authorities assert that parents should avoid the extremes of prudishness on one hand and vulgarity of detail on the other.
Pope Pius XI, in the Encyclical letter “On Christian Education of Youth,” pointed out the duty of parents to instruct their sons and daughters in sex matters when they are requested to do so by their offspring.
Sex questions should then be answered directly and reverently.
The way in which parents handle this problem may affect their children and their children’s children for generations.
Still another way the love life of a child or teen-ager may be permanently affected is that by which a selfish mother or father resents sharing the child’s affection with friends and playmates.
A mother who emotionally ties a child to her apron strings does that individual a great injury. Obstacles placed in the way of a child’s development in normal friendships can later turn out to be a real booby trap.
Parents should endeavor to develop in their children, from early years, a wide range of friendships with other children of both sexes.
The mother who boasts that she is her “son’s best girl” and who is eternally berating all girls as flirts, and who, to her daughter, pictures all men as “wolves,” does her offspring a disservice.
The teen-ager’s normal adjustment may be impaired or irreparably damaged by such conduct.
Let us now consider some of the different manifestations of love.
There is, as we all know, such a thing as a deep love of country; there is the love in friendship such as that which existed between Jonathan and David and between Our Lord and Saint John; there is filial love such as exists between a child and its parents; there is romantic love such as exists between two lovers; and nuptial love–that which exists between a man and his wife.
Common sense tells us that in each of the above cited examples, the love is different.
For instance, the simpler love in friendship is more or less restricted in external expression, for while there is genuine esteem and deep regard, we do not kiss or fondle all our friends.
Again, the love that exists between members of the family, while much more demonstrative, has definite natural limits.
A mother will have as deep and abiding a love for her child as she has for her husband, but the difference lies in the fact that her love for her husband is flavored by sexual attraction.
The romantic lovers will love their parents, brothers, and sisters, but the love between themselves is the sexually flavored variety. And sexual attraction is a normal, natural, healthy desire, created by God Himself, without which few men and women would desire to marry and have children. Frankly, without sex attraction the human race would soon die out.
A deep understanding of the different kinds of love will keep parents from making the mistake of resenting the romantic love of sons and daughters. The new love will not extinguish filial love, it will strengthen it.
“Our words do more than just make our children feel good. Our words can make them feel like somebody who can accomplish great dreams or like a nobody who is destined to be a loser.”
“Affirming words from Moms and Dads are like light switches. Speak a word of affirmation at the right moment in a child’s life, and it’s like lighting up a whole roomful of possibilities.” – The Power of a Woman’s Words
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Lord Bacon, one of the great English philosophers and essayists, tells us: “He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question–when a man should fall in love and marry–‘a young man not yet, and an older man not at all.'”
I, for one, cannot dismiss the feeling that the formulator of that answer was either once in love and was jilted, or he was married and his wife beat him.
Love is the wine of existence and marriage is an honorable estate, or, should I say, for some it is an imperative one, and go along with Saint Paul, who fiercely puts it:
“For it is better to marry than to be burnt.”? (I Cor. 7:9.)
In the second chapter of the Book of Genesis we are told that when the world was in its freshness of new beauty and Adam was master of it all, God saw the need of making a companion for him. One thing was lacking: “for Adam there was not found a helper like himself” and “it was not good for man to be alone”; and so God made Eve.
Strange as it may seem, falling in love means searching and finding in another, the partner who will make it easier for you to fulfill your destiny and realize God’s plan for yourself. At least, that is one conception of love.
A clear-cut definition of love is not as easy to find as one might imagine. Few encyclopedias even carry the word. They devote pages to economics, art, and music, but ignore love.
The writers of books on marriage either avoid giving a definition of it or frankly admit that it is indefinable.
Cole Porter went so far as to set the question “What Is This Thing Called Love?” to music, yet he gave no satisfying answer. The inimitable George Bernard Shaw, when invited to contribute to a book on marriage replied: “No man dare write the truth about marriage while his wife lives.”
Perhaps that answer may supply a key to the problem of why so few have dared to define love. There may be as much “dare not” as “cannot” involved in this complex matter.
The gifted St. Thomas Aquinas had no inhibitions on the subject and boldly declared that “to love a person is to wish him well.” .
Sir Walter Scott says:
True love’s the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven.
It is not fantasy’s hot fire
Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire–
With dead desire, it doth not die.
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can find.
To Scott, then, love is a composite thing which, laying hold upon one’s nature, binds it with another in secret sympathy. Like grace, the effects of love are easier to treat than its nature.
Love, like death, is the universal leveler of mankind. It is nature’s motive and reward. “We are all born of love,” said Disraeli, “and it is the principle of existence and its only end.”
It is only natural that since love was to be the mainspring of man’s existence it would be the very thing Satan would endeavor to counterfeit.
Thus true love, like every genuine thing of value, has numerous imitations. The cruel task for many is to sift the wheat from the chaff, to distinguish the true from the false, the precious metal from the slag.
There is but one thing against which genuine love is helpless and that is time. Love is like wine in that age improves the good and sours the bad.
If we are to accept modern songs, novels, the radio, and movies as our criteria, we shall believe that love comes at first sight and with such a crushing force that one is powerless to resist.
Such, however, is not the case. If love were always to strike like lightning, then no one would be safe. Your mother might be smitten by the paper boy and your father by John’s Other Wife.
Momentary attraction must not be confused with love, for love needs time.
Love at first is fancy, then there follows admiration, joined with respect and devotion. In this mélange of emotions there occurs, sometimes, violent agitation, but more often there is a gentle simmering, a confused but agreeable mingling, until gradually all becomes transfused into a vital feeling called love.
“The introduction to this felicity,” says Emerson, “is a private and tender relation of one to one, which is the enchantment of human life; which, like a certain divine rage and enthusiasm, seizes a man at one period and works a revolution in his mind and body; unites him to his race, pledges him to the domestic and civic relations, carries him with new sympathy into nature, enhances the power of his senses, opens the imagination, adds to his character heroic and sacred attributes, establishes marriage and gives permanence to human society.”
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Having once established the fact that marriage is a topflight career, it naturally follows that the same rules govern its success as govern those of other careers. Every successful career demands adequate preparation, intelligent earnestness, persistent industry, and the will-to-win, but marriage demands all these, plus the anointed strength of love.
If every couple would but bring to marriage one half the consuming zeal for success that Thomas A. Edison brought to his scientific career, how different many of them would be!
As a youth, Edison spent long dreary hours practicing on the tiny telegrapher’s key, learning the code and manner of sending and receiving messages. There was a four-day walk from Port Huron to Boston in search of work. There was the penniless arrival in New York and a chance job repairing a telegraphic communication system in a stock exchange on Wall Street that led to financial betterment, but it was dogged determination to succeed that made him so outstanding as a scientist.
Take, for instance, Edison’s work on the carbon filament. In October, 1879, he determined to make his experiment work if it was the last thing he ever did. So convinced was he that the carbon filament was utilizable that he refused to leave his laboratory until he completed his work. On the second night he said to his associate, Charles Batchelor, “We will make a lamp before we sleep or die in the attempt,” and make it he did, though it took four sleepless days and nights before the now famous Edison incandescent light was invented and the whole lighting system revolutionized in the world.
Edison’s career was successful solely because he brought to it a determination to succeed no matter what the cost. Success in any field rarely comes without great sacrifices. One has only to read about the life of Madame Curie and her devoted husband and follow the discovery of radium to evaluate the cost of success in a career.
Madame Curie’s sufferings as she worked in the smoke-filled shed, cold in the winter and stifling hot in the summer, defy description. The work of days became months and years, and failure dogged her every minute of the time, but Marie Curie, with terrible patience, continued to treat kilogram by kilogram the tons of pitchblende residue. Poverty hampered her in the acquisition of adequate equipment. The obstacles seemed insurmountable in the forty-five months of experimentation, but in the end the Curie work produced radium.
Who could look at the great Marie Curie as she lay on her deathbed, after thirty-five years’ work with radium, and see her tired, burned, scarred hands without realizing the awful cost of success in a career?
Success in marriage depends upon acceptance of the fact that it is a career and upon the readiness and willingness to bring to it all the determination possible to overcome every difficulty and obstacle on the road to success. If a marriage breaks up, it is not because a man or woman must accept defeat but because the defeat is willed.
A kite cannot be made to fly unless it goes against the wind and has a weight to keep it from overturning. No marriage will succeed unless there is readiness to face and overcome difficulties and a willingness to accept the responsibilities of a parent, for parenthood is the weight that keeps most marriages from somersaulting.
When Divine Love Incarnate came to Cana of Galilee to sanctify forever pure conjugal love, He came to that marriage fresh from His terrible bout with Satan.
Since the first man and his wife had succumbed to temptation in the Garden of Eden, it was divinely planned that Christ, the New Adam, should permit the same tempter to attack Him and be ignominiously defeated and thus set a pattern for all to follow in the resistance of temptation. His sacred presence at the wedding was ever to be an earnest of the help and special graces He would grant those called to the marriage career who would likewise resist the onslaughts of Satan. Yea, more, Our Lord would elevate matrimony to the dignity of a Sacrament and make of it a veritable channel of special graces.
It is worthy of note, however, that while en route to Cana, the Master called His first five apostles, one of them being Nathanael (St. Bartholomew), a native of Cana of Galilee. The timing of Nathanael’s call to the apostolate was, doubtless, to indicate the primacy of dignity and honor of the priesthood and religious life over marriage, and that, in that very order, they would form a trinity of top-flight careers.
It was only after choosing a nucleus for His priesthood that Christ went down to the marriage at Cana of Galilee.
from Cana is Forever by Charles Hugo Doyle
Madame Curie’s sufferings as she worked in the smoke-filled shed, cold in the winter and stifling hot in the summer, defy description. The work of days became months and years, and failure dogged her every minute of the time, but Marie Curie, with terrible patience, continued to treat kilogram by kilogram the tons of
