Category Archives: Marriage

Romantic Love…A Subtle Thing

02 Monday May 2022

Posted by in Cana is Forever, Marriage, Youth, Youth/Courtship

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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.

From Cana is Forever by Rev. Charles Hugo Doyle

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:

  1. A genuine interest in the other person and all that he or she says or does.
  2. A community of tastes, ideals, and standards with no serious clashes.
  3. A greater happiness in being with this one person than with any other.
  4. A real unhappiness when the other person is absent.
  5. A great feeling of comradeship.
  6. A willingness to give and take.
  7. A disposition to give fair consideration to the other party’s judgment.
  8. A pride in the other person when comparisons are made.
  9. 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.

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Be Temperate Toward Material Things ~ Catholic Family Handbook

21 Monday Mar 2022

Posted by in Catholic Family Handbook - Fr. Lovasik, Finances, Marriage

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by Father Lovasik, Catholic Family Handbook

Be temperate toward material things

Ill-regulated love of material things can be the cause of much trouble, unhappiness, and downright misery in the home. Your attitude toward money can be a source of great friction if it is not well ordered.

Two extremes are to be avoided: miserliness and prodigality.

A miser lives in some comfort, but has to struggle mightily with himself to give away even a small sum. A spendthrift is one who foolishly, wastefully, and usually selfishly squanders money, whether he happens to possess little or much.

Today there is a craze for buying on credit. A wife who cannot not see an expensive item for household use in a store without buying it can keep a man so loaded down with debt that he will find no joy in the use of these unpaid-for luxuries.

When a wife is foolish and childish in handling money, it would be prudent for a husband not to let her have any money at all. But such cases are rare.

The other extreme is intolerable miserliness. The principle is: “I pay as I go.” Some men not only refuse to incur debts, but strive for a bank account ten times greater than the cost of anything their wives want to buy.

A little debt can be a good thing: it keeps both spouses striving and working together; whereas, without it, there is less incentive to cooperate and sacrifice. But that means a reasonable amount of debt.

A sensible wife will accept limitations on her desire for new things, and at the same time a sensible husband will be willing to incur a reasonable debt.

Miserliness is not in accord with the honesty and sincerity you owe your family. If you are the father of a family, your first obligation is to provide the economic necessities for your wife and children. You are to be the breadwinner of the family, and you should not expect your wife to neglect your home and children for the sake of extra income unless extraordinary circumstances indicate a real need.

A mother’s job is to keep up a good home and raise her children properly. Greed or selfishness should not induce her to neglect these tasks for the sake of the additional income she can earn from a job outside the home.

In marriage you entered into the closest possible partnership with each other. The result of this partnership is that you are bound to share not only those faculties that are involved in the procreation of children, but other things as well, such as material possessions.

The free use of material things is one of the greatest joys of ownership. If you, as a husband, deprive your wife of that joy, you are not sharing in the full sense of the word. The fact that you pay the bills does not mean that you are sharing these things completely.

Do not be a party to some of the abuses practiced by some “money-pinching” husbands. Do not keep from your wife the actual amount of your income or refuse to let her have a word to say about money matters, with the result that she has no idea how to buy for the present or to plan for the future.

She has a right to know exactly how much you are earning, and she should be taken into your counsels on the economic planning for the home. Business dealings and other arrangements that affect the welfare of your home should be common knowledge.

Neither of you should ever contract a personal debt without first talking it over with the other and reaching an agreement.

A wise wife is satisfied with giving her honest opinion. The final decision rests with her husband, who is the head of the home, even as Christ is the head of the Church.

Do not imitate the practice of some husbands who give their wives just barely enough to provide necessities for the home, for herself, and for the children.

Your wife should be a sharer of your income, not an unsalaried servant, held to account count for every penny she spends. Some husbands spend freely on their own amusements but cannot afford recreation money for their wives and children.

Your wife has a right to spend just as much of your money for her personal pleasure as you do for your own. The ideal arrangement is that both of you share in whatever pleasures money can buy.

As the educator and trainer of the immature minds and wills entrusted to you by God, your vocation is difficult. It calls for many qualities that are virtues in themselves: zeal, painstaking effort, patience in weariness, and the humility that joyfully stoops to the level of the child. It is hard work, and the temptation must come at times to abandon the effort and take life easy. Only the seriousness of the undertaking and the knowledge that it is done for God can sustain the untiring effort demanded. – Father Lawrence Lovasikromance-trisha-Sun-Bath

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Secretly Unfaithful ~ Pope Pius XII

10 Monday Jan 2022

Posted by in Marriage

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Your marriage is a holy union. Protect it from the evil one’s subtle and cunning pitfalls that can come along the marital path (especially when we are weak or feeling alone).

From Dear Newlyweds by Pope Pius XII

SECRETLY UNFAITHFUL

The law of the Divine Redeemer, which is a law of love, also protects and preserves true love and true fidelity. It is a law of love which is not confined to the detailed and formal provisions of a code, but penetrates the spirit, the heart, to the point of excluding even the sin of desire (Mt. 5:27-28).

Could there be, then, despite appearances, a secret infidelity hidden in the most intimate recesses of the heart? Without doubt, for out of the heart, says Our Lord, come evil thoughts and other iniquities (Mt. 15:19). And yet this sin of secret infidelity is unfortunately so frequent that the world pays no attention to it and the lulled conscience grows used to it, like the spell of an illusion.

However, true fidelity which has as its object and foundation the mutual gift not only of the bodies of the wedded couple, but their spirits and hearts as well, opposes and overcomes every deceptive charm. Is it not perhaps true that the least infraction of this exquisite and ardent fidelity, leads sooner or later to breakdowns of married life and happiness?

With the wedding ring as its symbol, fidelity is truly a most delicate virtue! Before it was formulated and taught by Our Lord, it had been carved by the Creator in the depths of honest hearts, as exemplified by Job’s famous saying that he had made a covenant with his eyes to refrain from any impure look.

Compare such an austere restriction, which is the prerogative of any soul that is its own master, with the conduct of so many Christians washed from birth in the waters of regeneration and raised in the glowing light of the Gospel. Like children accustomed to regarding the anguish of maternal solicitude as an exaggeration, they smile at the moral anxiety of their mother the Church.

And yet she is not the only one to give thought to this; all serious persons, even those who are far from the Christian concept, utter a cry of alarm. Along the public roads, on the beaches, at entertainments, women and girls shamelessly expose themselves to impertinent and sensuous glances, to indecent solicitation and unseemly promiscuity.

How violently the passions are aroused under such conditions and encounters! With the exception of the final step, the descent into formal infidelity—supposing that by some miracle they do not go this far—what difference would there be between such habits and the conduct of those unfortunates who openly cast aside all shame?

Unless we blame the decline of their sense of morality, we cannot understand how honorable men tolerate the bold looks and familiarities which their wives and fiancées permit other men or how a fiancé or a wife who values her dignity could stand for the husband’s or fiancées taking such liberties and intimacies with other women. Who does not see the last dying flame of honest feeling revolt and rise up against such grave outrages to the holy fidelity of chaste and legitimate love?

But we have said enough concerning these regrettable and disconcerting debasements. In the order of the spirit and the heart, discernment between good and evil is even more delicate. It is true that there are natural tendencies, blameless in themselves, for which present living conditions offer easy and frequent outlets. Whatever danger they may sometimes present, they do not, of themselves, offend fidelity.

Nevertheless, we must warn you against any secretly sensual intimacies, against love that would be called platonic but which is all too frequently merely the prelude to, or discreet veil for, an affection less pure and licit.

As long as intellectual attraction is limited to sincere and spontaneous agreement on ideals, to the enjoyment and admiration of a soul’s grandeur and nobility, it is without reproach. Nevertheless, St. John of the Cross warns these same spiritual persons against deviations which could follow from this.

Imperceptibly, the proper order of things is often turned about, so that an honest attraction for a person, arising from a similarity in thinking, habits or character, reaches a point, by unconscious consent, where a person harmonizes and conforms his own views and ideas to the views and ideas of the one he admires.

At first, one gives ground on trifling questions, then on more serious subjects—on matters of a practical nature, on more intimate topics of art and taste, then in the truly intellectual or philosophical field, and finally on religious and moral doctrine, to the point of renouncing one’s own personal criteria so that one thinks and judges only under the other’s influence.

Principles are subverted, norms of living are abandoned. While the human spirit naturally, and often to the point of excess, proudly adheres to its own opinions, how can one then explain such an easy submission and complete subjection to the ideas of another?

But at the same time that the spirit in this way comes gradually to be modeled on that of a stranger, each day it becomes more alienated from the soul of its lawful husband or wife. To everything the husband or wife thinks or says, one begins to react with an irresistible instinct to contradict, with irritation, with scorn.

This feeling, unconscious perhaps but no less dangerous, indicates that the mind has been conquered and monopolized, that there has been delivered into the power of someone else the spirit which had been irrevocably given on the wedding day. Is this fidelity?

Guard against a subtle and misunderstood illusion. It could be that through the influence of a noble ardent soul, motivated by purest zeal, an intellectual attraction would become the dawn of a conversion; but more frequently than not it is dawn only. Rarely does the morning light brighten to midday.

On the other hand, how many in this way have lost their faith and their Christian perception! Illustrious examples, even though they are rare indeed, seem sufficient to reassure some who imagine themselves a Beatrice or a Dante. In many cases, however, it develops that in their twofold blindness they tread upon the slippery edge of the road and both fall into the ditch.

Even supposing that the spirit was not, as has been said, the “dupe of the heart,” the heart, blind in its own right, is the spirit’s companion and does not hesitate in its onrush to drag the spirit along as well. Once the spirit gives way, the heart yields, but not without becoming unfaithful to the person to whom it was given in the beginning in an indissoluble bond.

The world is content to proclaim as faithful the wife who has not physically committed a fault, to boast of her magnificent fidelity because, perhaps by heroic sacrifice, but only human heroism, she continues to live without love at the side of the husband to whom she had joined her life, while her heart, her whole heart, belongs definitely, passionately to another.

 More saintly and austere is the morality of Christ!

One may try to exalt the nobility of a pretended union of hearts chastely joined “as the stars and the palms,” to wrap this passion in the cloud of empty religiosity, which is only nonsense nourished by poetry and novels, not by the Gospel or by the Christian bond. They may try to fool themselves into continuing this love in lofty serenity, but nature, after original sin, is not so receptive to conceited aphorisms of deluded spirits. Fidelity was already violated by the illicit passion of the heart.

Young husbands and wives, guard against these illusions! Illumined by the Divine Light, under the protection of Mary, Mother Most Pure, love each other in a holy way, drawing ever closer your lives, your spirits and your hearts.

In a happy home, parents often hold firm against other allurements which tempt them to put the needs of their children in an inferior place. Such allurements include the desire for an overly active social life, the constant pursuit of pleasure in the form of commercial entertainment and the exclusive choice of hobbies (golf, cards, dancing clubs, etc.) from which children are excluded. -Fr. George Kelly, 1950’s

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The Little Things – Alice Von Hildebrand & A Christmas Giveaway!

10 Friday Dec 2021

Posted by in Advent/Christmas, Alice Von Hildebrand, Give-Aways, Loving Wife, Marriage

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– by Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand

By Love Refined: Letters to a Young Bride

Dear Julie,

I’m grateful for your frankness. It makes my duties as your godmother easier to fulfill.

You say that although the analogy of the stained-glass windows is very moving, nonetheless true lovers are concerned with “great things, beautiful things” and should not let themselves be troubled by small things.

Roy wouldn’t agree.

He and my friend Evelyn have been married thirty-five years. She’s sloppy and he’s meticulous. During their honeymoon, Roy noticed that she always left the toothpaste tube open. He asked Evelyn to put the cap on, but she laughed at him, claiming he had the habits of an old maid.

Time and again, Roy has asked her to change. Nothing doing! After thirty-five years, the cap still remains off and Roy has resigned himself to it.

Compare this to my own husband’s attitude. Early in our marriage, I noticed he would always leave the soap swimming in a small pool of water. It would slowly disintegrate into an unattractive, slimy goo – something I found unappealing. I drew it to his attention.

From that day on, he made a point of drying the soap after each use – to such an extent that I couldn’t tell from the “soap testimony” whether he had washed himself or not. (Moreover – and this is typical of him – he too developed a strong dislike for sticky soap.)

I was so moved by this, that to this day I feel a wave of loving gratitude for this small but significant gesture of love.

My husband was a great lover. And because he was one, he managed to relate the smallest things to love and was willing to change to please his beloved in all legitimate things. This characteristic is typical of great love.

I’m sure that as your love grows deeper, you, too, will come to see how the greater the love, the more it permeates even the smallest aspects of life.

With love,

LilyA-great-love-between

“Every effort we make to forget self, to leave self behind us, and to devote ourselves to the labor of making every person with whom we are bound to live, happy, is rewarded by interior satisfaction and joy. The supreme effort of goodness is,—not alone to do good to others; that is its first and lower effect,—but to make others good.” Rev. Bernard O’Reilly The Mirror of True Womanhood, 1893 (afflink)

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Our attitude changes our life…it’s that simple. Our good attitude greatly affects those that we love, making our homes a more cheerier and peaceful dwelling! To have this control…to be able to turn around our attitude is a tremendous thing to think about!
This Gratitude Journal is here to help you focus on the good, the beautiful, the praiseworthy. “For the rest, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame, if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline, think on these things.” (Philippians 4:8 – Douay Rheims).
Yes, we need to be thinking of these things throughout the day!
You will be disciplined, the next 30 days, to write positive, thankful thoughts down in this journal. You will be thinking about good memories, special moments, things and people you are grateful for, lovely and thought-provoking Catholic quotes, thoughts before bedtime, etc. Saying it, reading it, writing it, all helps to ingrain thankfulness into our hearts…and Our Lord so loves gratefulness! It makes us happier, too!

Available here.

 

There’s nothing complicated or magical about learning to be kinder; it just takes greater attention to the things that you do and how you do them. The Hidden Power of Kindness shows you how to become more aware of even your most offhand daily actions. You’ll find simple, step-by-step, and spiritually crucial directions for how to overcome the habitual unkindnesses that creep undetected into the behavior of even the most careful souls.

From the thousands of personal letters by St. Francis de Sales comes this short, practical guide that will develop in you the soul-nourishing habits that lead to sanctity.
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“I Just Can’t be Cheerful in the Morning.” ~ Alice von Hildebrand

21 Thursday Oct 2021

Posted by in Alice Von Hildebrand, Marriage

≈ 1 Comment

From By Love Refined, Alice Von Hildebrand

“I just can’t be cheerful in the morning.”

Dear Julie,

The French author Balzac writes, “It’s easier to be a lover than a husband, because it’s easier to say witty things occasionally than to be witty every day.”

Balzac is highlighting the fact that an illicit relationship is limited to a short time, when you put on your most attractive face. But marriage is marriage, early in the morning and late at night.

This is one of the difficulties all spouses encounter in marriage: they’re together when they’re not at their best.

As you’ve discovered, sleeping together is a great and beautiful intimacy; but it also means you wake up together, which for most of us isn’t the best moment of the day.

We’re disheveled, groggy with sleep, not interested in talking, and usually rushing around to get ready for the day’s work.

Unless this potentially disillusioning aspect of the intimacy of marriage is counter-balanced by a deepening of your love and spiritual life – and a great measure of patience – it’s bound to cause difficulties that don’t crop up in a casual relationship.

There are ways to deal with these problems. If you’re not cheery in the morning, then talk with Michael about it – but do it later, when you’re brighter and more clearheaded.

Let him know you’re sorry and are trying to change, but aren’t having much success. Assure him that in the early morning he just isn’t encountering your true self and ask him to avoid discussions at these times, because they’re bound to end badly. (Hasn’t Michael asked you to do the same for him when he comes home from work tired and grumpy?)

Yes, Balzac is right: it is easier to be a lover than a spouse, because it’s easier to be at your best occasionally than to be at your best all the time.

But our concern isn’t with what is easier; our concern is with what is more beautiful: a relationship based on the feelings of the moment or a deep enduring love, sealed by marriage, in which the spouses love each other in good times and bad, in sickness and in health, until they’re parted by death.

Marriage is the beautiful mystery of faithful love – a theme so profound and so fascinating that it unleashes in me a torrent of thoughts which I long to share with you.

Your marriage will be blessed because you and Michael see many of the dangers and you’re working to avoid them with your love.

Please give my fondest greetings to Michael,

Lily

We are called to be great Apostles of Love in our ordinary, daily life. We are Christ’s Hands and Feet as we wipe noses, feed hungry little ones and change diapers with an attitude of service and love. When we are cheerful to those we rub shoulders with each day, when we kindly open our door to those who enter into our home, we are taking part in Christ’s Apostolic Work. “Jesus was an Apostle in the stable of Bethlehem, in the shop of St. Joseph, in His anguish in Gethsemane and on Calvary no less than when He was going through Palestine, teaching the multitudes or disputing with the doctors of the law.” – Divine Intimacy, Painting by Morgan Weistling http://amzn.to/2p0dxg8 (afflink)

Spiritual Reading on audio!

Free MP3 Downloads for you to enjoy… such titles as Introduction to a Devout Life, An Easy Way to Become a Saint, How to be Happy; How to be Holy, Counsels of Perfection for Christian Mothers, etc. Look for them here.

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Book suggestions…

Few realize that a person can pursue a truly supernatural vocation by consecrating himself or herself to perpetual celibacy while yet living in the world. Here Fr. Unger describes the main guidelines for such a religious vocation, showing the nature of this vocation and the manner of dedicating oneself to it. The author gives the history in the Church of consecrated celibate living, plus some basic helps in safeguarding purity in such a life. Based on the Pope Pius XII encyclical On Holy Virginity, this book shows that the consecrated life in the world is just one more example of the rich Tradition of the Church in providing for the needs of all her children. The Mystery of Love for the Single will bring much-needed encouragement and enlightenment to those generous souls who wish to pursue a supernatural vocation and yet remain single and celibate while living in the world.

In this ground-breaking book, Colleen Hammond challenges today’s fashions and provides you the information you need to protect yourself and your loved ones from the onslaught of tasteless, immodest clothing. Colleen Hammond shares real-life examples of how women can accentuate the grace and beauty of their femininity, and she shows that modest definitely does not mean frumpy !! DRESSING WITH DIGNITY covers it all . . . The history and forces behind the changes in fashion. How to talk to teenagers about the privilege of femininity so they will want to dress with dignity. How to awaken chivalry in men and be treated with respect. How to regain and teach the lost charm of interior and exterior femininity! How to dress in an attractive, dignified, classy manner! Specific documents about manners of dress from the Magisterium, the Popes and the Saints. Comprehensive guidelines for choosing tasteful attire. Resources on where to find beautiful, modest clothing. And much, much more!

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

Sacramental Protection of the Family

04 Monday Oct 2021

Posted by in Marriage

≈ 1 Comment

by Emerson Hynes St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota

+J. H. Schlarman Bishop of Peoria President NCRLC

Sacramental Protection of the Family

(Notes from a talk by Emerson Hynes to the Rural Life Summer School, St. Bede College, June 25, 1945.)

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on the Catholic home and rural living. For I believe deeply that, even in this tempestuous world, where headlines dealing with military movements of millions are the order of the day, where the decisions of leaders are apparently shaping the future of all of us, where the charter of nations at San Francisco encompasses the whole world–even in such a world the most important things are still the Family and the Church.

None of us will question the position of the Church. But I wonder if we do not have a tendency to regard the family as less important than we should. Theoretically, of course, we know and preach its place. But in fact we like to talk and plan in terms of modern science, the state, of so many billions of units of this and that, of a national income of 160 billion dollars, of full employment and 60 million jobs, of international economic and social and military cooperation.

Those are challenging objectives. We are aiming at a better world. And it is a world of mass production and of science. I do not mean to decry these objectives or to suggest that we do not need to be concerned with planning on a large scale.

It is rather that we must always keep in mind that all this has meaning only in terms of human persons and of human families. All this size, all this science, all this production, is good only if it contributes to better living for persons. And persons live most intimately and most of their time in that little unit called the family.

The Family the Basis of the Future

We must see, first, that the family is really the basis of the future. We cannot start at the top with international organization and imagine that other things will work out all right. We must start at the bottom.

That does not mean automatically that the top will work. But it is the first requisite. Hence every leader can have hope and consolation.

No matter how dark the world picture is, he can do effective work. No matter how little cooperation he gets from others in the wider circle of social activities, he can always make progress with his own little group.

No matter that society seems to be destroying itself, he can always be building it by building the families under his care.

G.K. Chesterton, with his flair for seeing the important in the commonplace, once made a striking analogy by comparing the family to a cabbage.

A prosaic soul, he said, would think, while walking in the garden, that a cabbage was a very ordinary vegetable. But a man of vision would be struck by the grandeur, by the monstrousness of that gigantic head of cabbage growing from a tiny taproot in the soil. That something so large and bulky could come from one little root!

So it is with the family, which seems small, like one of millions of roots in the fields. But it bulks large in importance as it grows and matures. In itself it is “wild and elemental.” It is dwarfed by the whole field, yet it is a supreme object in itself.

It is the place where the basic processes of life occur by nature: birth, growth, and death. It is able to produce the greatest love and the greatest hatred, too; the greatest joy and equally the most stinging sorrow.

So we must recognize the importance of the family in the lives of men. We must shape our thinking to better the family; and in so doing we shall be performing the most important and most revolutionary work possible. We can never be discouraged if we are improving family life.

  1. The Sacramental Aspect of Family Life

It is but natural that priests and other Catholics should think first of the spiritual side of marriage. It is not only tremendously important. It is our unique treasure.

All leaders of good will can work with us and we with them to improve the family wage, the family housing, the family health, the family recreational facilities.

But our specific gift is the fact that marriage is a sacrament, instituted by Christ to be a source of grace. And how urgently that grace is needed! For it gives parents the strength to endure much. After all, material standards are relative. The necessities of life today were undreamed of only a century ago. The best house in the nation in 1850 would be substandard today.

The troubles and inconveniences should be avoided; but merely avoiding them will not make healthy family life. It is the spirit that counts.

From the fact that marriage is a sacrament, several points follow:

A. Marriage is a continuous sacrament. This truth was stressed by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical on marriage. We heads of Catholic families need to be reminded of that fact repeatedly. We cannot be told too often.

Marriage is not a sacrament merely on the wedding day. It is a continuous “sign instituted by Christ to give grace.” How consoling it is for parents to know this!

How it gives them strength! How it checks them when human weakness inclines them to quarrel! How it increases the joy of their two-in-one-ship! How it enables them to see their children as blessings! How it helps them to offer up to God their daily work: their care of children, their meals, their play, their household tasks.

Who would dare to bicker and quarrel and deliberately sin in the presence of the other six sacraments? Who dares to despair, then?

Even so, Catholic parents can be led to understand and then practice the same joyful spirit in their special sacrament. We stand in great need of explanation. That is a place where any servant of Christ can begin to improve family life. Tell us of the beauty and depth and grace of marriage.

B. From the first point it follows that marriage is a vocation. Truly it is a religious vocation, in the broad sense of that term. It is a way of salvation, chosen by the majority of the people. And since it is a way of salvation, it must be looked upon as such.

Marriage should not be viewed simply as a proper means of perpetuating the human race. Every marriage is that, pagan (or natural) or Christian. It surely should not be viewed merely as a legitimate means of quieting concupiscence. That is a secondary aspect.

The special thing about a Christian marriage is that it is truly a means of serving God, a way of salvation. And how marvelous and mysterious it is! For by choosing the way of marriage, man and woman no longer work alone for salvation, but together in a most intimate way.

Their marriage is a means to sanctity, and the advance of one should be a help to the other; the defect of one will weigh down the other. In any event, we need to realize more than we do that marriage is a vocation, a chosen way of serving God. And in that realization the family will take on new and deeper meaning.

How blessed the parents will see they are! They have all the joys of the natural family. But over and above, they have, in their sacrament, a religious way of life, too.

How much more important the family becomes as we begin to see that, although in a different way, we are serving God as are the priest and the nun! It will not solve all difficulties, of course, just as ordination or solemn vows do not automatically make perfect men. But you know what an aid to perfection is the knowledge of one’s vocation. So it should be with Catholic parents.

C. If marriage is a continuous sacrament and a true vocation, then daily family living must give evidence that it is a religious life. Both in the spirit of the members and in the externals of the home itself religion must be evidenced. Here we Catholic parents need help. We need instruction and we need confidence..

“You should fear nothing, if you are equipped with the strongest spiritual weapon —Holy Communion. It prevents mortal sin—the greatest evil in the world—from taking root in your soul and even washes away the stains of venial sin so long as you have no affection for it nor desire to commit it in the future. The coming of Jesus in Holy Communion awakens new love in your heart and encourages you to live in purity and sinlessness, which is a necessary condition for happiness.” -Clean Love in Courtship, Fr. Lovasik http://amzn.to/2fOwQm9 (afflink)

Our attitude changes our life…it’s that simple. Our good attitude greatly affects those that we love, making our homes a more cheerier and peaceful dwelling! To have this control…to be able to turn around our attitude is a tremendous thing to think about!
This Gratitude Journal is here to help you focus on the good, the beautiful, the praiseworthy. “For the rest, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame, if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline, think on these things.” (Philippians 4:8 – Douay Rheims).
Yes, we need to be thinking of these things throughout the day!
You will be disciplined, the next 30 days, to write positive, thankful thoughts down in this journal. You will be thinking about good memories, special moments, things and people you are grateful for, lovely and thought-provoking Catholic quotes, thoughts before bedtime, etc. Saying it, reading it, writing it, all helps to ingrain thankfulness into our hearts…and Our Lord so loves gratefulness! It makes us happier, too!
Available here.

 

As no sensible person would make a long road trip without first consulting a map, so the person intent upon gaining Heaven should first resort to a competent guide to reach that Goal of all goals. And no better guide to Heaven exists than An Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), Doctor of the Church. It is at once easy to read, being laid out in short chapters, yet thorough, authoritative, reliable, kind and gentle a mirror of its author. It is a book, moreover, for all, because all are called to the devout life. True devotion to God, the author points out, adorns every vocation. The devout life, moreover, is a lovely, a pleasant, and a happy life.

If your life seems to make no sense, or if you don’t know which path to take, St. Francis de Sales will console and inform you. In this warm little book, he explains to you what God’s will is and how He reveals it yes, even to you, and even in the seemingly random events of your life.

No matter what you’re going through now (or may have gone through), you’ll see why you should love and trust in God’s will and long for its fulfillment. Best of all, you’ll learn a sure method for discovering God’s will in any situation today!

As you begin to discern God’s loving hand even in seemingly chaotic events, St. Francis de Sales will lead your mind and your heart to the still waters of God’s gentle consolation.

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This Thing Called Love ~ Cana is Forever/NEW! Children’s Podcast ~ Jack Be Nimble, Etc.

28 Tuesday Sep 2021

Posted by in Cana is Forever, Marriage, Podcasts - Finer Femininity

≈ 1 Comment

Cana is Forever: Counsels for Before and After Marriage — A Catholic Guide to Dating, Courtship, and Marriage

by Charles Hugo Doyle, 1958

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.”

St

“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

Available here.

Excellent book by Fr. Jacques Philippe…

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.

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Strive for Genuine Love ~ Fr. Lovasik

10 Friday Sep 2021

Posted by in Catholic Family Handbook - Fr. Lovasik, Marriage

≈ Leave a comment

Painting by Julien Dupre, 1851

by Father Lovasik, Catholic Family Handbook

Strive for genuine love

The Church says that happiness comes as a by-product of duty well done. It is earned, not found. The best way of achieving conjugal happiness is by fulfilling the ends for which marriage was instituted.

While the procreation of the race is the primary purpose of marriage, there are other important ends achieved by this divine institution.

Marriage fosters the love and devotion of husband and wife. It provides a legitimate expression for the divinely implanted sexual hunger. It answers man’s craving for intimate companionship, sympathy, understanding, and lasting friendship.

It enriches the personality of man by increasing his unselfishness and deepening his capacity for love, friendship, and sacrifice. Although the physical elements of marriage are not to be depreciated, the highest and most enduring joys are the mental and spiritual ones that come from the complete union of hearts and souls – the perfect fusion of two personalities, which is achieved only in the holy mystery of conjugal love.

The domestic affections – the mutual love of husband and wife, of parents and children, of brothers and sisters – are the principal source of human happiness and well-being, the chief wellsprings of actions, and also the chief safeguards against evil.

Focus on the spiritual, not the physical

Love is not a mere emotion of the body. Merely emotional or sensual love is an attraction that arises within the body and concerns itself only with the body of another.

To keep married persons from forgetting their primary duty to the race, God has implanted sexual hunger in human nature. It is part of the divine plan that the satisfaction of sexual hunger be accompanied by feelings of pleasure and happiness.

Emotional love eventually dies down after some years of marriage with the cooling of sentimental attraction. If a married person unfortunately comes to the point at which he can honestly say that his love for his spouse has completely died, this is usually an indication that it was only a selfish, sentimental, mental, animal-like love from the very beginning.

Mere animal attraction may sometimes lead to marriage, but when it passes – as it always does – love passes, too, and usually some other animal attraction is sought and satisfied.

Nothing is harder for a human being who possesses religious convictions and aspirations than to live long in marriage with a person who does practically nothing that a brute animal cannot not do. Therefore, in seeking happiness in marriage, do not stress what is physical. The fact is that only a small part of happiness in marriage is dependent upon the senses.

Happiness and pleasure sure cannot be taken as a steady diet, because the Creator never meant people to be permanently happy here on earth. Physical attraction diminishes and gives place to a greater and nobler basis for happiness.

Depend on your will, not on your feelings

The essence of love resides in the free will. The will may be stimulated to love freely by feelings and emotions. Love can be real and genuine without feelings if it is faithful and loyal, self-sacrificing sacrificing and cooperative, and manifested in word and, more often, in deed. All this can be accomplished without a great deal of intense feeling.

All human love undergoes changes and varieties in feeling. This does not affect the motive of love residing in the will. The feelings of love ten years after marriage are not the same as they were on the day of marriage, and yet the love can be true and sincere.

Duty is more important than feelings: loyalty to duty is fundamental in life; feelings are secondary and can, when the sense of duty is strong, be brought into satisfactory, if not perfect, agreement with the requirements of duty.

If your sense of duty is uppermost in your mind, contrary feelings  will never grow into hatred. Duties do not lose their force and obligation when opposed by contrary feelings; hence, a situation cannot become intolerable.

People with some background of self-discipline seldom become victims of intolerable difficulties. It is important to check feelings that are contrary to duty from the very beginning, so they will never become strong.

Therefore, do not count too much on feelings of love as the only inspiration to fidelity throughout the years, but rely primarily on the conviction of obligation created by the vows you made in the marriage ceremony.

Nevertheless, feelings should not be neglected in your marriage, for it is possible to smother and destroy all the natural feelings of love. The sense of duty must always remain, but without any normal feeling, or with a feeling of revulsion instead stead of attraction, it will be difficult to live up to that sense of duty.

Since love is essentially an activity of the free will, once it is pledged in the marriage ceremony, it can and should, with the help of the grace of God, remain alive and strong forever.

In that sense, it means working for the happiness of each other despite your own feelings and despite the faults and sins of your spouse.

God uses the feelings of love, or a sense of emotional attraction between you, not only to lead you into marriage, but also to make carrying out the duties of marriage easier and more rewarding.

You surely have one desire in marriage: to make the love that has drawn you together endure forever.

Love is destroyed only by a free act of the will. Your love for your spouse dies only if you really want it to die. Even then your love can be revived by doing the things necessary to promote  love. Love is not dead even if strong feelings are absent.

Women generally remain romantic long after their wedding; men usually do not. Most women would like their husbands to be as obviously affectionate after ten or fifteen years of marriage as they were during courtship.

The best attitude to adopt toward the idea that your spouse does not love you is to look at it as a petty annoyance and try to dismiss it as one would dismiss an unwanted temptation. Add to that a determination to keep busy, preferably in some form of service to others, especially to your family.

Permit yourself as little time to brood and worry as you possibly can. Idleness and introspection are dangerous. You can overcome this danger if you intensify your spiritual life by such practices as daily Mass and Communion, frequent prayers, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, and the cultivation of a childlike confidence in God’s Providence and goodness.

If you begin to think that life is destroying the love you once had for your husband, you must rekindle the spark if you can. If a true love ever existed, it can be restored and increased. Your union is a permanent one, and you must not allow it, for want of love, to head toward estrangement and separation.

You can recapture even a lost love by daily tending and constant watching for little opportunities to show your love. Your love will grow as your eager efforts increase.

Genuine love is a rational attraction, mutually shared, between two persons, that is not contrary to God’s law or to one’s own good of soul or body. It is a special inclination to do good for another, spiritually or physically, and to share all good with that person.

Such love is rational, because it must be under the influence of the mind and will, which together direct it to what is not contrary to God’s will or to the good of the person loving as well as of the person loved.

Love is not simply a blissful state that you fall into; it is an unselfish virtue that lifts you out of yourself. It is, above all, the desire to give – body, mind, and heart – to each other without out reserve. Unless you are willing to give yourself completely, unless the first emphasis is on giving rather than on getting, you are not truly in love.

Love is the desire that you and your spouse have to spend the rest of your lives together and to work out your salvation together.

The principal reason for unhappiness in marriage is the failure to love. Love is one of the noblest passions implanted by God in human nature. St. Thomas says that “to love is to will that good should befall a person.”

Your love is genuine if it has God for its foundation; then it is an aid to reaching God.

Love is a thing of the spirit more than of the flesh. When love shows itself only in the flesh, it may be more lust than love. Religion alone brings out the full attractiveness of a human being. It alone provides the motives, actions, and practical precepts for the practice of the virtues that appeal most strongly to the love of another. Religion makes human beings higher and nobler than brute animals.

Genuine love will patch up differences and make marriage happy, provided religious motivation, self-sacrifice, prayer, and work are given their proper place in your life. Genuine love is enough for a happy marriage. Love is not one-sided, but reciprocal.

The love between husband and wife is the root from which grows perfect love between father, mother, and child. You must love each other before you can love your children perfectly.

“One day at a time. This is very important. Very often we exhaust ourselves going over the past again and again and also our fears about the future. But when we live in the present moment, we mysteriously find strength. We have the grace to live through what we encounter today. If tomorrow we must face more difficult situations, God will increase his grace. God’s grace is given at the right time for it, day by day.” -Fr. Jacques Philippe, The Way of Trust and Love http://amzn.to/2wGXpkw Painting: Scent of a Rose by Sheri Dinardi (afflink)

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.
 
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Here, Baroness Maria Augusta Trapp tells in her own beautiful, simple words the extraordinary story of her romance with the baron, their escape from Nazi-occupied Austria, and their life in America.

Now with photographs from the original edition.

Most people only know the young Maria from The Sound of Music; few realize that in subsequent years, as a pious wife and a seasoned Catholic mother, Maria gave herself unreservedly to keeping her family Catholic by observing in her home the many feasts of the Church’s liturgical year, with poems and prayers, food and fun, and so much more!

With the help of Maria Von Trapp, you, too, can provide Christian structure and vibrancy to your home. Soon your home will be a warm and loving place, an earthly reflection of our eternal home.

Breathing Life into Your Home

06 Tuesday Jul 2021

Posted by in Loving Wife, Marriage

≈ 7 Comments

by Lisa Jacobson, Marriage Wisdom for Her

A wise woman breathes life into her home by choosing cheerful words over complaining ones.

It all started with a sigh. A sigh so natural to me that I never noticed it escaping my lips. A long heavy sigh. I was washing vegetables for the dinner salad. Celery, peppers, and carrots. The typical evening prep. Feeling behind and burdened by my day.

That’s when my husband walked into the room and asked, “Hey babe, how was today?” And then, “Why the big sigh?” He asked and so I answered.

And it went something like this: “The bickering kids, the avalanche of housework, the unanswered emails, the half-broken appliances, the errands that took longer than they should have, and the three medical bills that arrived in the mail. . . .” A long list of complaints, but nothing special. All the usual.

But right before my eyes, I watched those strong, solid shoulders of the man I love drop a little. Hunch over a bit. Heavy with all I’d just dumped on him. But he’d asked and I’d answered him honestly. And I believe it’s important to be honest, don’t you?

Except for one thing. My “honesty” was taking him down. I was literally sucking the life out of our home with my complaining. I’d developed the very bad habit of grumbling, and I’d masked it all under the disguise of “being honest” instead of calling what it really was.

What I really was.

A complaining wife.

And that’s when I knew something had to change. I had to stop this negative stream of communication that greeted him almost every evening. It was time to trade out my whining discontent and to replace it with a thankful spirit. To choose cheerful words rather than negative ones.

I wanted to breathe life back into my home and our relationship. Oh, not that it meant I could never be “honest” again; there’s a time and place for that. But I realized that I could save it for another moment. And I was going to make sure that I wasn’t merely “dumping” on him, but truly coming to him for support, help, or a little sympathy. Not complaining for the sake of complaining.

Rather than focusing on all that had gone wrong, I was going to concentrate on all that was good in my day. Things that were true, lovely, and worthy.

And that goes something like this: “The kids had lots of fun at the park today, I got the pantry cleaned out, so glad for my washing machine and (partially-working) dryer, made it to the grocery store, got a nice compliment from my co-worker, and grateful our girl got medical care when she really needed it. . . .”

Same day – different perspective. And that has made all the difference in the world.

Maybe you’ve picked up the habit of complaining as well?

Try changing this one bad habit and see the good it brings to your husband, your marriage, and your home.

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Here is a marriage blueprint that every woman can follow. Happy marriages do not just happen, they are made. It takes three parties to make a good marriage; the husband, the wife, and the Lord. This book is concerned with helping the woman to become the wife desired and therefore loved that every man worth having wishes to find and keep…..

Ladies, we have one shot at loving our man. We all have the capacity and capability to love him and to do it well. It’s time for our marriages to start thriving in love. This practical book gives specific, real-life instruction on how to enjoy the best marriage has to offer….

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

Life Together is Difficult – Christ in the Home

28 Monday Jun 2021

Posted by in Christ in the Home - Fr. Raoul Plus S.J., Marriage

≈ 2 Comments

Beautiful and important insight from Fr. Plus….

From Christ in the Home, Fr. Raoul Plus, S.J., 1950’s

Marriage is not an easy vocation. It requires great virtue of husbands and wives.

Personal experience reveals how true that is; those who cannot claim this personal experience can, in any case, accept the statement of psychologists who observe, “Marriage is the most difficult of all human relations, because it is the most intimate and the most constant. To live so close to another person–who in spite of everything remains another person–to be thus drawn together, to associate so intimately with another personality without a wound or without any shock to one’s feelings is a difficult thing.”

According to an old saying, “There are two moments in life when a man discovers that his wife is his dearest possession in the world–when he carries her across the threshold of his home, and when he accompanies her body to the cemetery.”

But in the interval between these two moments, they must live together, dwell together, persevere together. “To die for the woman one loves is easier than to live with her” claim those who ought to know. And how many women could claim similarly, “To die for the man one loves is easier than to live with him.”

They must bear with each other.

A French journalist while visiting Canada stopped for a time at Quebec. “You have no law permitting a divorce in the case of husbands and wives who do not understand each other?” he questioned.

“No.”

“But what do those married persons do whose discontent is continual and whose characters are in no way compatible?”

“They endure each other.”

How expressive an answer! How rich in meaning! How expressive of virtue which is perhaps heroic! They endure each other.

This is not an attempt to deny the delights of married life, but to show that more than a little generosity is required to bear its difficulties.

In “The New Jerusalem” by Chesterton, a young girl is sought in marriage. She opposes the proposal in view of differences in temperament between herself and the young man. The marriage would certainly be a risk; it would be imprudent.

Michel, the suitor, retorted to this objection in his own style: “Imprudent! Do you mean to tell me that there are any prudent marriages? You might just as well speak of prudent suicides . . . A young girl never knows her husband before marrying him.

Unhappy? Of course, you will be unhappy. Who are you anyway to escape being unhappy, just as well as the mother who brought you into the world! Deceived? Of course you shall be deceived!”

Who proves too much, proves very little. We can, however, through the exaggeration find the strain of truth. “Michel” is a little too pessimistic. He makes a good counterpart to those who enter into marriage as if in a dream.

“Marriage,” wisely wrote Paul Claudel–and he gives the true idea–“is not pleasure; it is the sacrifice of pleasure; it is the study of two souls who throughout their future, for an end outside of themselves, shall have to be satisfied with each other always.”

LOVING EACH OTHER IN GOD

We have already seen that it is essential to advance as quickly as possible from a purely natural love to a supernatural love, from a passionate love to a virtuous love.

That is clear. No matter how perfect the partners in marriage may be, each has limitations; we can foresee immediately that at the point where the limitations of the one contact the limitations of the other, sparks will easily fly; misunderstandings, oppositions, and disagreements will arise.

No matter how much effort one puts forth to manifest only virtues, one does not have only virtues. And when one lives in constant contact with another, his faults appear quickly; “No man is great to his valet,” says the proverb.

Sometimes it is the very virtue of an individual which seems to annoy another. One would have liked more discretion; one is, as it were, eclipsed. Two find their self-love irritated, in conflict.

Or perhaps virtues no longer appear as virtues by reason of being so constantly manifested. Others become accustomed to seeing them and look upon them as merely natural traits.

“There is nothing more than that missing for him or her to be different.” It is like the sun or the light; people no longer notice them. Bread by reason of its being daily bread loses its character of “good bread.”

Daily intercourse which was a joy in the beginning no longer seems such a special delight; it becomes monotonous.

Husband and wife remain together by habit, common interests, honor, even a certain attachment of will, but do they continue to be bound together by love in the deepest sense of the word?

If things go on in this way, they will soon cease to be much concerned about each other; they may preserve a mutual dry esteem which habit will render still drier. Where formerly there existed a mutual ardor, nothing more remains than proper form; where formerly there was never anything more than a delicate remonstrance, there now exists depressing wrangling or a still more depressing coldness.

Married persons must come to the help of weak human nature and try to understand what supernatural love is in order to infuse it into their lives as soon as possible.

Is not the doctrine of the Church on marriage too often forgotten? How many ever reread the epistle of the Nuptial Mass? Meditate on it?

In any case, how many husbands and wives read it together? Meditate on it together? That would forearm them against the invasion of worrisome misunderstandings.

Why not have recourse to the well-springs of wisdom? There are not only the epistles. There is the whole gospel.

The example of Joseph and Mary at Nazareth is enlightening.

What obedience and cordial simplicity in Mary! What deference and exquisite charity in Saint Joseph! And between the two what openness of heart, what elevated dealings! Jesus was the bond between Mary, the Mother, and Joseph, the foster-father.

In Christian marriage, Jesus is still the unbreakable bond–prayer together, Holy Mass and Holy Communion together.

Not only should there be prayer with each other, beside each other, but prayer for each other.

 
“Enjoy the man he is. Don’t compare him to anyone else. There is little more destructive than hoping he’ll become like someone he isn’t – whether said aloud or thought silently in your heart. Instead, make the most of his own unique qualities.” – Lisa Jacobson, 100 Ways to Love Your Husband http://amzn.to/2sk0lEa (afflink)

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Journals, Journal, Journals!

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“We live in an age characterized by agitation and lack of peace. This tendency manifests itself in our spiritual as well as our secular life. In our search for God and holiness, in our service to our neighbor, a kind of restlessness and anxiety take the place of the confidence and peace which ought to be ours. What must we do to overcome the moments of fear and distress which assail us? How can we learn to place all our confidence in God and abandon ourselves into his loving care? This is what is taught in this simple, yet profound little treatise on peace of head. Taking concrete examples from our everyday life, the author invites us to respond in a Gospel fashion to the upsetting situations we must all confront. Since peace of heart is a pure gift of God, it is something we should seek, pursue and ask him for without cease. This book is here to help us in that pursuit.”

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