No one likes to be taken for granted. In any human relationship a little sign of appreciation goes a long way. Life does not have to be a hard pull uphill all the time. To know that someone, especially the one we love, values our efforts sends us off with our heads in the clouds. The wife who is wise enough to show her husband appreciation for all his efforts will keep his heart fixed upon her.
With a fixed heart he will have a free hand to do the things a responsible head of the house must do. That is why, as Chesterton has pointed out, Christ said, “My son, give Me thy heart.” With his heart securely fixed on Christ the disciple had a pivot from which he could swing through all the complexities of life without losing his purpose. Appreciation gives purpose and motivation to a husband. It is one form of inspiration.
Some years ago a couple came to my attention whom I always have remembered. They illustrated the importance of a wife’s making her husband realize that she valued him. The wife had to leave her home and care for her sick mother. She was gone for a month. She and her husband rented without a lease, wondering from week to week whether they would have a home for themselves and their three little children.
While she was gone, he fell upon a good buy in a fairly new home. He said that he regretted the transaction was made while she was away, but the opportunity came then. He felt that it was his responsibility to do something about their living conditions. Having failed twice to locate her by phone he closed the deal.
The first Sunday his wife was home they went out for a drive. He intended to surprise her. As they were driving around, he suddenly stopped in front of their new home. Her curiosity at his action turned to grief on being let in on the secret. As she sat in the car looking at her new home she began to moan and groan that she did not like it. Why did he do it? Why did he not wait until she came back?
For a moment he sat there crestfallen, not knowing what to say or do. He expected elation and was prepared for a pat on the back. He made an effort to recover his confidence and suggested that they see the inside. She would like the arrangement of the rooms and closet space.
As they went from room to room, she continued her manifestations of disappointment and even resentment that she had no say in the choice of their new home. It was a bad day for both of them, how bad neither of them were to realize for several years. On that day he got the idea that his wife did not appreciate him. The idea continued to grow.
When we talked over their problems, their estrangement, and the future of the children, they had been separated for over a year. By that time he was all through and living with another woman. He had found someone to give him appreciation.
There is always someone around to give it if the wife does not. “The big dummy,” every woman is saying who reads this, “should get everything coming to him.” Perhaps he was something of dummy, but his wife had always loved him, still did, and wanted him back.
In justice to the husband in question, we should remember the circumstances prevailing when he bought the home. However, to make all wives happy, let us suppose that he made a terrible mistake in buying a home without his wife’s knowledge. The deed was done. What did she profit reminding him of his mistake? Was it wise for her to carry a grudge, to give him the idea that she considered him unfair or incompetent? Did her duty of inspiration cease because he was guilty of the worst possible judgment?
She was an excellent wife and mother in some respects, but she failed completely in the important function of inspiration. She told how she had never thought of it but now realized her big mistake, her shortcoming.
This woman was not the nagging type, at least not habitually so. She took her husband for granted. She felt that she was doing her job well. She assumed that he was. She did not assume a thing when they were courting.
If wives worked just half as hard and wisely at keeping their husbands as they do in getting them, the divorce mills would go out of business. A husband needs his wife even more than she needs him. With a little intelligence and verve she can keep him easily.
“If your large family brings ridicule from neighbors and even strangers, remember that you have a lasting treasure worth suffering for, and that the Lord called blessed those who suffer persecution for justice’s sake.” – Fr. Lawrence G. Lovasik. The Catholic Family Handbook
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This is a unique book of Catholic devotions for young children. There is nothing routine and formal about these stories. They are interesting, full of warmth and dipped right out of life. These anecdotes will help children know about God, as each one unfolds a truth about the saints, the Church, the virtues, etc. These are short faith-filled stories, with a few questions and a prayer following each one, enabling the moral of each story to sink into the minds of your little ones. The stories are only a page long so tired mothers, who still want to give that “tucking in” time a special touch, or pause a brief moment during their busy day to gather her children around her, can feel good about bringing the realities of our faith to the minds of her children in a childlike, (though not childish), way. There is a small poem and a picture at the end of each story. Your children will be straining their necks to see the sweet pictures! Through these small stories, parents will sow seeds of our Holy Catholic Faith that will enrich their families all the years to come!
This revised 1922 classic offers gentle guidance for preteen and teenage girls on how to become a godly woman. Full of charm and sentiment, it will help mother and daughter establish a comfortable rapport for discussions about building character, friendships, obedience, high ideals, a cheerful spirit, modest dress, a pure heart, and a consecrated life.
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The problem of finances for a married couple is a two-edged sword. It is a factor in their lives which can cut to pieces their happiness and peace and even their marriage. It can also bring them closer together in companionship as they stand as one in slashing at the wolf at the door. Through their use of money husband and wife can evidence their love for each other or their selfishness.
It has been stated that money is the root of all evil. Money represents the material possessions of this world, the things which militate against the spirit and the good in mankind. Because money and selfishness are boon companions and because there is selfishness or lack of love in all evil, the truth of the statement becomes clearer.
Money is a consequence of original sin. We never should have had to bother with it except for Adam’s disloyalty and fall. We could almost say that money in itself is an evil. Yet, out of evil good often comes. Christ and Redemption was a good to come out of the evil of Adam’s sin.
In having to wrestle with the mutual problem of money man and wife generally are brought closer together in fighting a common enemy. Thus the good of love and companionship is occasioned by an evil.
It is a particularly sad thing, when man and wife fall out over finances, because the common problem of money easily could have promoted their love for each other. The use of money can afford limitless opportunities to manifest unselfishness and love through their sacrifices for each other.
Thus the question of finances, even poverty, cannot be considered in itself a cause of disharmony in marriage. True enough, it is listed as one of the common causes of broken homes along with fighting drinking, and in-laws. It is so listed, because often it comes into the picture of unhappy marriages as a contributing or primary cause of their troubles.
Yet, it should be realized that their finances were not the real cause of their troubles. There was a deeper cause. It was the foolish, almost sinful idea, that they could have their happiness through themselves and not through each other.
Happy married people have the same problems as unhappy or estranged married people. The happy ones are still happy because they knew that there is no happiness in this world or under this world or above this world except through another.
Once a person seeks her happiness through herself, she is doomed to eventual misery along with the person through whom she should have sought it. There is no other way of being happy except by making someone else happy.
Money is thus truly a two-edged sword. The self-seeking husband or wife will cut happiness from under themselves. The couple who use their money to promote the other’s happiness cut themselves in on additional connubial bliss.
Of its nature this book is one-sided. It deals with the wife and brings the husband in occasionally only as a necessary distraction.
So, you see, it is not wholly a man’s world.
Because husband and wife must work hand and glove in regard to finances, and because family income is primarily a husband’s responsibility, an exception will be made here in the discussion of money matters. At times a struggle was necessary to resist the temptation to bring the husband into the picture. Let us give in to the one temptation for once.
Many young married couples have made the mistake of assuming that they could begin their married lives in the economic circumstances of their parents. They forgot that it took their parents thirty or forty years to get where they are. And it took lots of struggling and sacrifice unbeknown to their little children growing up.
The young couple had it nice and easy before marriage. They lived in fine homes with all the modern conveniences. They had frequent use of the family car. Both worked for several years before marriage and thus had a considerable amount of money to spend on themselves. In fact, for so many this was a rather selfish period in life. A good time and few, if any, sacrifices made up the picture.
Then came marriage with all its joys and its responsibilities as well. The husband, instead of giving ten dollars a week to his parents for board, or nothing at all, now had to pay rent. Food had to be bought. Babies were arriving along with outrageous doctor bills. Something had to give somewhere. Were they going to attempt to maintain the same standard of living they enjoyed before marriage?
Frequent parties, fine dinners at expensive places, numerous and costly gifts freely exchanged between relations and friends, and many other luxuries were part and parcel of their lives. Were they to continue? Then how would the family expenses be met?
The average husband, just getting a start in the economic arena, simply cannot maintain his previous standard of living and decently support his family to the satisfaction of his responsibility.
Over and over again marriages have come to grief because husbands have spent too great a proportion of their incomes on themselves to the callous disregard for their wives and children.
The naiveté of some of these selfish monsters is hard to fathom.
With hardly a blush some of them will admit to removing as much as twenty-five per cent of their incomes for their own pleasures in the form of golf, fishing, drinking, or some other activity unshared with the family.
A young woman must be very careful not to give her heart to any man, until she is certain he is responsible and unselfish. What is his attitude about money? Does he spend the greater part of his income before marriage merely on his personal gratification?
Many girls have been deceived into thinking that a young man was generous and unselfish, because he seemed to throw his money around freely. Many disillusioned wives have had to come too late to the realization that he was throwing his money around pretty much on himself.
The good times which he gave her were good times which he gave himself as well, and her good time was incidental to his. These characters save nothing for their future marriages.
It takes sacrifice to forego present pleasure in order to have the wherewithal to begin married life. The man who was unable to deny himself by saving for his marriage may rise to the occasion during marriage. But he may not. He is a poor risk. His happy-go-lucky attitude about money is as likely to carry over into married life. With a situation like this, heartaches more than companionship will be her lot.
The ideal husband made the choice where his real happiness rested. He gave up his pre-marriage pleasures as being inconsequential in comparison to his new found happiness. He cast his lot with his wife and their children.
To curb himself from previous pleasures, even such innocent and seemingly unselfish customs as the exchange of expensive gifts with every relative in sight, required sacrifice. The sacrifice was rewarded by a growth in love. There was no other way in which love could develop.
The ideal wife was sensitive to her husband’s struggle to adapt himself to a new way of life, not only because she loved him but because she was faced with the same problem of change.
She too had to forego the pre-marriage butterfly existence of spending right up to her income with no provision for future contingencies and necessities. She, even more than her husband, was interested in saving for the down payment for their new home.
The home was to be her work shop. If it should be inadequate for the needs of her family, she would be the one to suffer most. If she was pigeon-holed in a cliff dwellers’ apartment building, she found the confinement of herself and the children nerve wrecking.
How could she keep an eye on the children in their third-floor flat, as she ground out a week’s laundry in the dingy basement with an old broken down washing machine? Obviously then, she had more motive than her husband for putting aside cash for the building of a better day.
Yet we meet young wives who are still too immature for marriage.
One situation occurs to illustrate the lack of an effort on the part of the wife to be a real helpmate in this question of money. She visioned herself as something of a glamour girl. Wishing to have her pie and eat it at the same time, she wanted to continue her night clubbing along with her new married life.
Her main objective each day seemed to be to rest up for the night’s activities. As soon as dinner was finished, she was raring to go. Tonight it was the Panther Room; tomorrow it had to be the Leopard Room at some downtown hotel.
For some weeks the husband made a gallant effort to satiate her girlish whims in this direction of frivolous entertainment. Then he began to run down at the heels. His work was suffering. Moreover, he saw that he could not continue the squandering of money at this merry clip.
His first efforts to reason with her brought the rejoinder that he no longer was any fun. When he finally put his foot down and said that they had to stop the silly business, she became petulant. She could not be serious with him. She simply would not bother her pretty little head about finances. Did he not love her anymore?
Had she married a “tight wad?” Then why did he squirm at the cost of giving her a good time? A husband should like to show off his pretty wife elegantly dressed, well fed, and expensively entertained at some fashionable spot.
His exasperation at her immaturity drove them farther apart. Their eventual separation could no more be blamed on money problems than on the man in the moon. In fact, inasmuch as the word lunacy comes from the Latin word for moon, perhaps that man up there was her undoing.
She was incapable of real love. She did not have the slightest concept of seeking her happiness through her husband. The self-seeking type of wife could never be a helpmate and companion for her husband. If she had not fallen out with her husband over finances, it would have been something else.
Although this example of the glamour girl unwilling to settle down to marriage is drawn from real life, perhaps it is a little extreme.
The wives who are unfair with their husbands in money matters are more likely to manifest their selfishness by spending beyond their husband’s income on clothes, jewelry, and perfume. They were accustomed before marriage to expensive things. After marriage they do not want to sacrifice for their husband and children because they have not really learned to love.
“Home should not be just a place. Rather, it must be THE place. All else should be ‘outside.’ Home should be the center of activities and interests. It was built for births, courtship, marriage, and death. It is maintained so that children might grow, trained by precept and example – so that they will develop spiritually, mentally, and emotionally, just as they do physically.”
– Fr. Lawrence G. Lovasik. The Catholic Family Handbook: http://amzn.to/2ohW5nk (afflink)
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Why do we wear our best clothes on Sunday? What was the Holy Ghost Hole in medieval churches? How did a Belgian nun originate the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament? Where did the Halloween mask and the jack-o’-lantern come from?
Learn the answer to these questions, as well as the history behind our traditional celebration of Thanksgiving, in this gem of a book by Father Weiser.
Celebrate the Faith with your kids all year round!
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.
As most of us grow older and become less active physically, one of our greatest sources of entertainment is intelligent conversation. We derive satisfaction from the discussion of current events, of problems affecting our daily lives, and of sundry subjects of mutual interest.
Too little stress is given today in educational circles to the art of conversation. I believe that there are a number of reasons for this lack of interest on the part of educators. A group of high school girls at recess time usually presents the same picture. All are talking; none are listening. Promote talking? Teachers naturally lift an eyebrow if one suggests more conversation at their school. Yet ninety-nine per cent of all this talk is just chitchat….
Real conversation is an art. Like any other art it must be cultivated and practiced. The voice is an important phase of personality. Often the voice alone gives the cue to personality and character of a girl.A petulant, or frivolous, or frigid, or nagging young lady frequently rings a bell of warning in her voice to interested young men who have ears to hear as well as to catch dirt.
Likewise, a warmhearted and generous woman refined and cultured with a well developed personality can tell others of her accomplishments simply by speaking a few sentences. “The flute and the psaltery make a sweet melody, but a pleasant tongue is above them both.” Ecclesiaticus 40, 21.
Perhaps by this time some find their thoughts wandering from the work at hand–namely, self-appraisal and consideration of how to advance toward the goal of the ideal and desired wife. Maybe some are asking by now why they should strive to become this paragon of a girl.
Too many young men are too stupid anyway to see and appreciate in a girl all the qualities of the ideal wife. Isn’t a girl lucky for that! A girl can thank God that these imbeciles are not attracted to her. One of these cigarette sucking simpletons might rush her off her feet, and then see with what she would be stuck the rest of her life.
It does seem that neurotics attract each other for marriage. I suppose it is one more bit of evidence of the old proverb, “Birds of a feather flock together.” So the girls who develop their personalities and acquire the other features of the ideal wife have a much better chance of attracting their counterpart, the ideal husband. Again, let that all-interesting ideal husband take care of himself for a while. Let us get back to our “netting.”
Conversation is not a one way street. It connotes the ability to listen as well as to talk. Some people make a good audience. They stimulate conversation purely by the manner of their attention. They are alive, and thus they register. Because they are interested they are interesting. They bring out the best in others.
A clever girl can do wonders by the way she listens with animation to her boyfriend. The boyfriend or the husband is only human. There will be times when he is going to want to tell “all about it.” He is loquacious for a change. Then for heaven’s sake, let the wife give him the stage. Or, perhaps, he is taciturn and yearns for quiet. The wise wife senses these various moods of her husband.
I remember a case in which the wife hauled her husband down to the Chancery. Her major complaint was that her husband would not talk things over with her, would not confide in her. “He just never talks with me.” This poor woman talked “like a blue streak” for an hour and a half. A number of times I tried to break in. At each failure I got a knowing look from the husband as much as if to say, “Know how you feel. For years I’ve been trying to get a word in edgewise.”
There is a theory of counseling based on letting the estranged husband and wife talk themselves into their own solution of the problems vexing their marital happiness. There are enthusiasts of this school of thought who maintain that they can solve any case by just letting them talk.
I wish they had been in on the case just mentioned. I finally had to run from her one day later on, when she came down alone to see me. I could not take any more than two hours of it. I imagine that she is still talking, whether at her husband or not I do not know. How he could stand it, I do not know either.
While at school a girl should “make hay while the sun shines.” It is then that she can acquire and develop ability at conversation. As she learns to swim, to play tennis, to figure skate, and to sing, she can talk with interest and intelligence about these things.
If she knows nothing about music, a girl will have to be pretty clever to be able to “get away with” talking about music. On the other hand, as she develops her personality by learning to do various things, she should acquire facility in conversing about these things.
If she reads good literature, she opens another tremendous potential for conversation. True, she must practice, and school affords that opportunity not only in the classroom, but even during moments of recreation. Practice on your girl friends? Why not? They do on you!
Friends have been defined as those between whom there need not be conversation. Husband and wife can spend a quiet evening at home with a minimum of conversation and be happy and content.
They are aware of each other’s presence, and that is enough. Yet intelligent conversation will add immeasurably to their lives. A dumb Dora may have her moments; but, if she cannot formulate two consecutive and coherent sentences, let us all pray for strength for that husband of hers.
You and I have the wonderful opportunity to leave behind a legacy – one of care and concern, one that reaches out to others, one of loveliness and holiness. Be a woman who cares about the kind of legacy you leave when you are called home. Follow God’s will in your life. Pattern your life after Our Lady and simply pass it on to those you come in contact with each day.
Excellent sermon! Father gives us tips on growing in virtue to make this a great Lent. How can we conquer vices & grow virtue?
March ~ Printable Traditional Catholic Daily Planner ~ Meal Menu/Homeschool Page ~ Daily Gratitude/Spiritual Checklist/Daily Goals!
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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.<P> This book sold over a quarter of a million copies shortly after its publication in 1951, and it was read by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. It is a practical manual. It should be read by every woman considering entering the matrimonial state and also by those women who are already married.
We all have it . . . the desire, the longing for love. God meant for marriage to be beautiful, resilient . . . lovely, but this broken world can make it hard sometimes. 100 Ways to Love is a practical guide to find and live in the rich, fulfilling marriage God intended for husbands and wives. You can get beyond just living in the minimum of your relationship. 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.
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A girl’s parish church affords another opportunity for personality growth. Frequently I have heard girls say that they do not attend the young people’s club of their church. They went to it a few times, but did not “get anything out of” the club.
How often I have heard that criticism. I always wonder what they expected to “get out of” the sodality or young people’s group. Was the young assistant to put on a three ring circus for their entertainment, while they sat like a cabbage in a movie house?
Was a prodigy similar to Fr. Malachy’s miracle to be brought off? Or did they even expect a more stupendous work: the pastor himself spinning through the hall like a whirling dervish spraying out twenty dollar gold coins? Hardly. Who has seen gold coins for ever so long?
These girls, disappointed in the parish group of young people, are always looking for what they can get out of things. It never enters their imagination that they might contribute to things.
Obviously, girls with this attitude of sitting back and waiting for life to come to them will go away empty handed from any project. If they would enter the parish group with the idea of giving themselves to its success, in the long run they would be the ones to gain.
Self-seekers always end up holding the bag–an empty one. Those who give of themselves carry off the prizes.
One of these rewards is growth in personality. Girls who give their time, energy, and imagination to the parish group cannot fail to promote their personality, albeit unconsciously.
A stranger in a big city gets lost in some side street. He asks directions to his hotel. Well, your hotel is down this street, then to the left two blocks then to the right a block. No, that’s a dead end street. It runs into the railroad yards.
Let’s try it this way. Take this street we are on till you come to the stop sign. Then turn left for three blocks. Then take a right turn till you hit that side street running diagonally. No, by golly, that takes you to the bank of the river. Say, stranger, I don’t think that you can get to your hotel from here!
This story often comes to my mind when I am dealing with a marriage all washed up because the wife was a total loss in personality. Where do they go from here? How are they going to get back to a happy marriage from here? Marriage is a contract, in which the parties give as well as receive. This poor creature seems to have nothing to give.
“He married me. We have children. It’s his moral obligation to stay with me as my husband.”
Yes–it is his duty, but not many marriages endure on moral obligations. Husband and wife came together because they were attracted to each other and learned to love each other. This love includes a physical, intellectual, and spiritual attraction.
The moral obligation to which our imaginary wife is appealing will steady a marriage and carry it through a crisis here and there: but happy, successful marriages are not built on moral obligations.
Too many failures have appealed to moral obligations but have done little to merit a contented and loving husband.
Many of these appeals to the moral law do not have the ring of sincerity, because the authors of them paid little or no attention to the moral law before the estrangement.
For years they threw stones at the policeman. Now they are screaming for his help. Besides, the policeman is no solution anyway. Their clamor for him is totally in vain.
Anybody can make serious mistakes. The saints did. The ideal wife with personality may make a serious mistake and thereby bring about a temporary alienation of her husband.
If she possesses a well-developed personality, the conflict generally will be resolved to mutual satisfaction.
Of course, I am supposing that the husband is not a basket case and that he has the capacity of forgiveness and will say the Our Father from time to time with realization of what he is saying.
Personality development is a most interesting process which can go on till the grave. We are born with certain temperaments. We have no control over whether we are to live with a choleric or melancholic temperament, for example.
Seldom are these temperaments ever changed. Yet, they may be modified. We may hold in check and even subdue the bad aspects of our particular temperament. Likewise, the good features may be developed and encouraged in our daily lives.
In some quarters there is the extreme opinion that we are pretty much the victims of our temperament and the first few years of our lives. By the time we are six or seven it is fairly well determined what sort of lives we shall live.
At this early age, so we are told, it has already been determined whether we shall be a shining light or a public nuisance. The only contingency is whether the stage for us will turn out to be Paducah or Keokuk.
The only trouble with this theory is that it runs head on into the teachings of Christ, nineteen centuries of Christian living, and our own personal experiences. And that is some collision.
Unless we can develop and improve our characters and personalities, unless, with God’s help, we are the master of our destiny, Christ should never have given the sermon on the Mount.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” It seems to be natural for little children to be selfish and greedy–anything but poor in spirit. Poverty of spirit must be acquired with effort.
St. Francis Xavier’s youth had little in it to distinguish him from others. Yet he learned to live the beatitude of poverty of spirit to the extent of giving himself into slavery, that he might reach the
China coast and Christianize the natives.
St. Francis changed his whole way of life, his whole personality because he changed his whole attitude of life and program of activity.
Teachers certainly have been struck by evidences of personality growth and improvement. Many a little first year high school bunny wakes up and becomes a charming and personable lady ten years later.
When a girl is born into this life, her personality and character might be likened to a solid piece of gold of goblet shape and size.
Thus, as a baby, the solid goblet cannot hold a single drop of the joy of living.
Should the baby grow into childhood and womanhood with only physical development, this abnormality would eliminate the poor creature from normal participation in life.
Without growth in intelligence and personality and character she would have to be cared for as a little baby all the days of her life. Her golden goblet remains solid and untouched as it was at birth. However, physical, mental and spiritual development usually goes on apace.
As the child begins to contribute consciously to the happiness of her parents by being affectionate and helpful, she begins to grind out her goblet.
As she learns of God and her own purpose in existing, as she grows in the virtues and subdues the selfish instincts of childhood, real progress is apparent in the goblet.
It now approaches the appearance of a hollow cup. During adolescence and full-blown womanhood the capacity of the goblet increases in direct relation to the development of her personality.
Because she has grown in personality, her capacity for living has increased. Her golden goblet has become so delicate that it is almost translucent.
Her cup is full to overflowing with the joy of life. And her greatest happiness comes from being able to share her cup of happiness with the man she loves, the husband of the desired wife.
“Let others ask for what they will: health, riches, worldly advantages; I come to ask you, O Mary, for those things which you yourself desire for me and which are very dear to your heart. O Mary, you who are the holiest of all creatures, make me holy. You lack neither love nor power; you can and you will obtain everything for me. Only my failure to have recourse to you and my want of confidence in your aid can prevent me from receiving your favors” (St. Alphonsus).
New! The Lenten Way of the Cross Picturesque and Prayer-Filled Cards with Handcrafted Wooden Card Holder ~ Family/Children Activity!
Help make Lent more meaningful for you and your family with the Lenten Way of the Cross Cards!
Follow along with your family and prepare your hearts for the Passion and Resurrection of Our Lord each year at Lent and Easter using these special picturesque and prayer-filled cards to help keep your mind and heart focused each day There are 41 cards in total.
Keep the cards in a visible spot in your home as a reminder to you and your children.
Comes with the handmade wooden card holder. Cards are approximately 7″ X 4 1/2″. (The wooden card holder is made with the wood from 100 year old pews that were made by boys in a Catholic School in the 1800’s! *While supplies last on this one).
You can look up more details on the Lenten Way of the Cross here.
Lenten Bundle!
This journal will lay out some simple activities in which your children will be doing their sacrifices and will have a tangible means of “counting” them for Jesus. You, Mom, will have a place to put a check mark if that the activity is remembered and completed for the day. This journal also includes a place for you to check off whether you are fulfilling your own personal resolutions…your Spiritual Reading, your Family Rosary, etc.
“Sooner or later a man’s habitual thoughts come out in his life and character….”
Lovely short anecdotes from the lives of the Saints, showing us in a warm, encouraging and inspiring way the importance of prayer and the ease with which we can all derive great benefits therefrom, without yet being Saints ourselves. Covers the meaning of the basic Catholic prayers; plus, the Mysteries of the Rosary and the wonders of the Mass. Written for all and all should read it. (Click on photo for more details.)
A beautiful little book “all about the Holy Ghost,” including prayers to Him. Shows He really and truly dwells in every soul that is in the state of grace. He aids all Christians without exception, if only we will ask His help. Enlightening and encouraging!
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Whatever has been said of truth holds good for all the other virtues. Honesty, humility, kindness of manner, and generosity in judging others, her husband included — these and all the other virtues found in the truly religious wife make her a desirable companion for life.
How many wives have diminished their lovableness in the eyes of their husbands by judging them rashly. Generosity is an attractive quality of soul. All gravitate toward a person generous in her opinions and judgments of others.
I remember a wife who guaranteed the everlasting love and devotion of her husband by being kind and generous in judging him. Although this husband foolishly, yet innocently enough, allowed a series of circumstances to arise which seemed on the surface to implicate him with another woman, he was entirely innocent of any wrong.
There was plenty to arouse the suspicions of any wife. The wife of our story did not rashly judge him. She never mentioned the episode. On the contrary she went out of her way to show her husband her complete confidence and love.
When he told her the whole story and asked her if she was not worried she told him, as her actions already had indicated, that she trusted and loved him and could never stand in rash judgment over him. She did not know all the facts and was confident that there was an explanation.
This wife merited by her bigness of soul the admiration, fidelity, and love of her husband. The religious wife is a wife desired because she merits the love of her husband. She deserves and will have his love.
Because she remains close to God, the source of all true love, because, in other words, she is religious and virtuous, she remains lovable and desired by her husband. “A virtuous woman rejoiceth her husband, and shall fulfill the years of his life in peace.” Ecclus. 26, 2.
Christ did not wish His work of redemption to be a single historic act dead and past. In many ways He has perpetuated Himself down through the centuries. He wished to remain among the people of the world until the end of time.
To point out and explain all the ways in which He has accomplished this desire would carry us too far afield for the purpose of this chapter. Suffice it to say that Christ still remains in the world for those who want Him.
Between Himself and His followers there is a union of love all the more real because it is spiritual. To ever remind us of this union of love He chose the love of man and wife as a symbol and sign.
There is an old saying that all the world loves a lover. The love of a bridal couple is always new and exciting.
In other words, Christ wished the visible union of man and wife in love to keep the world aware of the invisible union between His followers and Himself.
Obviously Christ wished the love of husband and wife to be a sacred thing. To effect this He raised the natural contract of marriage to the dignity of a sacrament for His baptized followers.
Marriage is not all moonlight and roses. To enable husband and wife to meet all the manifold problems and difficulties of married life Christ gives them His help for all their married lives.
They need and have His help to manifest to the world through their love of each other the love which Christ and His followers have for each other.
Because the ideal wife is religious she realizes the sacred character of her marriage and treasures it as her most precious possession.
Although each must work out her eternal happiness alone in the innermost recesses of her soul, yet to the wife God has given many helps in the order of nature as well as in the supernatural sphere.
The greatest of these aids is her husband and the sacrament of matrimony administered to her by him. He brings love and companionship and warmth of life to help bridge the long nights and days of self-insufficiency.
Realizing what a gift from God her husband is to her, the ideal wife clings to him in appreciation. To a greater extent than the average wife ever takes time to fathom, he is her means of salvation. Divorced from him, particularly in the earliest years of her life, she is a rudderless ship on the cruel sea of life.
The ideal wife has a sense of the right order of things. This is religion in the right sense of the word. Just as she understands her connection with God as creature to Creator, she also realizes the proper relation between herself and her husband.
The religious wife knows and accepts the words of St. Paul on obedience. These words of the Apostle are found in some marriage ceremonies. We quote them at length because no one has ever given clearer expression with more authority to the right order between man and wife. “Let wives be subject to their husbands as to the Lord; because a husband is head of the wife, just as Christ is head of the Church, being Himself savior of the body. But just as the Church is subject to Christ, so also let wives be to their husbands in all things. Husbands love your wives, just as Christ also loved the Church, and delivered Himself up for her….”
“Do wives actually have to obey their husbands?” is a sure fire question from some lady in any panel discussion on marriage. I usually try to soften the blow by remarking that any man who enters marriage under the delusion of ordering his wife around is in for a sad awakening.
It goes without saying that there are many equalities between man and wife. Both are human beings. Both have souls to save with inalienable rights.
Yet there must be a head for the home. The husband is it. No wife in her right mind will try to “wear the pants.” By trying to do so she forfeits the most charming and irresistible aspect of her femininity, her surrender and submission.
Likewise, she hardly succeeds in making herself a man, try as she may. She ends up being neither flesh nor fish.
Recently the newspapers carried a decision of the supreme court of an Eastern State that a woman worker has no redress against a male worker who swears at her. The court felt that, seeing that women had won equal rights and responsibilities with men workers in the factories, they must accept the same hazards–to wit, being sworn at.
In a Christian society women need not worry about acquiring “equalities” with men. They are head and shoulders above men– way up on pedestals where they belong. It is the wild eyed feminist who has won for her sex the dubious privilege of being sworn at.
An acquaintance of mine many years ago got himself so involved in his personal affairs that he decided to move downstate and begin all over. He was a physician.
His wife resented leaving the city for a small town. She felt that there she would waste the sweetness of her social charms on the desert air. She began her exile–so she considered it–in a petulant spirit soon degenerating into a nagging of her husband to return to the city.
She had no concept of her obligation of obedience to go wherever her husband knew that he could make a living and a home for themselves. Finally she left him with the ultimatum that, if he still wanted her, he would find her back at their old home in the city. Because the doctor was still mentally confused over his past difficulties and quite lacking in confidence in himself and because he was very much attached to his wife, he shortly followed her back to the city.
The reunion was none too promising for their future for he resented her domination over him and her failure to be a real helpmate.
Her struggle for dominance, and his anguish continued until the wife found him one day in the garage dead of monoxide gas.
The forlorn picture of this wife standing at the grave alone without children and with only the memory of her fatal attempt to lead her husband around by the nose–this melancholy picture remains with me.
“One of the first essential elements in a wife is faithfulness, in the largest sense. The heart of her husband safely trusts in her. Perfect confidence is the basis of all true affection. A shadow of doubt destroys the peace of married life. A true wife, by her character and by her conduct, proves herself worthy of her husband’s trust. He has confidence in her affection; he knows that her heart is unalterably true to him.” -.J.R.Miller
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Mrs. Brown walked through the vestibule of St. Luke’s and out into the evening mist with a handkerchief held to her nose. She looked to the little group of women standing under the street light.
Mrs. Julia Thup, the Brownie leader of Troop Sixteen, surely must have been to services. It was a pity if she had not been. The Reverend Towne talked with glowing terms about public spirited citizens who left their homes and gave unstintingly of themselves.
Yes, mused Mrs. Brown, Julie was an asset to the community. Having only one child herself, a delightful little Brownie, she could be a sort of mother by proxy to all the girls making up Troop Sixteen.
Mrs. Thup did not believe a mother should have too many children. Else how could she be active in community affairs?
Julia was emphatic on this score. Mrs. Brown could remember how having her little girl almost forced Julia to give up her work with the Orphans of the Storm, the anti-cruelty to animals society.
There were few women with the force of character of Julia. If it had not been for her Mrs. Brown was sure that she never would have given two thoughts to the suffering little animals. In fact, just that afternoon she did not feel too kindly about Snap, the next door neighbor’s poodle. Snap barked incessantly all afternoon and robbed her of several hours sleep. As she walked up to the group of ladies, her cold seemed to go before her and introduce its victim.
“Why Mrs. Brown,” exclaimed Mrs. Thup, “What are you doing out on a night like this with such a heavy cold?”
Now wasn’t that just like her kind friend, Julia. Mrs. Brown tried hard to reply with a look of fierce heroism that said she would sidestep three weeks’ ironing, if necessary, to come to church services. Her reputation of being a religious and church-going woman would not suffer tonight, thanks to Julia.
Julia deserved some reward for pointing out to the other less discerning ladies what suffering the evening attendance at church had caused Mrs. Brown. As they left the front of St. Luke’s to walk each other home, Mrs. Brown began to tell Julia something perfectly awful. Julia was a Brownie leader and she should know.
Besides, the information would help her better understand little Ginger, who was a Brownie. Of course, Julia was not to whisper a word of these scandalous goings on to a soul.
Could Julia ever believe that Ginger’s father and mother were seen- – – ? Mr. Brown wanted to take her to one of those places some years ago. The very idea! Why, she was furious, and gave him a tongue lashing he would never forget.
Mr. Brown, as Muriel was sorry to say Julia must know, was not a churchgoing man. It was her cross, as the Rev. Towne had consoled her. She tried to make up for him.
“And you do such a wonderful job. Muriel.”
“Thanks, Julia, you know how much that means to me.”
The two friends parted company, and Mrs. Brown stalked into her home. It was not a very happy home, nor a very tidy one tither.
Muriel did not get around to the house work or the ironing that day. She rested for the sake of her cold. Since Mr. Brown was not a church-going person and since Mrs. Brown was one with a vengeance, it was crystal clear to Mrs. Brown where the fault lay for their shabby marriage.
Mr. Brown got more than his share of good example. He was always right up to his ears in it. He could never rely on a clean, ironed shirt, but he could ever depend on Muriel’s giving him the best advice about going to church.
If Mr. Brown looked askance at some old friends returning to the table from the refrigerator by way of the pot on the stove, he was informed of how the Rev. Towne suffered in his early missionary days. His food was most primitive and meager.
Mr. Brown never seemed to be comforted by reference to the past austerities of the Rev. Towne. The present trials and tribulations of his own appeared more real and pressing.
Once, however, he was so overcome with emotion concerning his wife’s recital of the fearful missionland experiences that he pitched the pot of “old friends” out the kitchen window.
He had no intention of hitting Snap next door. Yet he could not convince the imbeciles who belonged to Snap of his innocence. They, being regular members, felt that the Anti-Cruelty to Animals Society of dowagers should come into the case.
Julia, living down the block, was the nearest Field Representative and was contacted quickly by the central office. Her appearance at the Brown threshold caused strong emotional reactions in both of the Browns.
Mr. Brown slammed the door in her face with a house rattling crash, which did not quite drown out his imprecation. Mrs. Brown fell away into what was the nearest thing to a faint she could manage. Her recovery from this episode was slow. It was some time before she ventured to show her face at St. Luke’s. What would Julia and the rest think?
Only the irreligious would call Mrs. Brown religious. We doubt that they would consider her an ideal wife. Thus at the outset it behooves us to understand that affiliation with and even regular attendance at church in itself does not necessarily bring into being the virtue of religion, at least not in the sense in which it should be exercised by the ideal wife.
Granted that it is a step in the right direction, there are too many Muriel Browns around for any church-going wife to be complacent. No wife can assume that she is an ideal wife because she goes to church. It does happen that she can be a pillar of the church and a pillory of grief for her husband.
The word “religious” is used here in its true etymological sense.
The Latin word “ligare” means to bind, to tie, to connect something with something. The “re” signifies “back.” Thus the English word, really a transliteration of the Latin word means a binding of the creature back to its Creator.
When the creature acknowledges its Creator and translates this knowledge into its daily life, we say that person is religious. In other words, when a person recognizes her real worth as an image of God and her ultimate destiny in a union of love with Him, she is said to be religious.
For our purpose we use the word “religious” in this sense and shun any secondary meaning of the word, any false concepts of the word amounting sometimes to a very travesty on true religion.
The little Penny Catechism told us that we are images of God, made after His own likeness. We were created in closer likeness to Him than any other creature in the world because He desired us to love Him and be loved by Him.
No one can love unless she possess intelligence to know and free will to choose. Because of these powers of God Himself, we are His children and closer to Him than a child is to its human mother.
A human being is a most lovable being because she is an image of God. The goodness and lovableness of God shines through her.
When a young man becomes aware of this wonderful and exciting fact, he has already fallen in love with her. He has rubbed elbows with thousands of other images of God during his life, but for some mysterious reasons she disclosed to him a preview of and glimpse of God. She became for him an image of God.
Of course, she was this all the time. No one else noticed it. At first he did not either. Then the lightning struck. He was in love. He had found the Ideal Woman of all the dreams of his life, and he was content.
Others may be blind and unable to see the image of God in her. To him has been given the happy privilege of seeing what others cannot see. “The beauty of a woman cheereth the countenance of her husband, and a man desireth nothing more.” Ecclus. 36, 24.
How often have we heard the question of how John could possibly have married the girl he did. She was a rather plain girl, perhaps even a little bit on the homely side. As frequently as not people who were perplexed at John’s choice admitted that the couple was deeply in love.
John thought that the sun rose and set on his wife. They were happy and made an ideal husband and wife. The reason is simple. They saw the goodness of God in each other. They wanted this goodness above all else in life. They were in love.
It is thus obvious that no young man falls in love with a girl because of the evil in her life. He may fall in love with her in spite of evil or in ignorance of it but never because of it. He never is really in love with her, unless he sees that she is an image of God.
Certainly he may become physically attracted and infatuated and marry her on this basis. Though this may lead to love, still it is not genuine love.
Love is something spiritual and must have reference to God. It has repercussions in the physical order of our natures, but of its essence it transcends the biological.
Human love could never exist but for God. It will never endure, if God is shut out of the picture. In the words of the poet, “All things betray thee who betrayest Me.”
Sooner or later love will betray the wife who betrays God, for the simple reason that devoid of God she has pitifully little wherewith to command love.
A person, no matter how evil she becomes, always remains an image of God. But, if she should allow evil in any form: dishonesty, lying and deceit, racial or nationalistic hatreds, gluttony and sloth to come into her life and practically obscure the beautiful image she is or could be for her husband, who could be attracted to her, who could love her?
Young people often ask whether true love can ever die. They seem to expect the answer in the negative. The sad fact is that it happens every day.
Some women think that they can dispense with the precepts and counsels of their youth. As children they learned from their parents and from religious instruction that they could never be happy in sin.
Lying, they were told, would hurt them much more than anyone else whom they might deceive. No lie could be justified, even if it would spare the whole world its aches and pains.
Somewhere along the line in their lives they felt that this was impractical. Life was a matter of “dog eat dog”. A lie here and there made things much easier.
I wonder how many marriages I have seen ruined by the untruthfulness of a wife. These lying creatures, caught in the mesh of their vice, had to learn the hard way the wisdom of their youthful religious training. Truth was lightly regarded, if not condemned. They felt, apparently, that as long as they did not kill or steal they were doing all right. That the truth is worth living and dying for never entered their minds.
Cases of lost love and respect because of a lying wife crowd in upon my memory. These husbands loved their wives with sufficient love at least to marry them. With the years this love normally would have deepened had they been able to continue seeing the image of God which had originally attracted them. Soon after marriage the true worth of these lying wives disclosed itself.
Instead of seeing in their wives the beauty of God these men saw the deceit of the devil. Instead of the God of truth they saw the father of lies. Is it any wonder that they were repelled and came to the parting of the ways?
Without truth there can be no trust, and without trust there can be no love. The lying wife so often learns only through bitter experience in her remorse that by lying she flees from God, who is truth.
She should also know that by separating herself from God she is in the greatest danger of separating herself from everything worthwhile, her husband included.
“Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me.
Strange, piteous, futile thing . . .
And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited–
Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worth of any love thou art!”
Francis Thompson did not write these lines about lying wives. Yet, any woman careless of the truth could well ponder them. No one can expect to merit human love by lying. Although no woman becomes a desired wife by the possession of only the virtue of truth, yet this virtue is an essential part of the picture of the ideal wife. Without it all her other accomplishments and attributes may be wasted.
“And you, too, must stand by your convictions at the cost of things you love. An ideal is worth little if it is not worth wholehearted, honest effort. Nothing is more pitiful than a woman whose mind admires purity and right, yet whose will is too weak to choose them and whose life is blighted by sin and mire about her. Be true, be noble, aim high, and God will give you strength to keep your ideals.” – Mabel Hale, Beautiful Girlhood http://amzn.to/2ucQAF0 (afflink)
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Webster’s Dictionary has this to say about patience. Patience is “uncomplaining endurance of wrongs or misfortunes.” Patience “denotes self-possession, especially under suffering or provocation.” It also suggests “quiet waiting for what is expected” or persistence in what has been begun. Forbearance, leniency, and sufferance are given as synonyms.
Patience is a quality of maturity. Little children are not noted for “uncomplaining endurance of wrongs.” Mother would begin looking for the thermometer should she notice anything resembling “quiet waiting for what is expected.” It takes a bit of living and dodging of the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” before people get enough sense to value patience.
Patience connotes a “self-possession, especially under suffering or provocation,” and it brings to one a quiet confidence. The patient wife is master of her own soul. She, and not every imp to come flying into her mind, is in charge of her own fort.
Since no one can be truly successful without patience, it should be expected that the possession of the virtue is a requisite for every desired wife.
Indeed, no vocation or profession in life requires patience more than that of husband and wife.
The first reason for this that they live in such proximity to each other. They rub elbows day in and day out. There is bound to be a little chafing here and there. Among saints there would be. Patience is the soothing oil preventing the irritations from becoming running sores.
Some years ago I was faced with the necessity of working up a talk on the ideal wife. Naturally, I was open for suggestions, particularly from a few ideal wives whose friendship I highly prize.
One evening, as I visited the home of one of these friends, I mentioned the task with which I was confronted.
“Mary, if you had to give an hour talk on the ideal wife to high school seniors or to a woman’s club, what would you discuss?”
Here was the voice of experience talking. I was not asking any air scout how to fly that Constellation. The senior pilot of the airlines was briefing me now. I was not asking any camp fire girl how to whip up that batter of soda biscuit mix. Grandma herself was looking over her glasses at me.
I think that it is of interest to point out here that, although she did not indicate that she considered patience the most important quality of the desired wife, she unhesitatingly suggested it first.
Not only did she mention patience first, but she also explained what she meant by patience in the wife.
Notice that the discussion deals with the patience required of the wife, not of the mother in her relations with her children.
A woman is first the wife of her husband before she is the mother of his children. Later I hope to say a few words concerning the twofold role which the woman must play.
At present I just want to make it clear that Mary is no rattle brain. She was on the ball and stayed there. She was explaining what she meant by the patience in the wife and her dealings with her husband.
Marriage is not a fifty-fifty proposition. (This of course, is Mary talking through my memory.) The wife who enters marriage with the misconception that it is, has failure lurking just around the corner. Often she will think that she is giving her fifty per cent. As a matter of fact, it is only fifteen or twenty per cent. On many other occasions the husband unconsciously is demanding ninety per cent. The fifty per cent proffered falls miserably short. The result is two people at loggerheads. A fight begins and love takes a beating, if it is not turned out-of-doors.
The understanding, the sympathy, and the patience required for happy living cannot be measured out. The stupid expression “marriage is a fifty-fifty deal” implies yardsticks, tape measures, half cups, full tablespoons, and the like.
Love has nothing to do with these things–will not be fenced in by them, for love partakes of the very limitlessness of God.
A wife’s parsimonious measuring out of her imagined fifty per cent produces many serious fights.
She wins these fights too and loses her husband.
Let us illustrate the above by concrete examples.
The wife was getting supper ready. John was fighting the traffic on his way home from work. She was humming softly as she busied herself contentedly about the kitchen. He was muttering loudly the red light blues. She felt fine. He was half sick and out of sorts. Things had not been going well at work. He was upset and unwittingly looking for a fight.
As he entered the house and gave Mary a little hug and kiss, she noticed that he looked tense and jumpy. A few minutes later she could hear him scolding one of the children. The storm warnings should have been flying by now. They had better steer clear of him tonight.
Before the family was called to the supper table, Mary had been fully on guard. Unless she was very mistaken her husband was going to demand much more than fifty per cent somewhere along the evening. So the measuring devices, the half cups and full tablespoons were behind her for this evening.
The meal was already prepared. She would not use them on her husband. She would not measure out her patience and understanding. Her husband was definitely off color this evening. She would give him her all. No matter what he said, she would pass it off.
The supper got off to as good a start as could have been expected with the cloud hanging over the table. Soon one of the children massacred table etiquette in such manner as to cause Emily Post to wince.
Before her husband could draw in sufficient breath to let out a blast at the culprit, she quickly took the wind out of his sail by firmly correcting the child. Before the dessert appeared, she took in her stride a caustic remark about the quality of the pot roast and a criticism leveled at her through one of her children.
Mary was nobody’s dish rag. She had a lot of fire and spirit. She could have stood up to him that night, “let him have it,” and have had a fight which she might have won, or, at least in which she would have held her own. But, did anyone ever win a fight of this kind?
This ideal wife had made up her mind to carry her husband through the evening, come what might. He was not himself.
Tomorrow would be another day. If he had been physically sick in bed and needed her care, would she have given only fifty per cent? Of course not. She would have nursed and lavished upon him all the warmth of her nature.
Well, he was sick that night–sick in mind and spirit. He needed her intelligent, loving and patient consideration. She would have considered herself a very shallow person to have reacted otherwise. She was in love with her husband that night too, unreasonable though he was.
A few weeks later the tables were turned. She was the one who was at wits end with herself. She started the day with a headache and things went from bad to worse. It was a rainy day, and for some unfathomable reason the school shut its doors on the children.
They were under her feet all day. Often she had to act as referee in their squabbles. As the afternoon wore on toward supper time, she was becoming conditioned for more adult opposition.
An unsuspecting husband made his entry. He was back to his little castle in the suburb with roses round the door (metaphorically speaking) and babies on the floor (literally speaking).
During the meal Mary “blew her top” about something. Oh yes, the car did not start that afternoon. The battery or something must have been dead. Some junk! It was time they had a new car.
So it was a junk, was it? John could think of the days of work it had taken to buy that old bus a few years previous. It was still a good car. What did women know about cars anyway? There ought to have been a law against women ever—-.
There is no future in this kind of thought, so John quickly banished the hideous little devil from his mind. Mary was worked up tonight. He would have to be cautious. Did he defend his car against his wife? John was a little too sharp for that.
He jumped on the band wagon and lambasted the car too. Yes. We would have to do something about that nuisance. He felt like going out then and burning it up. He knew that by the time they got to the dishes, she would have forgotten all about the car.
Mary purred through the rest of the meal contentedly with that wonderful feeling that her husband was all for her. Together they stood against the whole world.
Suppose that John had been a little thick between the ears and that he took exceptions to her remarks about the car and defended the car against his wife. A fight would have ensued. Feelings would have been hurt. And there was danger that their tempers would have swept them on to the name calling stage. Once this has been reached, real harm frequently has been done to a marriage.
Mary finished her explanation of what she meant by patience by saying that she and her husband had never had a fight in the twelve years of married life. Then she added what I thought was the epitome of her whole conversation by saying that she and her husband did not intend to have any fights.
This determination not to fight was indicative of their intelligence and maturity. Surely it was one of the factors contributing to the happy stability of their marriage.
This couple has had arguments and disagreements I believe that I have been in on a few warm ones. An argument is not a fight.
People with minds of their own will not always see eye to eye on every phase of their daily lives. Viewpoints will vary and disagreements will result even as to whether or not junior should have a crew haircut. But let us not make junior a ward of the divorce court because husband and wife cannot agree on the proper length of junior’s hair. After all, it is not that important.
Arguments and disagreements degenerate into fights, when ill-feeling, name-calling and bitterness come into the picture. The ideal wife, fortified with the virtue of patience, sets her face against such loss of harmony. Whatever be the cost she wisely realizes that her effort at peace is worth the price.
No good comes from fights in married life. I have been asked whether it is not a good idea for husband and wife to have a fight once in a while. The air is thus cleared. The very young, theorizing about this, often add that it is so sweet when they make up. In connection with this question one inquirer quoted Bishop Fulton Sheen as saying that a couple never really knows how much they love each other until they have made up after their first fight.
Nothing was said about how many found out how little they loved each other and never made up.
It is very true that sometimes good comes out of evil. Yet, how insane it is to seek or even permit avoidable evil, on the chance some good might come of it.
Fights among married people are evil things and bring untold misery into lives. So many broken marriages have come before me in which there was no third party, no drinking, no in-law trouble, no major difficulty. They just fought. So often people are less mature than their children, whom they have brought into the world to endure their bad tempers.
Fights begin between human beings because of pride. We have a will of our own. When we do not get our way pride suffers. Like children we want to fight the opposition to our will. So far we have no control of our reactions. We are made this way.
If we are adults, however, we have learned by bitter experience that our pride is the surest destroyer of happiness and love. Unless we are psycho-masochists, we crush our insurgent pride and prevent ourselves the stupid and dubious pleasure of hurting the one who has stung our pride.
Once a fight has begun between man and wife it is clear that one or the other must win the struggle against pride. One or the other must curb the desire to win the empty victory.
If the wife makes the first effort at reconciliation, her humility will make it difficult for the husband to nurse his pride. Pride cannot face up to humility. It is shamed out of existence.
Even when husband and wife make up completely after a fight, a fight is still unfortunate. Fights leave scars. The wound heals, but there ever remains a scar in the mind.
I have had many estranged married people tell me that their partners did this or that to them twenty-five or thirty years ago. Happy years had intervened between the fight and the present estrangement. But they could not forget, even if they had forgiven.
The wife desired meditates deeply on the hatefulness of fighting.
She has made up her mind to suffer anything rather than fight and thus wound her husband. Remember that there is always the danger that we begin to hate whom we hurt for the same reason that we begin to love whom we help.
“Lord, Help me to be a good wife. I fully realize that I don’t have what it takes to be one without Your help. Take my selfishness, impatience, and irritability and turn them into kindness, long-suffering, and the willingness to bear all things. Take my old emotional habits, mindsets, automatic reactions, rude assumptions, and self-protective stance, and make me patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. Take the hardness of my heart and break down the walls with Your battering ram of revelation. Give me a new heart and work in me Your love, peace, and joy. I am not able to rise above who I am at this moment. Only You can transform me.”
Do you want an idea for a simple Christmas activity? Join Angelo for a night of fun building a simple Christmas nativity scene with his nieces and nephews…
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Author Mary Reed Newland here draws on her own experiences as the mother of seven to show how the classic Christian principles of sanctity can be translated into terms easily applied to children even to the very young.
Because it’s rooted in experience, not in theory, nothing that Mrs. Newland suggests is impossible or extraordinary. In fact, as you reflect on your experiences with your own children, you’ll quickly agree that hers is an excellent commonsense approach to raising good Catholic children.
Fr. Lawrence Lovasik, the renowned author of The Hidden Power of Kindness, gives faithful Catholics all the essential ingredients of a stable and loving Catholic marriage and family — ingredients that are in danger of being lost in our turbulent age.
Using Scripture and Church teachings in an easy-to-follow, step-by-step format, Fr. Lovasik helps you understand the proper role of the Catholic father and mother and the blessings of family. He shows you how you can secure happiness in marriage, develop the virtues necessary for a successful marriage, raise children in a truly Catholic way, and much more.
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Although sex is an important aspect of marriage, yet it is really a small part. Especially is this true in the marriages where all is well as regards sex. The companionship of marriage is what brings the real fullness of peace and contentment to a couple. And after all, peace and contentment are the real day in and day out ingredients of happiness.
The full flaming moments of ecstasy of love, rocketing a soul into the very presence of God, are few and far between for the average mortal. These moments are cherished as a glimpse of eternal things to come. Now we have not even the capacity to long endure them.
A human being is not very self-sufficient. A person needs others to fill the emptiness of his own being. Husband and wife fill this need for each other. They complement each other in this manner much more even than they do in any physical sense.
There is something beautiful about the companionship of man and wife as it bridges the years. Especially is this true for those who have kept something of the chivalry of the first days of their love.
Familiarity does not have to breed contempt. Perhaps it does among savages. The natural, easy familiarity between man and wife, springing from their daily companionship can easily remain, and does in very many instances, a fine influence in their lives.
All wives appreciate the little courtesies of respect and esteem from their husbands. Some do nothing to promote this attitude on the part of their husbands. A lady will receive attention and courtesy if she merits it, and if she is gracious enough to acknowledge the efforts of the male.
By nature a man has a deep-seated sense of respect, of chivalry for the lady. It does something for him to manifest this feeling. It helps to make him a better man.
At an early age, I was somewhat disillusioned about the female in this matter of chivalry. During high school years I rode the “E-l” in Chicago during the morning rush hour.
I shall never forget my first efforts to be courteous with the female passengers. I was almost trampled to death. It was impossible to show these women any deference. They had become callous. For them life was a matter of dog eat dog. They shoved and gouged and grabbed any preference before a man could offer it to them.
A man on the “E-l” during the rush hour had about as much opportunity to be chivalrous as a polite hog at a trough has of getting in a bite.
I have often wondered what kind of wives those little ladies became. Perhaps they were tired or confused at being thrown into the vortex of the economic struggle for survival. In a saner world they would have been at home, where the true nobility of their lives could find its proper environment for growth.
Intelligent couples never take each other for granted. Of course there is a natural easiness and relaxation in each other’s company shutting out any stiffness or lack of intimacy. The bright husband will never relinquish the prerogative of being a gentleman.
Thoughtfulness is his watch word. A kindness here and a consideration there go a long way to promote companionship with his wife. The opening of a car door for her, helping her with her coat, seating her at table, these and a dozen other little actions evidence his tenderness for her. She is precious to him, so he surrounds her with attentions.
What wife could be so dull as not to yearn for such interest? Then she makes an unobtrusive but very real effort to keep for her married life the chivalry of her days of courtship.
Many married couples never lose the evidence of chivalry and romance of their days of courtship. Actually all their married lives they court each other. So blessed with this disposition they walk through life leading each other to their eternal reward in loving companionship.
“When marriage and parenthood seem difficult, picture yourself with your spouse as an old couple who, just before you hear the Master’s summoning call, look back along the road you have traveled. That road did not seem nearly so rough when you were leaning heavily upon each other. You faced threatening enemies on the way with stronger courage because you fought side by side. Courage sprang from knowing that you did not work or walk alone.” -Fr. Lawrence G. Lovasik. The Catholic Family Handbook
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With his facile pen and from the wealth of his nation-wide experience, the well-known author treats anything and everything that might be included under the heading of home education: the pre-marriage training of prospective parents, the problems of the pre-school days down through the years of adolescence. No topic is neglected. “What is most praiseworthy is Fr. Lord’s insistence throughout that no educational agency can supplant the work that must be done by parents.” – Felix M. Kirsch, O.F.M.
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Necessary advice to Catholic parents building a Catholic home. Reliable advice that is almost completely lost today, from people who know how it’s done. How to make it. How to live it. How to keep it. This book covers every aspect of Catholicizing your home–from spiritual matters like prayer and catechism to nuts and bolts topics like Keeping the Family Budget, Games and Toys, Harmony between School and Home, Family Prayers, Good Reading in the Home, Necessity of Home Life and much more
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This post paints a pretty bleak picture of a woman who is obsessed with suspicion. Let us hope we don’t fall into this trap…and nip the beginnings of it in the bud! As you can see, after reading this post, suspicion, uncontrolled, is most unbecoming and makes a fool out of the one whose heart is filled with this vice!
Fundamentally, a suspicious woman is a cynic who believes that all human conduct is directed wholly by self-interest or self-indulgence. Insecure in this cold, evil world, she must protect herself. She trusts no one. All must prove themselves innocent, else they are guilty.
There is something in her of the hypocrisy of Diogenes, shuffling along with a lantern looking for an honest man. He was blinded by his own light and not very honest. In his most desperate moment of loneliness no one should ever trust a suspicious woman with any confidence.
The suspicious being is a petty, beetle-browed parody of a son of God. The suspicious wife is obnoxious to all, and it is little wonder, seeing what mental company she keeps.
Satan, ever ready to whisper into her ear a choice little morsel of gossip, suspicion, or rash judgment, is her boon companion. Suspecting sin of others, especially her husband, she herself drones through life in sin. It is a sin of injustice to suspect another of wrong doing, to put evil motives into the minds of others.
Most suspicious wives fall into a definite pattern. Suspecting their husbands of infidelity, they themselves are unfaithful to the trust and confidence out of which grows real companionship. The suspicious wife generally informs the whole neighborhood of her husband’s imagined infidelity.
Relatives are dragged into the sorry picture. She makes a nuisance of herself even where he works by continually checking on him over the phone or by waiting for him at his place of business. He becomes the butt of nasty jokes from his fellow workers. He is suspected of irresponsibility by his employers. If he is not released from his position, at least he is considered a poor risk for any advancement.
Often the suspicious wife makes a liar of her husband. In order to allay her apprehensions over some trivial matter, he takes what he foolishly thinks is the easy way out. He lies. One lie usually demands another. Sooner or later the truth will out.
Once she has caught her husband in a lie, the suspicious wife goes to work on him with the eagerness of a bloodhound on the scent.
An innocent highball with the boss on the way home from work might be misconstrued by the little woman so he fabricates some excuse for being a half hour late for dinner. On finding the truth later she belabors him with it.
He is perpetually in a turmoil whether a truth or a falsehood will stir up her suspicions. For him it is either the frying pan or the fire. His silence is construed as guilt, and his protestations of fidelity are its proof.
In this connection the sad picture of a husband comes to memory. After telling his story of a suspicious wife and his gradual alienation, he sat in silence for a few moments and then said, “A ghost woman ruined our marriage.”
The short and the long of the matter is that these women are capable of very little love. Love brings trust and confidence upon which companionship can be built. Most of these suspicious women complain of the lack of companionship with their husbands. They do not stay home in the evening. They never have any holidays together. Their conversation is meager.
These wives do not seem to be able to see that they are driving their husbands away from them–even at times into the infidelity of which they are suspicious.
The wife desired is in love with her husband, and therefore she has absolute trust in him. Because she is a practical woman, she knows that there is no other possible course. She realizes that her husband carries with him the weakness of humankind. So she is poised more in readiness to forgive than to drive herself into mental illness by constantly fretting about the possibilities.
She is only human, so the devil will use sundry situations to drop suspicions into her mind. He will play on her imagination. She wisely pounces upon these dirty offerings at the first consciousness of them and flings them from her mind.
In this action she recalls the wisdom of the ancients–obsta principiis, resist beginnings. An evil suspicion willingly harbored in her mind quickly sends out roots to sap the very life blood of her love. The longer it is nursed the more difficult will be the extraction. She knows this and tosses the devil’s garbage back at once. The tranquility of her soul is not to be whipped into turmoil so easily.
Jealousy and her twin sister, Envy, have spawned more mischief upon this world than is generally realized. These are the vices with which the devil is most tormented. Little wonder it is, then, that he takes particular delight in seeing jealousy or envy bring about the moral downfall and consequent misery of a human being. These vices have a frightful history of human tragedy strewn in their wake stretching back from the latest divorce to the murder of Abel.
It is hard to imagine a vice less rewarding to its victim than jealousy. Conceivably, the robber derives some enjoyment from her spoils, the adulteress from her passion, the deceiver from her deception. Jealousy produces nothing but sadness and grief. A jealous wife makes me think of the picture of a wounded snake biting itself.
If it were not for the tragedy of broken marriages arising from jealousy, the situations springing therefrom often would be comic.
One wife complained one day that her husband gave his affection to everybody but her. At a wedding reception she saw him kissing his cousins. He explained that there was nothing to it. Simply they were kissing cousins. She made a searching study of the propensities of his side of the family and proclaimed that his cousins were not kissing cousins.
A jealous wife watches her husband like a hawk. He had better not show any affection even to his sister, or he will be in hot water. A momentary, furtive glance at a beautiful woman always alarms and makes her uneasy. Because a jealous wife is an unhappy wife she contributes no happiness to a marriage. From jealousy it is one fast, easy step to suspicion and all its incumbent evils.
A wife striving to be desired by her husband will be ever on guard against jealousy. It is a petty sin in the sense of its meanness, not in its consequences. Lest some feel that the language concerning suspicion and jealousy has been too severe, hearken to the words of Scripture. “With a jealous woman is a scourge–he that hath hold of her, is as he that taketh hold of a scorpion.” Ecclus. XXVI, 9, 10.
Once a friend gave a bit of sage advice concerning friendship and companionship for those on long vacations with a group of friends. He advised going off by oneself for a day. A week or ten days of constant companionship begins to wear. After having spent the day alone, one will come running back to one’s friends and be happy to be with them again.
The wise wife will realize that it is good for the husband to have an evening out once in a while to attend some club or lodge, or to bowl. She will not want to keep him under her eye constantly. She should be free likewise, of course, to get out by herself and visit her girl friends. No hard and fast rules can be given for guidance on a question like this. Yet the principle must be recognized that deep and lasting companionship does not suffer from occasional, brief separation.
Some silly wives begin to pout, if the husband ever ventures out for an evening. By their childish and short-sighted attitudes, sometimes even clouded with suspicion, they become less desirable companions. Little wonder it is then that the husband starts to wander off more than he should. The ideal wife will be successful in some phases of companionship in the same proportion as she is successful in developing her personality.
“Blessed is the home where unkind speech does not enter, nor cursing, nor bad literature, nor intemperance, for on that home will be heaped the blessings of peace.” – Fr. Lawrence Lovasik http://amzn.to/2nq50xO Catholic Family Handbook (afflink)
NEW!! The following pages in this Maglet (magazine/booklet) is for you…to inspire you in your daily walk as a loving, strong, patient Catholic mother.As mothers we have an awesome responsibility, as one of the key people in our children’s lives, to help mold them into happy, well-adjusted, faith-filled adults. This Maglet is filled with unique articles and anecdotes to help you in this journey.It is unique because most of the articles are written by men and women (some priests and a Dominican nun) who have lived in an age where common sense was more of the norm. Their advice and experience are timeless and invaluable… Available here.
Padre Pio Wire Wrapped Rosary! Lovely, Durable… Each link is handmade and wrapped around itself to ensure quality. Available here.
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A wonderful book showing how the angels have visited people innumerable times in the past, how they do so today, and would do even more if we asked them. Also, how they prevent accidents, comfort us, help us, and protect us from the devils. Contains many beautiful stories about St. Michael, St. Raphael and St. Gabriel; plus, angel stories from St. Gemma Galgani, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Bosco, etc.
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A very optimistic book showing how an “ordinary” Catholic can become a great saint without ever doing anything “extraordinary”–just by using the many opportunities for holiness that to most people lie hidden in each day. Written with an assurance of success that is totally convincing and infectious. Many easy but infallible means of reaching great sanctity.
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A real man likes to picture his wife as one with spirit and bounce. Because she is intelligent with a mind of her own she knows when to maintain a principle, when to be roguish and sportive. Gifted with imagination she can give herself to the game of intriguing her husband. Always she is exciting and vivacious.
The wife loves a little compliment here and there herself, so she knows the value of this form of encouragement. Incidentally, in most marriages heading for the rocks the couples exchange no compliments. Just the opposite is true between people who seem still to have some sort of possessive love for each other.
I do not suppose there exists a married couple who could not concentrate upon and draw up a list of each other’s shortcomings. The wise wife knows that there is no future in this mean indoor sport. She counts her blessings. She makes her husband’s good points the foundation upon which she strives to help him build improvements.
The ideal wife does not mother her husband. Yet she knows that he stands alone only with difficulty. Physical or mental pain may drive him to her. She knows how to accept him then with feeling.
Toward the end of his days a man can look back upon his life and find no greater accomplishment than his full success as a husband and father. All his varied activities possessed significance, really meant something only in relation to his role as husband and head of the house.
If he had great success in the cheap sense of the word and became very rich, but was a failure as a husband, what contentment is there in the last recollections of his life? What success, real or fictitious, can compensate for his failure as a husband?
No woman can escape sharing her husband’s misery or his contentment and peace. If she has contributed to his making, to her comes the reward of real happiness. No wife hurts her husband more than she hurts herself. No wife makes her husband happier than she makes herself.
“No one can put up with the gloomy and disagreeable man all day long. Thus a person is bound, by a certain natural debt in decency, to get along amicably with others.” -St. Thomas Aquinas
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by Monseigneur Landriot, Archbishop of Rheims,
Translated from the French by Helena Lyons
“This book consists of fifteen discourses (four on Sins of the Tongue, three on Envy and Jealousy, two on Rash Judgments, two on Christian Patience, and four on Grace) that were originally talks given to laywomen of his diocese in the late 19th century. At the beginning the good Archbishop says I propose, my children, to give you some instructions on the tongue, and the faults which it causes us to commit. I shall commence today by speaking of the power and beauty of that organ, of the noble use which ought to be made of it, and of the many advantages we may derive from it. There is precious little teaching on the topics covered in these instructions which is accessible to the average man and woman of today.” Loreto Publications
Lent is early this year! 💜 ✝️ LENTEN JOURNAL… I have prepared this Lenten journal to help you to keep on track. It is to assist you in keeping focused on making Lent a special time for your family. We do not have to do great things to influence those little people. No, we must do the small things in a great way…with love and consistency. Catholic culture is built on celebrating, in the home, the feasts, the seasons, the saints, the holydays….making them come alive in a beautiful and charming way…. Available here.
Finer Femininity is taking a break from Facebook.
I am on MeWe if you would like to follow me there. This platform is a lot like Facebook but respects the privacy and the free speech of the user. Here is the link to my FF MeWe Page. Each day I add tidbits to inspire you on your journey.
Also, if you do not want to miss a post on this site please sign up for the Email Notifications here!
A must-read for the married and those considering marriage! This guidebook to finding a happy marriage, keeping a happy marriage, and raising happy children has been out of print for over 50 years…until now! From the master of the spiritual life, Raoul Plus, S.J., it contains loads of practical and spiritual advice on family life. Have you been looking for a handbook on marriage and raising children that is based on truth? You’ve found it!
The saints assure us that simplicity is the virtue most likely to draw us closer to God and make us more like Him.
No wonder Jesus praised the little children and the pure of heart! In them, He recognized the goodness that arises from an untroubled simplicity of life, a simplicity which in the saints is completely focused on its true center, God.
That’s easy to know, simple to say, but hard to achieve.
For our lives are complicated and our personalities too. (We even make our prayers and devotions more complicated than they need be!)
In these pages, Fr. Raoul Plus provides a remedy for the even the most tangled lives.
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We all have it . . . the desire, the longing for love. God meant for marriage to be beautiful, resilient . . . lovely, but this broken world can make it hard sometimes. 100 Ways to Love is a practical guide to find and live in the rich, fulfilling marriage God intended for husbands and wives. You can get beyond just living in the minimum of your relationship. 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.
“Sooner or later a man’s habitual thoughts come out in his life and character….” 
Two Ways to Follow the Spiritual Christmas Crib for years to come!
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