Part III, Chapter XXXVIII

Instructions for Married Persons

“Matrimony is a great Sacrament, but I speak in Christ, and in the Church.” (Ephesians 5:32) It is honorable to all persons, in all persons, and in all things, that is, in all its parts. To all persons, because even virgins ought to honor it with humility; in all persons, because it is equally holy in the rich and poor; in all things, because its origin, its end, its advantages, its form, and its matter are all holy. It is the nursery of Christianity, which supplies the earth with faithful souls, to complete the number of the elect in heaven; in a word, the preservation of marriage is of the highest importance to the commonwealth, for it is the origin and source of all its streams.

Would to God that his most beloved Son were invited to all marriages, as he was to that of Cana; then the wine of consolations and benedictions would never be wanting; for the reason why there is commonly a scarcity of it at the beginning is, because Adonis is invited instead of Jesus Christ, and Venus instead of his blessed Mother. He that would have his lambs fair and spotted as Jacob’s were, must, like him, set fair rods of divers colors before the sheep when they meet to couple; and he that would have a happy success in marriage ought in his espousals to represent to himself the sanctity and dignity of this sacrament. But, alas! instead of this there are a thousand disorders committed in diversions, feasting, and immodest discourse; it is not surprising, then, that the success of marriages should not correspond. Above all things, I exhort married people to that mutual love which the Holy Ghost so much recommends in the Scripture.

O you that are married! I tell you not to love each other with a natural love, for it is thus that the turtles love; nor do I say, love one another with a human love, for the heathens do this; but I say to you, after the great Apostle, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church.” (Ephesians 5) And you, wives, love your husbands, as the Church loveth her Saviour. It was God that brought Eve to our first father, Adam, and gave her him in marriage; it is also God, O my friends! who, with his invisible hand, has tied the knot of the holy bond of your marriage, and given you to one another; why do you not, then, cherish each other with a holy, sacred, and divine love?

The first effect of this love is an indissoluble union of your hearts. Two pieces of fir glued together, if the glue be good, cleave so fast to each other that they can be more easily broken in any other place than that in which they were joined. But God joins the husband to the wife with his own blood; for which cause this union is so strong that the soul must sooner separate from the body of the one or the other, than the husband from the wife. Now, this union is not understood principally of the body, but of the heart, of the affection, and of the love.

The second effect of this love ought to be the inviolable fidelity of one party to the other. Seals were anciently graven upon rings worn on the fingers, as the holy Scripture itself testifies. Behold, then, the mystery of this ceremony in marriage. The Church, which by the hand of the priest blesses a ring, and gives it first to the man, testifies that she puts a seal upon his heart by this sacrament, to the end that henceforward neither the name nor the love of any other woman may enter therein, so long as she shall live who has been given to him; afterward the bridegroom puts the ring on the hand of the bride, that she reciprocally may understand that her heart must never admit an affection to any other man, so long as he shall live upon earth whom our Lord here gives her for a husband.

The third fruit of marriage is the lawful production and education of children. It is a great honor to you that are married, that God, designing to multiply souls, which may bless and praise him to all eternity, makes you cooperate with him in so noble a work, by the production of the bodies, into which he infuses immortal souls, like heavenly drops, as he creates them.

Preserve, then, O husbands! a tender, constant, and cordial love for your wives; for the woman was taken from that side of the first man which was nearest his heart, to the end she might be loved by him cordially and tenderly. The weaknesses and infirmities of your wives, whether in body or mind, ought never to provoke you to any kind of disdain, but rather to a mild and affectionate compassion; since God has created them such, to the end that, depending upon you, you should receive from them more honor and respect, and that you should have them in such manner for your companions, that nevertheless you should be their heads and superiors. And you, O wives! love tenderly and cordially the husbands whom God has given you, but with a respectful love, and full of reverence; for therefore did God create them of a sex more vigorous and predominant: and was pleased to ordain that the woman should depend upon the man, being bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh, and that she should be made of a rib taken from under his arm, to show that she ought to be under the hand and guidance of her husband. The holy Scripture, which strictly recommends to you this subjection, renders it also agreeable, not only by prescribing that you should accommodate yourselves to it with love, but also by commanding your husbands to exercise it over you with charity, tenderness, and complacency. “Husbands,” says St. Peter, “dwell with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor to the woman as to the weaker vessel.” (1 Peter 3:7)

But while I exhort you to advance more and more in this mutual love, which you owe one another, beware lest it degenerate into any kind of jealousy; for it often happens, that as the worm is bred in the apple which is the most delicate and ripe, so jealousy grows in that love of married people which is the most ardent and affectionate, of which, nevertheless, it spoils and corrupts the substance, breeding, by insensible degrees, strifes, dissensions, and divorces. But jealousy is never seen where the friendship is reciprocally grounded on solid virtue: it is, therefore, an infallible mark that the love is in some degree sensual and gross, and has met with a virtue imperfect, inconstant, and subject to distrust. Jealousy is an absurd means of proving the sincerity of friendship. It may, indeed, be a sign of the greatness of the friendship, but never of its goodness, purity, and perfection; since the perfection of friendship presupposes an assurance of the virtue of those whom we love, and jealousy presupposes a doubt of it.

If you desire, O husbands! that your wives should be faithful to you, give them a lesson by your example. “How,” says St. Gregory Nazianzen, “can you exact purity of your wives, when you yourselves live in impurity? How can you require of them that which you give them not? Do you wish them to be chaste? behave yourselves chastely towards them: and, as St. Paul says, let every man know how to possess his vessel in sanctification.’ But if, on the contrary, you yourselves teach them not to be virtuous, it is not surprising if you are disgraced by their perdition. But you, O wives! whose honor is inseparably joined with purity and modesty, be zealous to preserve this your glory, and suffer no kind of loose behavior to tarnish the whiteness of your reputation.” Fear all kinds of assaults, how small soever they may be; never suffer any wanton addresses to approach you: whoever presumes to praise your beauty, or your general behavior, ought to be suspected; for he that praises the ware which he cannot buy is strongly tempted to steal it, but if to your praise he adds the dispraise of your husband, he offers you a heinous injury; for it is evident that he not only desires to ruin you, but accounts you already half lost, since the bargain is half made with the second merchant when one is disgusted with the first.

“Ladies formerly, as well as now, were accustomed to wear ear-rings of pearl, for the pleasure,” says Pliny, “which they derive from hearing them jingle against each other.” But for my part, as I know that the great friend of God, Isaac, sent ear-rings, as the first earnest of his love, to the chaste Rebecca, I believe that this mysterious ornament signifies that the first part which a husband should take possession of in his wife, and which his wife should faithfully keep for him, is her ears; in order that no other language or noise should enter there but only the sweet and amiable music of chaste and pure words, which are the oriental pearls of the gospel; for we must always remember that souls are poisoned by the ear, as the body is by the mouth.

Love and fidelity joined together always produce familiarity and confidence; and therefore the saints have used many reciprocal caresses in their marriage; caresses truly affectionate, but pure, tender, and sincere. Thus, Isaac and Rebecca, the most chaste married couple of antiquity, were seen through a window caressing one another in such manner that, though there was no immodesty, Abimelech was convinced that they could be no other than man and wife. The great St. Lewis, equally rigorous to his own flesh, and tender in the love of his wife, was almost blamed for the abundance of such caresses; though, indeed, he rather deserved praise for being able to bring his martial and courageous spirit to stoop to these little duties so requisite for the preservation of conjugal love; for, although these demonstrations of pure and free affection bind not the hearts, yet they tend to unite them, and serve for an agreeable disposition to mutual conversation.

St. Monica, being pregnant of the great St. Augustine, dedicated him by frequent oblations to the Christian religion, and to the service and glory of God, as he himself testifies, saying, that “he had already tasted the salt of God in his mother’s womb.” This is a great lesson for Christian women, to offer up to his divine Majesty the fruit of their wombs, even before they come into the world; for God, who accepts the offerings of an humble and willing heart, commonly at that time seconds the affections of mothers; witness Samuel, St. Thomas of Aquin, St. Andrew of Fiesola, and many others. The

Mother of St. Bernard, a mother worthy of such a son, as soon as her children were born, took them in her arms, and offered them up to Jesus Christ; and, from that moment, she loved them with respect as things consecrated to God and entrusted by him to her care. This pious custom was so pleasing to God that her seven children became afterwards eminent for sanctity. But when children begin to have the use of reason, both their fathers and mothers ought to take great care to imprint the fear of God in their hearts. The devout queen Blanche performed this duty most fervently with regard to St. Lewis, her son. She often said to him, “I would much rather, my dear child, see you die before my eyes, than see you commit only one mortal sin,” This caution remained so deeply engraved in his soul that, as he himself related, not one day of his life passed in which he did not remember it, and take all possible care to observe it faithfully. Families and generations are, in our language, called houses; and even the Hebrews called the generations of children the building up of a house; for, in this sense, it is said that God built houses for the midwives of Egypt. Now, this is to show that the raising of a house, or family, consists not in storing up a quantity of worldly possessions, but in the good education of children in the fear of God, and in virtue, in which no pains or labor ought to be spared; for children are the crown of their parents. Thus, St. Monica fought with so much ardor and constancy against the evil inclination of her son St. Augustine, that, having followed him by sea and land, she made him more happily the child of her tears, by the conversion of his soul, than he had been of her blood, by the generation of his body.

St. Paul leaves to wives the care of the household concerns as their portion, for which reason many think with truth that their devotion is more profitable to the family than that of the husband, who, not residing so among the domestics, cannot of consequence so easily frame them to virtue. On this consideration Solomon, in his Proverbs, makes the happiness of the whole family depend on the care and industry of the valiant woman whom he describes.

It is said, in the book of Genesis, that Isaac, seeing his wife Rebecca barren, prayed to the Lord for her; or, according to the Hebrew, prayed to the Lord opposite to her, because the one prayed on the one side of the oratory, and the other on the other; and the prayer of the husband offered in this manner was heard. Such union as this of the husband and wife, in holy devotion, is the best and most fruitful of all; and to this they ought mutually to encourage and to engage each other. There are fruits, as, for example, the quince, which, on account of the bitterness of their juice, are not agreeable unless they are preserved with sugar; there are others, which, on account of their tenderness, cannot be long kept, unless they are preserved in like manner, such as cherries and apricots; thus, wives ought to wish that their husbands should be preserved with the sugar of devotion; for a man without devotion is severe, harsh, and rough. And husbands ought to wish that their wives should be devout, because without devotion a woman is very frail, and liable to obscure, and perhaps to lose, her virtue. St. Paul says “that the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife; and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing husband”; because, in this strict alliance of marriage, the one may easily draw the other to virtue; but what a blessing is it when the man and wife, being both believers, sanctify each other in the true fear of God!

As to the rest, their mutual bearing with each other ought to be so great that they should never be both angry with each other at the same time, so that a dissension or debate be never seen between them. Ibices cannot stay in a place where there are echoes or rebounding of voices; nor can the Holy Ghost remain in a house in which there are rebounding of clamor, strife, and contradictions. St. Gregory Nazianzen tells us, that in his time married people made a feast on the anniversary day of their wedding. For my part, I should approve of the reviving of this custom, provided it be not attended with preparations of worldly and sensual recreations; but that the husband and wife should confess and communicate on that day, and recommend to God, with a more than ordinary fervor, the happy progress of their marriage; renewing their good purposes to sanctify it still more and more by mutual love and fidelity, and recovering breath, as it were, in our Lord, in order to support with more ease the burdens of their calling.

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