Subject: Anchoring Catholic Families Amidst the Storm
Date: May 10, 2004 04:44 pm
I wanted to share with all of you on my newsletter the talk I gave to couples this weekend. The workshop will be available on audio and video cassette. I urge those of you interested to contact me via email.
You will notice that the following information is directed towards a general audience…since it was not written for the newsletter but for a workshop.
I have spent days preparing a speech with lots of information and statistics on successful marriages. Yet, more importantly I hope to transmit to you all that my heart contains about this topic. I hope you leave here with an understanding of the many joys, struggles and challenges creating a successful Catholic marriage in a society that promotes the culture of death entails.
The title of my talk is “Anchoring Catholic Families Amidst the Storm.” I believe that you will not survive the greatest storm ever to attack families unless you have anchored yourselves to the Two Great Pillars… The Eucharist and Mary…..
Just like St. John Bosco, had the vision of the Holy Father anchoring the vessel which represented the Church to the Two Great Pillars…The Eucharist and Mary…I say to you anchor, your family, the vessel that represents the Domestic Church to the two Great Pillars… and you will survive the storm.
I want to share with you the six words I most hear working with couples. “I just want to be happy” What is happiness? I ask you all here today…as I have asked those who have repeated these words to me in the past. What is happiness? Oh I have heard… “being out of the Hell my home has become.” I have heard, “I don’t know but I just want to be happy” How about “Well she/he just doesn’t make me happy”
These words “I just want to be happy” ironically have caused tremendous unhappiness. Upon these words many marriages have been dissolved only to leave behind in their wake …devastation, suffering and open wounds...sometimes so deep that years later you will still find the traces of this unforgettable trauma, both in children and spouses. Yet, even today someone here amongst you or someone who will be hearing or watching the tapes…will be repeating these same words…. “I just want to be happy”
On March 27, 2004, Monsignor Cormac Burke an Opus Dei priest who teaches anthropology at Strathmore University and wrote the book “Covenanted Happiness” gave a speech in Nairobi, Kenya.
He was asked, What are the “Laws of Happiness” as are found and lived in Christian marriage?
Monsignor Burke replied, “The first thing to bear in mind is that marriage cannot give perfect happiness, nor can anything else here on earth. The purpose of marriage is not to give the spouses such happiness, but to mature them for it. He goes on to say…
In everything here on earth, God is trying to teach us to love, which we will enjoy fully in heaven. Marriage is one of his most intensive schools of love…
Happiness demands an effort. When a married person in difficulties allows the thought, “I’ll get a divorce and marry this other man or woman, because I’ll be happier with him or her, “they are really saying, “My happiness depends on not having too much demanded of me. I’ll be happy only if I don’t have to make much of an effort to love.”
The Person who chooses to think this way can never be happy, for happiness is above all a consequence of giving, as it says in Acts 20:35: “It is happier to give than to receive.”
Before I go on it is important to make emphasis on our Holy Father’s call to live and promote the civilization of Love and Life. I have pondered much on this subject and have understood that creating a civilization encompasses all levels of society.
Civilization comes from the word “civil” meaning … a community of citizens, their government, or their interrelations … the word civilization further explains the task at hand… the process of civilizing or becoming civilized. We are being called to educate and change citizens, governments, educational systems and interrelationships between individuals and nations. The only way to do this is to create a new culture… because “culture” is the heart of a civilization. By creating a civilization of Love and Life … we will be changing hearts. The culture of Love and Life is the victory over the existing Culture of Death.
His eminence Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family proclaimed in the tenth annual conference of Women for Faith and Family, “The family is the essential basic community, the natural institution, which carries out the task of socializing individuals and perpetuating society.” How do we begin to change the hearts of families…? It begins with you and me…one family at a time…anchoring ourselves to the Sacred and Eucharistic Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate and Sorrowful Heart of Mary. One family at a time we will be victorious in creating the Culture of Love and Life.
“Be not afraid” how many times do we hear Our Holy Father say these words to us. Be not afraid to protect, “the family.” Today many are actively trying to change the concept of the family … let us not be deceived by a group of individuals whose sole purpose is to destroy the heart of a living culture. Today we may have to change the description of the family due to its breakdown by expressing its components as small, large and nuclear families. But as Cardinal Lopez Trujillo has stated, “This description must never be allowed to slide into ambiguity, so as to destroy the truth that a binding marriage is always the source of the family. Even when marriage has been broken by death, divorce or separation, the reality and the identity of the family after that disaster is derived from the marriage which established that family.”
Today, however we are challenged by an individualistic society. This could be described as a bunch of independent beings rattling around, at times colliding, running in and out of “relationships” getting and consuming whatever they want when they want it with no regard for the other. After all, in this society … it is all about me … Me first… Me second… Me third and if there is anything leftover it is for Me too.
One of the greatest individualistic plagues to attack families today is “Divorce.” Unfortunately, about 15 million American children go to sleep every night in a home without a father. And contrary to the feminist propaganda, mothers cannot fill a father’s role. What men bring to their children is vital to their emotional, intellectual, sexual, moral and spiritual development.
Statistics from the Family Research Council show:
- At least one out of every three children experiencing a parental separation demonstrated a significant decline in academic performance persisting at least three years
- Compared with girls with intact nuclear families, girls who lose their fathers by divorce are overly responsive to males, are more likely to be sexually involved with males in adolescence, marry younger, are more often pregnant before marriage and become divorced or separated from their eventual husband more frequently.
- The best predictor of violent crime and burglary in a community is not race or income, but the proportion of households without fathers.
- Children in fatherless families are two to three times more likely than children in two-parent families to have emotional and behavioral problems
- Three fourths of all children of divorce have contact with their fathers less than two days a month.
Fathers are more associated with behaviors which challenge their children and mothers primarily guide and comfort them. One is not more important than the other … they compliment one another.
Mother Angelica in her writing The Family Spirit tells us, “We live in an age that stresses personal goals, careers, happiness, work. The emphasis is on the individual and how best that individual can satisfy himself. Today we are not faced with “absolute good and evil” that would be easy to discern…Mother Angelica goes on to say, “today we have the confusion of half-truths, blatant evil disguised as part of modern living and an indifference to sin called tolerance and love. Self-satisfaction at everyone else’s expense is considered a kind of fulfillment and any reaction to the contrary is an infringement on personal freedom.”
We are presented at all levels options … temptations that must be unmasked…brought to the light and exposed for what they truly are. Today adultery and fornication have passed from unfaithfulness and sin to an inability to love only one person and the fulfillment of one’s basic needs. Children who are the fruit of love are considered accidents, financial burdens, consumers of the worlds food supply, and of course an infringement on personal freedom. How are we ever to change this mentality? There is only one way…by anchoring families to the Sacred and Eucharistic Heart of Jesus and the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Mary Ann Budnik, a weekly columnist for Our Sunday Visitor describes happiness in a family as the 4 S’s:
1. Striving daily to live the will of God
2. Struggling to grow in virtue
3. Suffering with acceptance
4. Sacrificing for family and strangers alike
Despite media propaganda, we were created solely to become saints, not corporate giants or sports stars. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1721, “Our purpose in life is to grow in holiness by knowing, loving and serving god in this world so that we can be happy with Him forever in eternity.
To Love, Honor, and Serve God we must grow in virtue. Virtues expand our human potential, perfect our personality, and help us to live more easily an upright Christian life. It is usually a lack of virtue, or vice, such as pride, selfishness, and bad temper, lack of self-control or jealousy on some family member’s part that causes the arguments or problems in a family.
I have learned in my practice that the following virtues are conducive to a strong and healthy marriage. I have used Fr. Romano Guardini’s, definition of each of these virtues to help us understand them better:
- Truthfulness: This virtue has suffered great damage in out times. Truthfulness means that one tells the truth, not only once but again and again, so that it becomes a habit. One should not only speak the truth but should “do it” also through actions, attitudes, and gestures.
- Patience: A mature responsible life begins with our accepting people as they are. We must remember that again and again, we call to the Lord…How patient is He with us.
- Loyalty: The knowledge and awareness between a husband and wife that they have formed a bond which determines their life.
- Courage: One who is aware of the Challenge of life and feels bound by self-respect to meet it. He or she may not be very strong physically and is perhaps very sensitive to suffering…nevertheless, he/she stands firm, goes on quietly, and meets events without fear.
- Kindness: Whenever he/she encounters a living being, the kind person first reaction is not mistrust and criticism but to respect, to value and to promote development.
- Understanding: the beginning of all understanding consists in this, that each spouse shall give the other freedom to be what he is, and not regard him/her from the point of view of egotism, prescribing for him/her what he/she is to be according to one’s own self-interest, but rather regarding him/her from the point of view of freedom first saying, “Be what you are”…”Now I should like to know what you are, and why”
- Respect: “Anticipate one another in showing honor” not merely “Honor one another,” but, “Anticipate one another in showing honor.” Respect recognizes the good in others and lets them feel that it is valued.
Most couples who are engaged believe they are going to be married forever… but how many are consciously preparing never to make “divorce” an option. I have had couples ask me “Mary, do you think we will be married forever?”… or “what do we have to do to be married forever?” There is a simple answer … never make divorce an option. I can promise all couples who marry that they will have trials, sufferings, sacrifices and more sacrifices. Only those that are committed and never threaten or suggest divorce will enjoy the opportunity of experiencing the gift of a lifetime marriage.
Couples can and should stay together and work out their differences. Over the past several years I have witnessed the suffering and disillusionment that are the predictable consequences of divorce. I have seen people who have been divorced for five or more years with wounds that seem impossible to heal.
Second marriages account for the saddening statistic of 60 percent divorce rate. Those who choose to remarry must be conscious and prepared to work on old habits. The habits that we develop over the years go with us into our next relationship.
Children are also victims of divorce. Research shows that except in extreme cases of abuse children want their parents together. Children have no say in a decision that profoundly affects them for the rest of their lives. When parents decide to end their marriage, it means the death of a family. As the family disintegrates, a child’s sense of comfort and security becomes shaken.
I am convinced that most marriages are worth saving simply because most problems are solvable. Many husbands and wives have asked me, “Should I stay for the sake of the kids?” They always say this with dread and heavy hearts… their voices sound like death itself…. “Should I stay for the kids?
The assumption is that they will have to always live in conflict. Parents should not stay in marriages to remain in conflict...they should stay together to resolve and give life to their marriage. Research does show that whether parents are divorced or married children suffer if there is conflict. Couples should do everything within their power to make their marriages work again so that their children’s lives will not be adversely affected by conflict and divorce. Not to mention the sacramental vow you make at the altar. Finding solutions to marital conflicts is not easy but it is possible. In the most difficult situations if both spouses are willing to work hard and open their hearts to grace…change is possible. Sadly, in the most insignificant situations … all it takes is one spouse to sabotage the healing process.
Unfortunately, many believe that relationships and people can not change… perhaps people cannot but with God nothing is impossible.
I pray that this weekend you will leave here with a renewed heart. I hope that you anchor your marriage, your families and yourselves to the Two Great pillars, the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
I suggest that you read the books, The Power of a Praying Husband and The Power of a Praying Wife, by Stormie Omartian. I have used her book to explain the importance of prayer in a marriage. Begin by meditating on Jesus’ words, “the greatest act of love is to lay down your life for another (Jn 15:13). Husbands, there are many ways to lay down your life for your wife without physically dying. It’s sacrificing a relatively small amount of time for her greatest good, which is ultimately yours also.
Wives it is important to pray for your husbands. Praying for your husband does not mean “change him Lord.” Instead say, “Lord, nothing in me wants to pray for this man” … “Help me with my anger, hurt, unforgiveness, disappointment, resentment, and harshness of heart towards him. Forgive me and create in me a new heart. Give me a new and forgiving attitude toward him.
Husbands and wives… God can resurrect the deadest of marriages, but it takes humbling ourselves before Him and desiring to live His way. It requires a willingness to lose the argument in order to win the battle.
Why do you think the Holy Father made St. Therese, the Little Flower a doctor of the church in this century? Could it be to help us understand the little way of holiness in the most complex century of them all? Husbands and wives are called to assist each other in becoming saints. Our Holy Father, is letting us know we don’t need to do this with great big acts…we can do this “the little way” We can do this one small act at a time. When was the last time you did something selfless for your husband or wife?
I am in awe when I think that the Lord entrusts husbands and wives to each other. How reckless we are with this command. Let us imagine that the Lord entrust a priceless crystal to your care. Wives you would place it on a pennant and wear it around your neck for everyone to admire. You would polish and admire its beauty and brilliance. Husbands if the Lord entrust a priceless crystal to your care…you would place it on a stand and guard it with your life…lest it be stolen. You would research its value and consider yourself honored to be its caretaker. How sad…we have been given that crystal … the very heart of the soul you have been given to cherish and honor all the days of your life. How many wives polish and admire the beauty and brilliance of their husband’s hearts? Husbands how many of you guard and honor your wives with your life?
I am the witness of the greatest cruelties…committed by husbands and wives …how they take a hold of each others hearts and shatter it into a thousand pieces. Our heart is a precious fragile crystal…once it has been shattered…putting the pieces back together is difficult and painful. The end result always leaves behind traces of the trauma. Please be gentle with each other … care for each other … Neglecting your duties will hurt the crystal, the heart, the Lord entrusted to you. This is both a great responsibility and accountability.
When I say be gentle I am not speaking of physical gentleness, I hope that those who are here today and listening to the tapes know better than to be physically abusive. I am speaking of words… Anyone who has been married for any length of time realizes that there are things that are better left unsaid. Wives and husbands are vulnerable to each other…you have the ability to hurt each other more deeply than anyone else can. I find women more often then men, will say to me… “I just have to say this to him because it’s the truth.” No… you don’t have to say it…you can remain quite and allow the Lord to work in him… and focus on your own need for change.
Husband’s there is nothing more wonderful than a male voice. It is strong and deep and can give a great sense of security. But the male voice can also be terrifying especially to women and children. Most men have no idea about the power of their voices. Your voice can either have the power to edify or the power to destroy.
In all my years working with families … I must say that men are usually easier to understand …simply because they are in general more practical and logical. It is a good thing that I am a woman …because when other women come to see me with all of their emotions and illogical common sense…I can relate. Husband’s listen closely … please do not take your wives ups and downs personally. You must keep in mind that there is a process always going on in a woman’s mind and soul… usually unbeknownst to you the unsuspecting husband. What is happening is that all her thoughts, fears, hormones, responsibilities, memories of previous offenses, the amount of sleep she go last night, for that case … her entire past, and how about what kind of hair day she is having, are all simultaneously competing for her attention … Now you can appreciate how multi task she truly is.
You know women’s hormonal cycles are difficult to gauge. After all, a woman can be emotionally sensitive in the days before, during and after her monthly cycle…that leaves maybe 3 or 4 days that she might be normal… and on one of those days she is ovulating so who really knows.
Now I know all of you at least all of the men have been waiting for me to say something about “sex” don’t worry I have not forgotten. I have left the best for last…after all; this is a gift, the icing upon the cake. If all the ingredients I have suggested are in the oven you will have a delicious cake… both of you can stand back admire your cake, fluffy yet firm…baked and ready to spread the icing.
How do we preserve sex as a gift…How can we keep sex Holy? The media has demeaned the gift of sexuality to its lowest form Lust. For example … to sell a car the woman who is on the advertisement looks like she is a center fold for a pornographic magazine... are we incapable of determining which model we like without the lady laying on top of the car. Men and women today are expected to keep up with a certain image. I ask you why are people so lonely…in a sex crazed society.
I believe it is because we have degraded the gift of sexuality. I encourage each of you to analyze your life and evaluate your attitude towards this God given gift. Husbands if your wife is uncomfortable with your intimate life…ask yourself … do I present my wife with the gift of sexuality or do I expect sex. Wives if you do not respond to your husband…are you graciously open to the gift of sexuality or are you bargaining with something that does not belong to you.
It is important for men and women to know how they compliment and relate to each other. Mother Adela, Foundress and Superior of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary shared with me an analogy that I have often used with my clients. The role of a man and a woman within a marriage is different but both are very important. The husband is the brain and the woman is the heart. Different yet both are important …the brain cannot live without the heart…and the heart cannot live without the brain.
The husband is like the brain … in that he is the head of the household…the one who must be practical and efficient in order to provide for his family. The wife is like the heart she nurtures and cares for the family. The wife creates the “love” atmosphere within the home.
When these two vital organs work in synchronization they give each other life. If husbands and wives work together as one …they will receive and give life. The perfect sexual union is only possible when we recognize that as husband and wife we are one and we unite intimately to become one flesh.
I end by calling you to be holy couples. I exult you to live and proclaim the culture of Love and Life…anchored to the Eucharistic and Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.
God bless you.
Mary Camejo, LMHC
www.counselingcatholics.com
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