March 2007 Print

Ten Minutes with Fr. de Chivré

Do you want to know how to talk to your spouse or fiancée? Have you ever considered how important a simple conversation can be? Let us, as always, look to the Almighty for insight.

God only speaks to create or to rebuild. Whether in the temporal order of Creation or the supernatural order of Redemption, the word of God always serves to bring into existence. Given that He is Love, His Word takes its meaning from the particular role spontaneously assigned to it by affection.

It only imposes or proposes in favor of an increase of love. Now, love only increases when confronted with an abundance of unexpected quality, which elicits our appreciation and esteem and moves our love to an even greater attachment.

Within marriage, the word should remain at the service of affection. It should only step forward if it can develop the quality of the one who speaks, to make that quality more captivating to the one who listens. Thus, our word is responsible for communicating either the best of what we are or the best of what we think. It provokes in return the joy of knowing ourselves appreciated and of delighting in the assent of the other, tasting an increase of happiness by this communication of ourselves.

From that moment on, thanks to our word, the other person becomes our echo, our mirror. He takes pleasure in that new appreciation for the one who speaks, and this pleasure increases the harmony between the listener and the one he loves. The function of the word is not pridefully to declare who you are but to communicate yourself in the service of the Good and the True with such selflessness that this Good and this Truth become the cause of an admirable attachment on the part of your listeners. There is a certain psychological impartiality or selflessness to bring to conversation in married life which will heighten your affection by the intermediary of a word anxious to speak a good or a truth capable of triggering understanding and consent, even at the expense of our point of view. Here are some examples:

Open yourself up in a confidence both unexpected and yet so appreciated that your union will be strengthened in a new need to step outside of banalities and ready-made phrases, even though your confiding called for a meritorious effort against vanity and selfishness.

Propose an outing which may or may not appeal to you but which you know will appeal to the other person. It can only strengthen the reciprocity of your tastes and solidify your friendship.

The role of talking is to establish a harmony upon which both can express themselves more freely and more affectionately.

In the realm of affection, talking is meant to achieve a qualitative development of the soul, mind, and heart through a spontaneous–and also qualitative–appreciation elicited in the one who listens to you as to another self. Talking in married life then ceases to be a way of selfishly declaiming your wants or your points of view, which would only harden you both in your opinions and deepen the divide between you. It becomes on the contrary a way of affectionately opening yourself to the mind of the other person, becoming the echo of your own self rather than the victim of your individualistic, selfish, and sinful demands.

Married life is only possible in an atmosphere of confidence, and that is why the value of the spouses remains the chief cause of happiness, for their spiritual and moral value constantly supplies each one with excellent realities to present to the other and excellent conversation to offer. In turn, the life of grace maintains in the judgment of the spouses a permanent disposition to express themselves only in favor of the mutual value of one another.

Then will talking be fulfilling its mission, which is to accustom each one to seeing their life in a superior manner: in the life of the home, that superior manner will mean the part given to God; in that of education, the sense of honor, plus respect for God; in that of work, the sense of honesty and of duty of state; and in recreation, the sense of morality.

Then will husband and wife speak to each other of these things with a view to expressing themselves in a Christian way; with a view to willing nobly, to sensing with delicacy, and to communicating the deepest of who they are. Understood in this way, their confidences become a more and more binding tie to the fidelity they have promised and the trust they desire.

The law of beauty when expressed by the word, like the law of perfection and the law of delicacy, is to create an attachment to the other person by a heightening of esteem, by a renewed admiration. When a couple has grown accustomed to respecting in this way the divine and perfect sense of conversation, that conversation becomes a lasting support for the two spouses, able to sustain the mystery of their distress and their fidelity.

Then will the word, having created confidence, give to both spouses the right to encourage one another toward an improvement of their life, knowing how to point out, with affection, each other's faults, which have now become principles of exchange and mutual education. Then, too, will talking become a means for stimulating the spiritual and virtuous advancement of each one, without turning into a kind of indelicate sermon or "pious" expression of nagging.

Our way of speaking can possess an intellectual and moral healthiness guaranteeing in advance the most meritorious acts of consent. Finally, once the word grows accustomed to respecting its mission, it will quash almost by instinct our inclinations to lower ourselves or compromise our quality in moments of disappointment. There will be no more of those offended, self-absorbed withdrawals; but there will be comforting exchanges of spiritual strength capable of transformation.

In marriage, not only is the word at the service of the best that there is in us, but we should also put it at the service of the best that we glimpse in the other person. The duty of love is formal: it should facilitate and favor the ideal, the call to perfection, the spiritual traits of the other capable of improving him, to the benefit in return of the one who is helping. We have to go out to the other person, not to judge him according to our own points of view but to help bring out the best in him, even without the hope of a psychological salary for ourselves, by approving, out of pure goodness, what is highest in his personal expectations, without criticizing or opposing them.

The law of marriage is not to enslave but, on the contrary, to leave open to each one his chances for perfection, for the benefit of the other who will seize the occasion for an increase of love'since true perfection never damages affection.

From that moment on, the law of sacrifice by love cannot do otherwise than come into play, whether it be the sacrifice of your time or your preferences or your preoccupations, in order to be at the service of the perfection of the other, in the form of a given superior activity which we encourage for him: esthetic, cultural, athletic, liturgical, or supernatural activity. Affection does not hesitate to offer to the love of the other to sing its participation, as on-key as possible, that we might hear the harmony and thereby nourish our own perfection.

Whoever sings his life in quality, thanks to the selflessness of the other person, will taste the need to prove his gratitude through an even greater attachment. Then, to use a word no one ever uses...everything becomes dialogue: verbal dialogue in the word of encounter; the dialogue of the senses and fusion in confidence; a virile dialogue in nobility of mind in suffering; a dialogue of silence that unites in hours of forced separation; the dialogue of God, who speaks the same language in both of the spouses, by the intermediary of a common spirituality.

With couples like that, with homes like that, we can build a society. In married life, you have to will to leave behind words that are too vulgar, too profane, forever calculating, or much too worldly–meaning conventional and empty–in order to echo the Word who speaks in us and who disposes us always to speak something of Himself, by words of truth and moral beauty.

 

Translated exclusively by Angelus Press. Originally published as "La Parole et l'Affection" in Carnets Spirituels: Le Mariage, No.3, February 2005, pp.13-17.

 

Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P. (say: Sheave-ray´) was ordained in 1930. He was an ardent Thomist, student of Scripture, retreat master, and friend of Archbishop Lefebvre. He died in 1984.