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Inasmuch as psychoneurosis has become such a characteristic of our modern civilization, it is fitting that there be mirrored forth for the example of Christians the story of how one husband lived through its Golgothas and kept his faith in God.
Sophie-Charlotte Wittelsbach (1847-1897), at the age of nineteen was betrothed to the King of Bavaria, who was already beginning to show signs of incipient insanity. The hopes of the young bride for an early marriage were wrecked, time and time again, as her prospective husband put off the marriage, and then, finally, told her that his only love in the world was for Wagnerian music. Her mind, somewhat shattered by this blow, found a temporary release when she met an exiled French Orlean, Ferdinand Philip, the Duke of Alencon, whom she married. It was his first love, and his last love as he told her one day: "I have loved you with the most tender affections on this earth, for I love you with an eternal love because it is a Christian love." This declaration of his love was made in the midst of a growing consciousness of her defects. Melancholia, which was one of the family traits, soon began to appear in her, manifesting itself in undue sensitiveness, impulsiveness, capriciousness and morbidity. The young husband, with a prophetic intuition of her needs, began a passionate and pathetic fight to tear his wife away from the clutches of mental instability and her repeated relapses into disturbing psychoses and neuroses. The struggle which he faced was one which he confessed would require not only a husband much in love with his wife but also a guardian angel. He tried to introduce her to the realities of religion but without much success until he brought her to Rome for a visit, where he saw on an ancient tomb the inscription: "Sophronia may you live." Hundreds of times a day he recited the prayer for his wife, "Sophie may you live." Later on he changed it to an assertion:
"Sophie, you shall live."
After many years of suffering he said to his wife, in one of her rare moments of lucidity, "I have told you nothing in order not to trouble you, but I have been watching over you in silence. On the day of our marriage God gave you to me, body and soul. If, by chance, you happen to fall I would be the guilty one, for I answer for you and if I had remained not true it would have proven that I did not know how to preserve you." Despite her impossible conduct, her anti-religious outbursts, he never left her side except to visit their children in school.
Finally, when his wife had reached the age of thirty-six, through his patience and his prayers she emerged from her last and terrible crisis, transformed and transfigured. He joined the Third Order of St. Dominic and she joined the Third Order of St. Francis and both united in works of charity. Many people began coming to her seeking her advice; the poor she visited on foot for many hours during the day and night; her former melancholia had given place to a joy which nothing could quench, and with that joy there came an amazing moral strength. On the fourth of May in her fiftieth year she left her home to preside over a Bazaar of Charity which was then being held in Paris. The Bazaar was a monstrous affair in a huge tent sheltering an array of tables and counters. The center of attraction was a recent invention, a motion picture machine which was installed behind an arbor of flowers. Her husband had come to the Bazaar in order to see his wife preside. Suddenly the motion picture apparatus caught fire and the two exits became jammed with escaping people. Because she presided, some people came to save her, but as she directed the women and children she said: "I shall go out last, save the others first." A Dominican Nun who stood by her, seeing the flames coming closer, said: "My God, what an awful death." "Yes," smiled the Duchess quietly, "but think of it, we shall see God in a few minutes."
Her husband, who tried to remain with her, was pushed by the crowd and left in a bedlam of smoke and fire and madness. The last that was seen of her was when she was kneeling by a young and fair girl, turning the latter's head toward her own bosom in order to hide from the young face the horrors of death. A few days later her husband, recovering consciousness in a hospital, was informed of his wife's death. His first words were: "Oh God, of course I know that I must not ask you why." Then a smile came over his lips, and resuming the prayer he learned at the ancient tomb in Rome, he now added a new invocation: the "Sophie may you live," which later on became "Sophie, you shall live" now became: "Sophie, you live!"
There are many instances of a husband or a wife offering himself or herself in order that the other may gain the gift of Faith. Inasmuch as the diaries and letters of this couple have been preserved, it is easy to follow the ascension and transfiguration of their souls. The woman was Alexandrine d'Alopeus of St. Petersburg who, though not a member of the Church, was very fond of visiting the churches when she was in Rome. In the year 1832, she saw a young man, a French Diplomat by the name of Albert de la Ferronnays, praying at the Communion rail. She said she felt such a strong urge to pray alongside of him that she actually would have done it if her sisters had not been with her. On coming out of the church, she was introduced to him. They made a visit to the four great Basilicas of Rome and when finally they finished the visit, Albert knelt before the main Altar and offered to Our Lord the sacrifice of his life if He would give to this beautiful young girl the gift of Faith.
Later on, while courting, she wrote to Albert: "When I am near you and when I feel that you love me, my happiness would sadden me if there were no God Whom I could thank. Do you think that those who have no faith really love? Do they have deep emotions? Can they be truly devoted?" When Albert received the letter, he wrote in his Diary: "Oh, my God, enkindle again in my heart the fire of your most Divine Love. Purify this sentiment which is today my whole life, that I may respect her more than anything else in all the world, and that I may become worthy to love her." Then, answering her letter, he said to her: "No, I do not believe that anyone can love with innocence and with depth, I do not believe that anyone can love at all, without being penetrated by a deep sense of God and immortality." Married on April 17th, 1834, in Naples, they spent for the next ten years a life so beautifully ecstatic that she asked her husband if this love was not a foretaste of the manner in which they would be allowed to love God and one another eternally in Heaven.
This confession of the triune quality of love soon began to pass through the phases of Divine Love when God came to this earth and took upon Himself a Cross. Her husband fell seriously ill with consumption, but still their love did not diminish amidst suffering, for every night they read together the Imitation of Christ. Their dear friend, de Montalembert, was then writing a life of St. Elizabeth. Having learned that the Saint and her husband used to call each other "brother" and "sister," they adopted the practice. She wrote in her Diary: "He called me 'sister' and I remember the angelic tenderness on his face when he said that word."
But still Alexandrine did not have the gift of Faith, and Albert's greatest sorrow was that his wife could not kneel alongside of him at the Communion rail and receive the Savior's greatest gift of love. One night as the husband's illness became worse, he said to her: "And if God were to take me, dear?" She wrote to de Montalembert saying: "I would be more happy a widow and a Catholic, than always the wife of Albert and not a Catholic." On the fourth of June, 1836, in the presence of her husband, she heard Mass in their bedroom and there received her first Communion. Making an act of resignation to God's Will, she wrote in her Diary: "Blessed be God, that after having shared most of His pleasures, I now also must share His Agony and if I had to choose between the two I would always choose the latter." Albert called for a paper and then wrote the last words: "Lord, formerly I told you night and day: 'Allow that she be mine in Faith; grant me this happiness, even if it is a duration of only one day.' Now that you have heard me, Oh Lord, why should I now complain? My happiness is brief, is unspeakable. Now that the remaining part of my prayer is to be fulfilled that I give you my life, give me the assurance to see her again there where we shall lose ourselves in the immensity of your Love." As Albert died and received the last blessing of the Church, Alexandrine, kneeling at his side, said: "And, now Jesus, Heaven for him." A few minutes later, she added: "Jesus, I have given you my happiness; give me your Faith."
Her widowhood was given over to constant works of charity, for which she despoiled herself completely that she might be like those whom she served. When friends complained that she was making too many sacrifices, she answered in the words of the famous convert Jew, Ratisbone: "One cannot give to God less than everything." Just before she died, at the age of forty, she wrote to her sister Pauline: "When I think that after having so loved and desired earthly happiness, having had it and lost it, and having reached the depths of despair and then to have had my soul transformed by joy because of it, I realize that nothing that I ever had or imagined is comparable to that joy." "Peace is my bequest to you, and the peace which I give you is mine to give; I do not give peace as the world gives it." (John 14:27)
When one reads of the tremendous transformation of souls in the Sacrament of Matrimony, one realizes that through them, as well as in a life specifically ascetic and detached, such as in the monastery and the cloister, there can be born a fiery and ardent love of God. There is a story to this effect told about St. Macarius, the Egyptian hermit, who one day in his meditations wondered to what degree of holiness and union with God his solitude and years of fasting and prayer had lifted him. Falling asleep, he was told by an angel that he had not reached the level of holiness of two women who lived in a nearby town of whom he should learn. Greatly interested, St. Macarius went to the town and there found the women, and to his great astonishment found that they were married. He entreated them to tell the secret of their sanctity, but the two women, greatly confused, assured him that there was nothing remarkable about them: "We are but poor wives amidst constant worldly cares." But Macarius pressed his question and asked them how they came to be so holy in the eyes of God. Their answer was that for fifteen years they had been married to two brothers and had lived together under the same roof, never once quarreling nor permitting a single unpleasant word to pass between them. Thus did St. Macarius learn that peaceful co-habitation can be even more praiseworthy in the eyes of God than solitary fasting and prayer.
Because of our deep affection for the Russian people who have been much maligned because the world judges their depths by the crust of communism, we here seek within the history of the Russian people some exemplary married lives which witness to the eternal Truth that it takes three to make love. Sacred to the memory of the Russian people are David and Eufrosnia of Nurom. Before David, Prince of Nurom, ascended the throne following the death of his elder brother, he had for a long time suffered from sores that covered his whole body. The daughter of a simple woodman, a girl renowned alike for her wit and goodness, cured him with ointment and constant care. Impressed with the high quality of her mind and heart, David fell in love with her and gave his word that he would marry her. Once recovered from his illness and restored again to the splendors of the court, he felt ashamed to take for his wife a girl as simple as Eufrosnia, so he broke the promise of marriage.
But he fell ill again with the same disease and for the second time Eufrosnia cured him. This time the grateful prince hastened to keep his word and married her. Once on the throne, the nobility of Nurom, urged on by his younger brother and nephew, declared that it was an offense to the land to see a peasant-born woman on the throne. He was, therefore, ordered either to abdicate or repudiate his wife. Calling to his mind the words of Our Lord, "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder," he refused to put away his wife, preferring rather to leave the Kingdom. His beautiful young wife consoled him with the words, "Do not sorrow, Prince, the merciful God will not leave us in destitution for long."
In Nurom, meanwhile, incessant and irreconcilable quarrels had started, the seekers of power taking to the sword and creating such a chaos that the people recalled David and Eufrosnia to the throne. Their reign was conspicuous for charity (both seeking occasions to give shelter to the poor and to the afflicted), and also for a deep faith in God and religion. One day while the two were in company with a married courtier while sailing on the Oka River, the courtier began to make improper suggestions to the beautiful Eufrosnia, who said to him: "Take some water from the river on this side of the boat and taste it." The man complied with her demand. Then she said: "Now go to the other side of the ship and take some water there and taste it." When he had done so she asked: "Do you find any difference between this water, and that water?" "None," the Courtier replied. Then the Princess remarked: "And thus also is the essence of woman similar, and in vain do you, forgetting your wife, think of another."
When David and Eufrosnia were old, he entered a monastery and she entered a convent, he taking the name of Peter and she the name of Fevronia. The Russian Church has a feast to this holy couple in which this prayer is offered: "From your youth working for Christ you have recognized the only One in the world in it Who is worthy of glory, therefore you pleased Him with alms and prayers and after your death you bring health to all who venerate you, our beloved Peter and Fevronia."
How a love which is made strong in Christ can overcome obstacles is revealed in the love of Princess Maria Volkonskaya, who at the age of eighteen was married to a distinguished officer and nobleman many years her senior, whom she learned to love only after her marriage. Her husband, for a political crime, was condemned to work in the mines of Siberia. She went to see her husband on the eve of his departure for that dreaded land, and though he entreated her to forget him, she swore that she would join him in Siberia. After many difficulties, she finally obtained, from Czar Nicholas the Second, permission to leave for Siberia. Selling all of her jewels to pay for the expenses because her father would give her no assistance for an enterprise of such folly, she made the hard journey on her own resources. She wrote: "I cannot stay. If I remain here, I shall always hear the quiet reproachful voice of my husband, and in the faces of my friends I will read the truth concerning my behavior. In their whispers, I shall get a sentence, in their smiles my reproach. My place is not at a ball but in a distant and savage land where a woeful prisoner, a prey to gloomy thoughts, suffers alone without help. I must share his disgrace and banishment. It is the will of heaven that has joined us, and we shall remain together. I would rather leave my baby here with my family than be unfaithful to my husband, for how will my son judge me one day--when he knows that his mother deserted his father in the hour of need? If I stay I might be tempted, God forbid, to forget my husband."
On her way to Siberia she stopped off at Moscow, where her sister gave an impromptu ball in her honor. Among the throngs of guests that filled the palace to see the young girl abandon her life of luxury for exile was the celebrated Pushkin, who had known Maria as a child. He forsook, for once, the bitterness he had adopted in public and talked to her with great tenderness and admiration and foretold that some day poets would sing of her heroism. After many weeks of the terrible journey, she reached the mines beyond Nertchinsk where her husband worked. By some miracle of kindness on the part of the people, she received permission to surprise her husband while he was at work in the mine. She went down into the depths of the earth and, when finally she saw him coming toward her in the gloom, she flung herself before the dazed, unbelieving man and kissed his chains.
Some years later, the exile ended and they spent the rest of their days giving example of love made stronger by adversity and disgrace. Later on, too, the prophecy of Pushkin came true as Nekrassof, the poet of the people, in a beautiful poem called "Russian Women," makes Maria speak to her father:
Father, you do not know how dear he is to me; . . .
at first I eagerly listened to tales of his courage
in battle,
And the hero in him I love with all my soul....
Later I loved in him the father of my baby....
But the last and best love my heart could give
Was the one I gave him in prison.
And then I lost him like another Christ
Garbed in the clothes of a convict
He shines now forever in the eyes of my soul
Shining with a peaceful greatness.
A crown of thorns is encircling his brow
Unearthly love shines from his eyes....
Father, I must see you again
I shall die with longing for him....
Yourself or your duty never spared anything
And have taught us to do ever the same.
Your own sons you sent to battle
At the places thought most dangerous.
You cannot quite truly condemn what I do
For I am only your daughter in doing it.
Another beautiful story of fidelity is that of Princess Katerina Troubetskaya who, after many difficulties, finally received permission from the Czar to join her husband in Siberia. Her father arranged for every detail of comfort on her departure to assure her of his approval. But during the voyage, he secretly arranged to have obstacles put in her way in order to force her to return. He begged one of his friends, the General Commander of a town in Siberia, to resort to every harshness to discourage her from making the journey. The General received her very coldly and made her wait for several days for a supposedly needed change of carriages and horses. The time having passed, he argued the validity of the imperial passport; then he questioned her health; finally, he started threats of imprisonment for allegedly disobeying the Czar, but Katerina said she did not mind prison if only she could be allowed to visit her husband. The General, in lurid terms, began to speak of the mining region beyond Nertchinsk where she was bound, and of the vicious people who lived there, and of the moral degradation awaiting a young and delicately raised cultured woman, of the death that would come to her in that cruel climate and the despair that would take possession of her soul in the midst of the guard of brutal soldiers.
Katerina answered that she was not afraid of death, as her death caused by love would only been Heaven. Furthermore, she said that her gentleness was more needed in a place where it was unknown, and as for moral degradation, there was a moral elevation given by God to those who chose to be the least in the eyes of the world.
The discussion having lasted for several days, the General finally consented, saying however that she would have to proceed as an ordinary convict and go in the company of a band of unfortunates who were then passing through the town. The rest of the journey would have to be made on foot and in chains. To which Katerina answered: "Where is this convict band which I am to join, and why could you not have told me the truth at once? Of course, I will go with them. I do not care how I arrive, or with whom, if only I arrive." On hearing this, the General could play his part no longer and confessed to her with a broken heart: "I have only obeyed, now I can torture you no longer. Your carriage will be ready in a few minutes. Please forgive me and God be with you."
G. K. Chesterton, in one of his ballads, wrote:
And so I bring the rhymes to you
Who brought the Cross to me.
These words fittingly could be applied to a young French girl by the name of Mireille de la Nenardiere, who fell in love with a distinguished, courageous and cultured man by the name of Pierre Dupouey. He had given up the Faith in his early youth, and from that time on until he met his future wife, never seemed to be able to find a substitute for it.
Andre Gide, whose disciple he was for a time, wrote: "Gradually there deepened in his soul a void which only the Eucharistic Presence could fill." In 1910 Pierre Dupouey wrote to Gide: "I am engaged to a rare and radiant maiden. I will not tell you what the angels call her, but among men she is called Mireille de la Nenardiere. Despite my astonishment to see something wise bend toward me, I must admit that this time wisdom has a face of love." When Mireille proposed to him she said that she wanted marriage in order to increase her love of God. Brought back again to the Faith through her inspiration and prayers, he married her in 1911 at which time Mireille wrote in her Diary: "The light of our home never again will be put out. We have lit you at the new fire: Christ-light that will never cease to sing of hope even in the crumbling of war for the home founded on the union of hearts cannot perish." The very first night of the marriage, Pierre proposed to establish, in memory of that day, a rite of love to be accomplished faithfully every day of their married life. He suggested that it consist of kissing each other's wedding ring before going to sleep, in order to ask God's blessing on their love, which was consecrated to His Name. Pierre Dupouey later on became so zealous for the Faith that he converted Henri Gheon, who later wrote of him: "I cannot tire of the look in his eyes--a just man, a free man who understands everything, even the good."
A son was born, and was baptized Pierre. Then came the First World War; during which Pierre wrote to his wife in a letter of August 21, 1914: "How I appreciate the joyous feeling that our hearts remain united despite the days and weeks of separation! They are united by a delightful and mighty chain of common thoughts and common prayers." A few months later she wrote to him, telling him that she was visiting the poor, to which he answered: "I thank you for helping the poor. Do it in my name. Give for both of us, and do not worry over anything that happens around you. Listen to God, Who speaks to your heart, and despise the petty prudences which put life out of the shelter of love. Apart from duty and Divine things, I only need you, or rather I need you because you are a part of a Divine thing of my life, because it is God Who made you enter into it, because you are His living and efficacious blessing to me. Since I have received you from God, I have learned to know what Providence means."
A few months later, he wrote to his wife, saying: "Your letters are the bread of my heart. I do not know if I am mistaken, but it seems to me that, even now, we receive the rewards of the effort that we've always made to consider everything in the light of eternity. How much these common thoughts of God, which have become so natural to us, have helped us pass these days and weeks, and how we must thank Him for all the Light that He has put into our hands." Then, as if anticipating death, he said: "If I come to disappear, it would only be to surround you from above more unceasingly. Do not be too preoccupied with the morrow. And remember that a little uncertainty as to the future is the best means to augment our confidence and abandonment to God."
Finally, on the eve of his death, he wrote: "At the end of all, the greatest prayer to make for each of us is included in the magnificent cry of Claudel: 'Lord, deliver me from myself.'" On Holy Saturday, at nine o'clock in the evening, he was struck by a bullet and never regained consciousness. The Chaplain who attended him said that he had gone to Heaven to celebrate his Easter.
Having been informed of his death, she wrote to the Chaplain of her husband's regiment: "Both of us have made the sacrifice. Some will think me mad, but I can tell it to you: since he is no more I have not ceased my thanksgiving to God. He sees God. I envy him. I shall nevermore be separated from him. As to our little boy, he no longer has a father on earth, but I shall put him in the hands of the Eternal Father."
One of the most remarkable men of contemporary times was Leon Bloy, who called himself the Pilgrim of the Absolute. To the married, his life bears a twofold lesson: one, the sacrificial love of a mother saving the soul of her son, and the other, how a marriage can be spiritualized, even in the midst of poverty. Mothers who have the great sorrow of seeing their children abandon their Faith can understand the deep mystery in the life of the mother of Leon Bloy. Describing his mother's sacrifices in relationship to himself, he wrote:
"In 1869 I had reached the highest point of my evil life. My mother, a Christian woman and heroine, wrote to me in 1870: "My dear son, you are one of my five sons at the front [in the Franco-Prussian War], and yet I would be more easily consoled of your death than of what is now happening." My dearly beloved mother prayed for me since my childhood. When at first indifference and then hate replaced faith in my heart, she redoubled her prayers, making them more fervent and longer, and more intense; she lighted on the altar of her heart a burning desire which perpetually ascended to God, like the flame of an unextinguishable sacrifice. As for me, I doubled my iniquities. Prayers did nothing for me, and grace found me always rebellious, impervious and inflexible. One day my mother, while meditating on the sorrowful Passion of the Divine Saviour, came to see that Our Lord having redeemed men by suffering without measure and without consolation, then we who are His own members can prolong this marvelous redemption through our imperfect sufferings. What Jesus has done absolutely by His perfect oblation of life, Christian hearts could do relatively through their sufferings. She then offered herself to suffer for her children, and to bear their penances. In a counsel of mysterious and ineffable sublimity, she made a pact with God that she would make the absolute sacrifice of her health, and the complete surrender of all human joy and consolation, if He, in return, would grant the entire and perfect conversion of her children. This prodigious bargain, concluded in the presence and through the mediation of the Most Holy Virgin, received its immediate accomplishment. She lost suddenly and irreparably her excellent health in a manner as complete as was possible without actually depriving her of life. Her life became a torment twenty-four hours a day and, in order that this torment be actually complete, her infirmity assumed a character of physical humiliation and abasement that demanded exacting heroism. As for me, I knew these things very much later, and when I had already become a Catholic. Then only, did I know that my mother had given me birth a second time in pain.... Before I came into this world, she said that she did not want me as a child. But through an extraordinary effort of will and of love, which can be understood only by superior souls, she abdicated completely her maternal rights into the hands of Our Lady, rendering the Holy Virgin responsible for all my destiny. As long as she lived, she never ceased telling me with a sublime obstinateness, that Mary was my true mother in a very special and very absolute manner."
Leon Bloy himself was destined to show in his life how even a voluntary poverty could still produce joy in marriage. While yet in his forties, in the year 1889, he met at the home of Francois Coppe a tall blonde girl, the daughter of the Danish poet Christian Molvech, who was visiting there. Bloy was presented to her and they spoke for a while. After his departure Jeanne Molvech asked her friend Anne Coppe, who this strange man was? "A beggar," she said.
Later on, Jeanne Molvech wrote concerning him: "The answer was thundering, inexorable in its absoluteness, forcing me to take sides immediately. I had the feeling that this was an enormous injustice, and immediately my heart flew out to that defenseless man who was talked of in such a way to one who had met him but once. But I had no idea of his real worth. I thank God for having hidden it from me." Jeanne did not share the Faith of Bloy and, with a prejudiced mind, wondered how a man as superior as he was could be a Catholic. A short time after their correspondence started, Jeanne embraced the Catholic Faith. Writing concerning this change of heart, Bloy said: "I am profoundly moved by the idea that you are about to enter the Church, that you are going to become, effectively, a daughter of the Holy Spirit, and that it is partly my doing--in the sense that you are receiving this magnificent reward for your compassionate love of this poor and desperate man.... When we receive a Divine Favour, we must be persuaded that somebody has paid for it; such is the law."
After their marriage not only to one another but to a voluntary poverty, they were to change residence some eighteen times in the space of twenty years, Bloy saying that this was a prefigurement of the fact that their home only would be in Heaven. Every morning, the two of them went to the earliest Mass and received Holy Communion. At breakfast, they talked to each other of God. They lived through atrocious hours of mental, moral and spiritual anguish, but beneath the surface, their lives possessed an incredible beauty and bliss. Jeanne, describing it, said: "There is a lamp lighted for us that does not burn for others."
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