HEALING THE FAMILY
Excerpts from Bernard Dubois' book: "Guerir en famille"

chapter one

THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE FAMILY
Introduction
We must of necessity define the anthropological foundations of the family before we can outline a path of healing for it. Indeed, during the past twenty years, the family has been especially under attack, and today is subject to the wrath of Satan. If the family is currently the target of choice, the reason is clearly because it is the final battle. The Holy Father made reference to this during the celebration of Family Day, when he acknowledged that the very moment of the attempt on his life came during the first day of the Commission on the family.

That is why, in order to brave such a spiritual battle, we must have as our support the model that our Savior has given us: his own Family.

1. The Holy Family: a Model

Within the family, the woman is the most severely tested. During the second half of the twentieth century, she has gone through an important phase in her growth in humanity by acquiring a certain liberation from man and a better understanding of her unique place within the couple. However, she is heading toward the dramatic loss of her significant calling by God. If the woman forgets God and her irreplaceable role in the salvation of humanity, then man, in turn, will be lost. For he is born of woman and without her help, he will no longer know who he is, and he will no longer be able to become himself. He will not be able to fulfill his calling as man, husband and father.

To remedy this situation we need to discover in the person of Mary a totally feminine woman, a spouse and a mother according to the heart of God. Mary can become a healing model for the woman and help her to recover her true calling. And furthermore, she draws us into the Holy Family and puts the Child Jesus in us. Thus, through her Son, she brings us into the Family of the Trinity and gives us Life divine.

But we cannot fully live in intimacy with the Holy Family if our spiritual life remains centered on the persons of Christ and the Virgin Mary, without giving Saint Joseph his fair place. To do so would be to lessen the Holy Family and distort the reality of the Incarnation of the Word of God. We must no longer separate the husband from the wife, the adoptive father from his child, Saint Joseph from the Virgin Mary and from their son Jesus. When God decided to come live among men, when he opened the heavens and descended, he spoke not to a single woman but to a couple. It is written in the Gospel of Saint Luke, The angel Gabriel was sent by God (…) to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary (Lk 1: 26,27). (Biblical quotes are from the Jerusalem Bible, unless otherwise cited.) Scripture is careful to specify, even before naming her, that the young woman was given in marriage to Joseph, of the house of David. God is announcing by this fact the Incarnation: he speaks to a family, to a house of royal blood, and to ordinary people. The first name spoken by the evangelist is that of Joseph, who then fades to make room for Mary. In this way the Holy Family is connected to a past. If we forget this man, not only are we missing out on a model husband and father whom we greatly need, but we are also skimping on a part of the Incarnation, which will have serious consequences. Unfortunately, this is what is currently happening too often in the West. Trinitarian life is not given to us through only one person – Mary – but also through Joseph, which is to say through a couple, through a family. This truth is embodied and its consequences are enormous.

2. Man, a Developing Member of the Family

To better understand what follows, we need to remember two essential anthropological notions that will help us discover the importance of living in the Holy Family.

- Man is a person in the process of becoming, a developing person. At each moment, no matter where he is, or what he is doing, he is capable of change. He is a being on the move.

The more one adheres to this dynamic vision of man, the more one grasps the mission of the mentor or of the teacher. Their work consists in facilitating change, of introducing it or of allowing it to happen. We can be those who reveal the capacity in the child (or in the adult) to introduce change into his or her life.

Man is also a communal being and part of a family. He was created to live in relation to others because it is not good that the man should be alone (Gen 2:18). He can only truly be himself by being included in a larger family unit. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the family is the only authentic social and spiritual reality. The couple does not exist for itself alone, as an end in itself. It is destined to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:28). Promoting the idea of the couple – as self-sufficient – is a modern and secular notion deriving from an egocentric behavior in an individualistic mindset. The same holds true with the nuclear family (parents with only one or two children).

The Lord wishes to rebuild the family. To do so he sets forth a simple, idyllic family scene and develops also, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, “New Communities” which restore a true picture of the family: all age groups are represented. In Africa and in certain countries of the Far East, the family is still made up of parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, male and female cousins. In the houses of the Community of the Beatitudes, one can see just how healing it is to have the presence of children and older adults (a “grandmother” or a “grandfather”). Such is the work of God. These larger families have a calling, as an image of the Holy Family, to be homes of love and of light, places of healing, of calm, and of rebuilding identity for young people today.

THE FAMILY, IMAGE OF THE TRINITY

1. The Trinitarian Model

God is family. Man is a familial being for he has been created in the image of the Holy Trinity. He is endlessly invited to enter into the trinitarian dynamic among the divine Persons who love each other and who constantly live a relationship of love, in the deepest respect of the identity of each. The Father loves the Son and has entrusted everything to him (cf. Jn 3:35). The Son loves the Father and does whatever he sees the Father doing (cf. Jn 5:19). The Holy Spirit is the communion of love which binds the Father to the Son and the Son to the Father. Each person of the Trinity is absolutely unique, but at the same time completely bound to the two others.

The love of the Father, Son and Spirit is characterised by a flowing circular motion, a flow of love. Within the Trinity, the three Persons are in a relationship of communal union. Each person receives completely the gift of the two others and gives himself completely, producing a permanent flow wherein each empties himself and is filled with the other, each is received and receives the other. Thus, there is a relational dynamic which is the characteristic of love.

Love: The unique impulse in God

Here is the trinitarian model, the perfect model: God is love (I Jn 4:8), God is love alone, free flowing love, love which gives itself and pours itself out endlessly. The Holy Family is a “little Trinity on the earth,” because between Mary and Joseph, close to Jesus, is lived the same dynamic of love, the same completeness of receiving and of mutual giving. In the Holy Trinity as in the Holy Family, each one of the persons receives and gives himself. We have none other than the Divine Family as our model; it is revealed to us, incarnate, in the Holy Family. The secret of every human family is contained in this relationship: each person is completed by giving himself or herself to the other. God is family and by making man, he did nothing other than create a family. In the family, each person offers himself or herself, respecting personal identity and togetherness, as St. Gregory of Nysse has explained it (Les Sentences des Pères du désert, Nouveau recueil, Abbaye saint Pierre de Solesmes, 72. Sablé sur Sarthe, 1970, n.2, p. 13): the “three divine suns” give only one and the same light. It will therefore be the Trinity that we take as our model. We cannot be father, mother, child, we cannot be family, if we do not participate in the free flowing exchange of this trinitarian love.

God has included man in trinitarian action.

From the first moment of the creation of the couple, God has included man in this trinitarian movement, in this circular, familial motion. Certainly man is distinct from God, for he is only a creature fashioned from clay; but this clay molded by God has been given life by his breath, and so has received the first fruits of the Holy Spirit. From that moment on, God lives in man and man becomes the dwelling of God. Thanks to the initial breath of life, then to the fullness of grace offered through the sacrament of baptism, we are brought into the flow of love. The Holy Spirit, always present in the innermost part of man, causes us to live in relationship with the Father and the Son, continually placing us within the trinitarian dynamic.

Through Mary…

It is to Mary, full of grace (Lk 1:28), because she has been endowed with the fullness of the Spirit, that the mission is given of ushering us into trinitarian life. By giving her the task of bringing the Son to the Father, the Spirit has taken her in a special way into the flow of love.

If we contemplate this trinitarian mystery, if we let ourselves be brought into it, we will be able to reconstruct a fully human and Christian family. But for that to be possible, we must live in the Trinity, we must make incarnate in a way, through the grace of the Holy Family, this divine love. We are all, in our families or in our communities, places of incarnation for the Holy Trinity.

2. Original Sin

However, experience tells us that we do not live it. Why not? Because of sin, in particular, original sin which takes us out of the flow of love. Outside of the dynamic of love, no life is possible, and man is subject to the pain of his hurts, of suffering and of death. Sin has cut him off from love and has pulled him from its three fold movement.

How is this possible? Because of pride. And in fact it is this other dynamic that the Serpent suggests to man: a dynamic of severance which places man outside of the flow of love, resulting in three consequences: the refusal to accept and welcome, the refusal to give and the disruption of the relationship.

The Refusal to Welcome

Pride manifests itself first in the refusal to receive and welcome. I no longer receive anything from anyone, I no longer expect anything from another because of doubt and suspicion that have been introduced into the relationship; I want to deal only with myself. The proud person no longer wants to receive from his parents, nor, consequently from God, knowledge, discernment, law and standards of morality, love of enemies and forgiveness…He is his own master, he breaks with the dynamic of welcoming and of giving, wherein he is fulfilled by loving others. He wants to do it all for himself by himself, meaning be all he can be alone, independently. No longer having an open attitude, he becomes one who takes what he needs from others and who tells anyone who wants to listen to him that he is a self-made man, and that all this originates with him: “I know,” “I can,” “I’ll manage by myself.”

At a most basic level, he is cutting himself off from the Father’s care. In a very concrete way, this means that he is cutting himself off, in his childhood hurt, from his own parents. At a psychological level, the break rebounds into a spiritual break with the Father. This results in a particular pathology widespread among today’s young people: the pathology of identity.

The Refusal to Give

Alongside of the refusal to receive is the refusal to give, the second consequence of pride. We have here a pathology of selfishness, “all for me.” I no longer give, and I no longer give myself, but I appropriate things and people, and I keep them for myself. Futher, what I take becomes the substitute of what I am. I replace my own identity that I am no longer receiving from God and from another, with what I acquire. I become a substitute self, and my identity is heavily dependent on what I have or on my influence or my appearance.

Independence and Dependent Relationships

The third consequence of pride appears in relationships. Depending on when and how it plays out with different people, the result will be an independent attitude or a dependent relationship.

- Independence means, “I don’t need you,” “I don’t expect anything from you because I’m perfectly capable of managing all by myself,” and “I’m not getting anything from you, so I don’t have to give anything to you.”

- In other cases, this will result in a dependent relationship, meaning a substitute love because the flow of trinitarian love is broken. “I’m in a relationship with you so I can dominate you and swallow you up by making you into what I what.” The other person is only the object of my self interest; the other becomes the object I use, and I take from this person even what he or she doesn’t want to give me. I think of myself as the center of the world. My identity depends on the disappearance of the other’s identity. The relationship is lived out as a power struggle in which I dominate the other.

In another person, the situation can well be the reverse. In this case, “I let myself be dominated and swallowed up by you, hoping in this way that you will continue to love me and give me my identity.” My relationship to the other comes through the negation of myself. I am the object which the other is using, and I am willing that the other is the center of my inside world. Because I am afraid of losing this love, I renounce whatever I think, want, or love – especially when I am not in agreement with this person.

Emotional Immaturity

Whether I dominate the other by hindering his or her development or whether I let myself be dominated by denying who I am, in both cases we have a dependent relationship, deadly in the long run. This process happens each time that we leave the flow of trinitarian love. It characterises the immature emotional state in which the person is enslaved by feelings of fear, anger, jealousy… The person retreats into such isolation that a meaningful relationship turns out to be impossible.

In order to leave behind childish emotions and discover true spiritual childhood, we first need to understand the nature of the initial hurt which resulted in a breakdown in the flow of love, in order then to regain the way to restauration.

3. The Work of Mourning

How can we get love to flow in us again? Through what may be called the work of mourning, meaning a work of giving birth which allows passage from one state to another. We come to this point of mourning because we have moved away from a trinitarian way of living. We have built ourselves on self centeredness and independence, on dependent relationships and childish emotions. That is why re-education becomes necessary. Our identity does not form itself: it is formed and it becomes what it is by giving. If we were not centered on ourselves, we would not need to to undergo this new birth (Jn 3:3). The work of mourning is a work of sanctification, a passage, by means of the Cross, from self-centeredness to self-sacrifice. If we were continually living as thank offerings to God, the work of mourning would no longer be necessary.

The Courage to be Afraid

We come now to a huge difficulty, to the crux in the process of mourning. We are afraid of death. Hanging on to substitute selves, we fear LOSING all that we are holding tight: our possessions, our abilities, our appearance. Every situation of loss, every letting go is lived in the fear of being the potential death of our very self. But really, it is not at all like that. The only things that will disappear are the substitutes for love, and our true identity, our deepest self with all of its capacity to love, will remain. This is why, as Chouraqui says, “death precedes life!” for death opens up to greater life. One can even say with confidence that, thanks to Christ’s victory, death is swallowed up by life, that our fears are vain and imaginary. Teresa of the Child Jesus, no stranger to the agony of dying, said about her own death, “I’m not dying, I’m entering life.” Some might say that she certainly is dead … ! But no, she has not died, for she now lives at the heart of circulating trinitarian love. In Teresa, death has henceforth been vanquished.

From Childishness to the Little Way

The passage from childishness to the little way necessitates a meaningful break and death to the self. For Teresa of the Child Jesus, the turning point came during the famous episode at Christmas, 1886. Up until then, she had let herself be ruled by her emotions and childish behavior. She would cry over nothing at all, and then she “cried because she had cried.” She couldn’t manage to get outside of herself. This particular Christmas, when she was fourteen, her father precipitated a crisis with a painfully weary reflection: “Fortunately, this is the last year!” Teresa fell into profound crisis, both in human and spiritual terms, behaving childishly by shutting herself up with her sorrow alone in her room. At this point, however, Teresa decided to act differently. She dried her tears and came down the staircase as if nothing had happened. The little way was beginning for her.

Confronting a new Choice

In our life stories too, there are episodes of Christmas. Maybe we have lived in a similar situation and we haven’t accepted it because it was calling for a renouncement, a death to ourselves. It is important to locate these events in the lives of the people that we mentor, in order to help them make a new choice, a decision to change which will always include moving from self-centeredness to self-sacrifice. By symbolically placing them in the key situation or event, at the moment when they said no, we allow them to discover that the path of change is still possible today. They can enter into the little way of childhood and live from now on in encircling love.

Making a Memorial of the Past

Besides confronting a new choice, a second way to leave our deadening attachments to the past is to use this past to make a remembrance out of these experiences that the Lord has allowed to happen. Making a memorial consists of making a eucharist (an action of thanksgiving), which is to say consciously recognizing that successive letting-go moments are in fact means of growth: “I’m not dying; I’m entering into life.”

Providence shows forth the fatherhood of God through events. Providence is made up of pleasant, smooth times, but also sad and stressful times. These latter times lead us to acts of letting-go, to times of mourning that will make us grow if we know how to make a memorial of them. Then, this particular experience, sometimes so tragic, becomes a sacred moment. What was for me fear of the unknown becomes an “experience of confidence.” To have confidence in another consists in living through the fear of what is to come, making a leap into the unknown, confronting the doubt that there is nothing on the other side, accepting the fundamental insecurity of not counting only on oneself, on what one knows, on what one possesses. Confidence helps us go beyond the fear of giving something up, the fear of suffering, the uncertainty of what is to come.

What will never change in life is the fact that it is a never ending work of mourning, moving from the state of sinner to that of rebirth. Life is full of occasions of death ready for rebirth. Each death is a passage which opens to more life. There can be no reintegration into trinitarian love without going through this acceptance of mourning.

4. The Trinitarian Structure of the Family

In mentoring and in helping situations, in educational struggles, or in marital conflicts, we may well ask the question: Where is the breakdown in the trinitarian relationship of father, mother, child?

This is a realistic question. We have lived, for the first twenty years of our life, in a family that should have been another “little Trinity on earth.” We have been the son or daughter of our mother or father. There was a certain flow of love – more or less present, sometimes more notable by its absence. This childhood past is not gone, it is not buried, it hasn’t come down to a few old ashes that can be warmed up; rather, it is perfectly present and still active in daily life.

Today we deal with father equivalents (the Pope, a plant director, an abbot, the shepherd of a prayer group, the parish priest, a father-in-law…), mother equivalents (a mother-in-law or life giving places such as a community, the Church, a prayer group, the parish…), and we experience relational difficulties with those who evidence upheaval going back to the early stages of love. For how I live out my relationships today – in my behavior, in my emotions – shows that my childhood is definitely present in the here and now. (see diagram 1).

The Numbers Two and Three

We are born into a family and we need a family in order to grow. For a family to function it must be on the trinitarian model of “three” in “one.” Thus, the Jewish tradition teaches that the letter beth (b) which is also the number two, manifests the created, whereas aleph (a), the “one” is the expression of unity, the divine. The “two” cannot be sufficient unto itself, for it runs the risk of collapsing into a destructive one against one. It calls the “three” and the “one”. So the couple is never an end in itself, and in order to flourish, it must open up to the communion of mutual love (they become one body, Gen 2:24) and fertility (be fruitful and multiply, Gen 1:28).

Abnormalities appear each time there is a breakdown of relationships within the trinitarian model. The three in one relationship is reduced and replaced by a certain number of dual relationships, with the members then falling into a potential dependent relationship based on selfish behavior whose main consequences are loss of identity and loss of growth.

In order to re-establish the trinitarian dynamic, we must identify where and why the relationship became dual. Then a third must be introduced between the two persons so that identity and growth can again take place. Every human relationship calls for openness. There can be no couple or no family without openness, just as there would be no trinitarian circulation of love without openness. In the Gospels we see how Jesus does battle against all that walls in a person: withdrawal into self, into one’s own religion (when he gives the Samaritans by way of example, he resolutely breaks with the discrimination that the Jews practiced toward them. Cf. Lk 10:33; 17,18; Jn 4:40), a rigid interpretation of the law (the sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath Mk 2:27), and notably closure of the family. There is no one who has left house, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children or land for my sake…(Mk 10:29). It is not peace I have come to bring, but a sword( Mt 10:34). Jesus came to open again what had been closed in order to bring us into the Trinitarian Family. Coming from a family that has given us life, we must separate from it in order to establish a new family, human or spiritual, which will be the place of new births.

The Right Distance, Separation and Identity

A family is a unit open to the outside, whose distinguishing characteristic is a dynamic action of relating and loving. For there to be action, there must be the right distance. If there is no distance, there will be dependency and lack of movement. If there is too much distance, there will be a breakdown, independence and loss of life and growth. Keeping the right distance, which guarantees a certain separateness in the relationship and avoids the trap of indifference, which leads to independence, is most important. With this in place, personal identity will develop as it should. The right distance, separation and identity are the three key words of a relationship serving to tell us whether or not the love is healthy.

In order for a family to function and live lovingly together, there must be an open relationship among the members, each being readily available to the others.

- Let’s take, for example, a very strong dual relationship between two spouses. This may be observed in certain couples who have voluntarily decided not to have children. Strong dual relationships may also be observed in couples suffering from infertility. Often it’s the case that the child is desired not for its own sake, but for the couple’s sake, giving rise to problems of bioethics. The child is no longer seen as a gift coming from spousal love. It becomes a “choice,” an option that one can either refuse or claim as a right. The child risks becoming an object serving the needs of the couple. The couple is then closed in upon itself, and the child no longer has the right to be what it should freely be. The celebrated modern nuclear family is only a substitute couple whose child comes as the object of dependent love and as a selfish way of continuing its own existence. It would appear that the couple gives mutually, but only to each other, and the child becomes their property.

- In other situations, it’s the mother who engulfs her children by taking them for herself and excluding the father (similar to those created without their paternity being known, according to Fivete in his book Fecondation In Vitro Et Transplantation d’Embryons). The mother lives in a dependent relationship with her child. The child can no longer be what it was created to be and loses its identity. The child “enters into the mother” without having access to the father, who has been pushed to the outside and rejected by the mother. The mother no longer fulfills her role which is precisely that of allowing engagement with the father. This type of pathology is seen in its neurotic manifestations (obsessions or phobia), in mental anorexia, and in identity problems, in particular, homophobia.

- The inverse situation, although more rare, gives the same result: the father-daughter couple, for example, works to the detriment of the ostracized mother. The daughter, estranged from her mother, can no longer find an identity model. She can’t figure out her relationship to her father and she tends to confuse her position with that of spouse.

Receiving and Giving

It is important, then, to try always to maintain an openness to love among all members of the family. They will be able to take root and grow in all directions, each member receiving from the others, but also having something to give. As soon as the relationship becomes one-way, abnormalities appear. There are those who give without receiving and those who receive without being able to give. In order to trace a pathway to healing, it will be necessary to leave the dual relationship in order to find the trinitarian relationship; and also, reintegrate into the two-fold action of receiving and giving.

There is a truth we see verified all the time in the formation of children. It is this: it is good to allow a child the opportunity to give something to his parents.

- Forgiving is an excellent example of this. In order that the child can discover the richness of forgiveness, in order that he accept the gift of mercy, the “gift above all gifts,” he has to experience his parents asking forgiveness for their own mistakes, as, for example, when a punishment has been out of proportion to the fault committed. Parental authority always comes out stronger here, because the parents are offering their child a chance to give. And the child in turn becomes capable of asking for forgiveness.

- The paternal blessing is an important moment at bedtime. But why not sometimes ask your children to bless you, during the evening prayer for example? There again, you are offering them the chance to give you something. You increase their self concept because they discover the priceless value of the gift of themselves. They realize they are important to you. They enter into a new circulation of love, into another way of being which becomes part of who they are.

We have previously seen that identity problems, so common today, originate in the breakdown of the relationship between father, mother and child. Each one must now take back his or her place within the dynamics of the family. The child needs to give to both father and mother, just as he needs to receive their love. Similarly the parents give of themselves, but they can also receive from each other and from their children.

Family pathology is a result of an abnormality in the trinitarian relationship of love, from a distortion of giving and receiving, from a lessening, maybe even an absence, of a give and take relationship between two persons. The other becomes the object of my desire: I strive to dominate the other, to put the other person under my influence. I enter into a love-hate relationship with the other. I love this person, but I suffocate him. I love her but the relationship, because it turns on itself, is headed towards loneliness.

The introduction of a third into the dual relationship will change the balance and will, of necessity, initiate a time of mourning, dying to certain artificial ways of being, but awakening to new life.

Mentoring work with a couple will often cause increased distress. This is because the pathway of healing always begins by opening up the relationship, presupposing a death to the self. The work of mourning centers around the fact that the isolated party (for example, the father in the mother-child relationship) becomes welcomed back. Thanks to a third person coming into the dual relationship, rightful identity is restored, as little by little the person concerned moves away from being the center. Such a change is very disruptive to the person who is changing. It is a call to give, and then finally to release. This means no longer being in charge, but once more surrendering to another’s love. How can this be possible? Through confidence followed by a complete surrender making us lose our sense of security. The task of becoming childlike is deeply unsettling and we should not be surprised that a growing intimacy with the Holy Family causes some deep distress or defensive reactions.

The Example of Some New Communities

In the context of a community composed of chaste singles and families living together, we may find examples which illustrate what we are talking about.

-Single people vowed to chastity highlight a particular aspect of family life involving all baptized members. In the past in the Church, before Vatican II, strong emphasis was put on the difference between the clergy and the faithful laity, between celibacy and marriage. However, consecration has no need of emphasizing these differences in order to define its great calling. Celibate singles give witness to the prophetic grace of the Kingdom. They represent the wedded union of man with Christ. They witness in their flesh union to Christ the bridegroom. They are “the spouses of Christ,” not for living in a two fold relationship but in a three part communion. By intensifying their nuptuals to the gift of their selves, they grow and discover a true healing, not only emotionally but also spiritually, in the heart of the larger community. There is a risk that the celibate single, especially at the beginning of his or her spiritual life, will seek after “his very own God,” becoming just “Him and me.” At a spiritual level, this person is recreating an underlying psychological pathology. For the door to his or her heart is locked and nobody else can enter. “I’m going to have my own encounter with my own God.” Others are missing from this relationship which makes no room for intercession for the world.

It is through the fruits of love that we can see if the circulation of love is balanced between a person and the Savior. If the celibate single has a tendancy to shy away from outward acts of love (such as being helpful, or doing a rather thankless task…), we can see that he or she is living in a dependent relationship to God. The path to healing must include the introduction of a third party. A hermit is an excellent example of what we are talking about, for he is not content just dwelling with his Lord. Even as he lives in a spousal relationship, he carries the world in his prayers. Intercession, the mediation of prayer for the Church and for all of humanity, is a powerful means of healing for a good number of those in religious orders who have lost their sense of calling. If they become aware of their unique vocation as intercessors before the Father, they again find meaning in their lives. If they open themselves to the entire world in their prayer, they bring forth fruit. Saint Silouane was able to write: “He who prays for the world pours out blood from his own heart.” The spousal relationship with Christ, in consecrated or non-consecrated singleness, is called to bear this kind of spiritual fruit, visible or invisible.

- By becoming part of a new community, families also live out a type of consecration. Their presence alongside chaste singles is prophetic for the Church today. They incarnate another aspect of the Holy Trinity, in another complementary way. They do not symbolize first of all a spousal union with Christ, but rather the mystery of sonship and paternity. The family constantly reminds us that we are all sons of the same Father, thanks to the Holy Spirit which is guiding us through Mary. The presence of children, of a father and a mother in a community, allows each to visualize, to touch, and to experience the action of trinitarian love which flows between parents and children, meaning ultimately the love of the Father for the Son and of the Son for the Father. Such love can only be lived in the Holy Spirit.

The new communities are prophetic in that they give evidence of trinitarian life. By gathering chaste singles and families into one community, they show forth simultaneously the two great callings of the people of God: that of being wedded to Christ by being consecrated to Him and that of filial devotion to the Father. This is why these are privileged places of healing for those who come to spend a few days or months. These extended families, by giving witness how God’s people live, are called to be genuine “little trinities on earth.” That is the magnificent work that the Holy Spirit is creating today in his Church!

God’s teachings come through the family. Parents are an image of the Father for their children, and they teach them, through listening and obedience, how to mature in their identity as son and daughter. The mother has the delicate task of bringing the children to the father, as the Spirit leads us to the Father. These different aspects of family life last forever, whether one is living in consecrated singleness or in marriage. Every man and woman is called to be in turn son, spouse, father or daughter, spouse, mother. Trinitarian love flows this way for everyone. It is the only relationship of love possible which avoids problems with dependence or independence.

For a community to live and grow, it must have a paternal and a maternal expression. Within the structure of the Abbey, for example, the Abbot and the Abbess represent Christ. Invested with authority, they are the paternal figure for the monks and the nuns. Beside them, the headmaster and the mistress of the novices act as mother for those newly called, who are discovering what monastic life is all about. They watch over each individual very attentively, even to the smallest details. Communities of this type, built on the trinitarian model, respect the place of father, mother, and children, in a healthy exchange of love which helps their members grow and discover their true identity as God’s sons or daughters.

These new communities have as their calling to be those homes of love and of light prophesied by Martha Robin from 1936 on, where each member can draw on as much love and hope as he or she needs. God calls them forth to function as extended families, becoming a place of growth and life for so many young people painfully wounded by the divorce of their parents and the break-up of their family. These communities are an answer to the current tragedy of the disappearance of the family.

An Answer to the Problems of Today

The trinitarian vision of man is the best antidote to the esoteric trends currently popular in North America and in Europe. In the “New Age” for example, man seeks union with God, but by losing himself in “the great All.” In the communion with the God of the Trinity, on the other hand, each being keeps his or her own personal identity, without adding or subtracting anything to the self. Trinitarian union does not negate the identity of those who belong but rather reinforces it, contrary to mystics who extoll oneness and loss of self. When the family once again functions on the trinitarian model, and thus gives the proper place to the father and the mother in their relationship with the child, then healing will be widespread in our society.

5. The Holy Family, Place of Healing

From this, it follows that the Holy Family is the chosen place for healing. What goes on here? Simply put: loving to death. The picture of the Holy Family drawn by Brother Ephraim explains:

- “…Joseph loving Mary to death…”. In fact Joseph is the model spouse. He gives up his life for his spouse. His son Jesus will carefully follow his example, as St. Paul points out in his Epistle: Husbands should love their wives just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy (Eph 5:25). The Savior could say: “As my adopted father loved my mother Mary, I also give up my life for my Spouse.”

-“Mary loving Jesus to death.” She is the perfect mother, who fulfilled her motherhood by giving her son. She pointed Jesus to the Father all her life. She let him go, she accepted with all of her being the separation that the Cross meant. She gave up her child, her gentle lamb, into the hands of the Father.

-“Jesus loving the world to death” lay down his life for the salvation of each person.

This is the encircling trinitarian love which invites us in.

To Give All and To Give Oneself

We find this same message in St. Teresa of the Child Jesus, who is an example of saintliness for the coming century. This one ambition resonated in her heart: loving to death, giving life to the point of death, totally giving of the self to the point of emptying the self (Phil 2: 6-8). In this, there will be true joy, a spiritual happiness which turns on sacrificial love; in this, we resemble God the most, we become God. Our world is for the most part dedicated to self fulfillment and self realization. However, self fulfillment consists precisely in giving oneself. “To love is to give all and to give oneself,” Teresa assured us. There is no happiness outside of the total gift of the self. The direction that family life is to follow is contained in one short sentence: A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends (Jn 15:13). Family is part of the flow of trinitarian love, where each member gives himself or herself in radical love, to loving to death (the image of what the Martin family experienced). It is from this perspective that the Church will go so far as to call a mother blessed who prefers death so that her child might live.

Broken Families

To say that laying down one’s life to the point of dying for love is the goal of family life does not mean to live in a perfect family. We should get rid of our yearning for the perfect family as much as possible, and not entertain thoughts like, “Oh! If I could only live in a perfect family!” The imagery associated with the upper middle class picture perfect Christian family sometimes can be a bitter illusion. This too perfect family, looking good from every angle, is only an imaginary ideal. A real family cannot be a dream. In a real family there will be a crack in the facade, a break where an opening up may take place. The family with a halo of perfection around it will be a self-centered family, legalistic, unforgiving, not comprehending weakness, sufficient unto itself. It won’t need anyone. A true family cannot be self sufficient, for like the members of the Trinity, like the Holy Family, it doesn’t exist for its own sake, but stays open to the world.

Our families are imperfect, fortunately. The stresses of weakness and sin open them to even greater love, love with mercy. It becomes possible to give beyond what is fair, beyond what is expected, and to enter into the folly of love, going so far as the scandal of forgiving and loving one’s enemies. We don’t need our families to be perfect, for it is far preferable that they be humble, open, even raggedy and torn. Today’s families are often shattered. That does not mean the death of the family, but rather a time when the power of God can be at work in our fragility. In the weakness the gift of God will show itself, leading us even to loving to death. “Alone, I cannot, but God can, in me.” When man confronts an impossibility, he also discovers recourse in confidence and in loving dependency on the Holy Trinity. We should ask the Holy Spirit to accomplish in our heart what we cannot do by ourselves.

Education consists in showing our children divine life by living it ourselves, by being a “trinity on the earth,” by preaching through the example of our humility. How slow we are to believe that imperfection will inherit perfection, that poorness in spirit will inherit infinite love! We should not stay fixated on desiring an ideal we can never attain, but we should be realistic, and the reality is the Holy Trinity, love which gives of itself. This reality clashes with all the pipe dreams, with a TV world that can’t be felt, touched, or tasted because it is imaginary, a flimsy, virtual world.

It takes a lifetime of struggles to learn how to accept one’s vulnerability, spiritual poverty and limits. We need to fall down hundreds of times, experience sickness and exhaustion and have all kinds of things happen to us that we don’t understand in order to recognize our limits. So long as we try to bypass our limits, we run around in circles, we stay outside of our deepest self. It is an undeniable truth that our deepest self can be fully realized only when it lives in trinitarian love.

Our lives are above all marked by the Cross. This is what Croatian couples signify in their marriage ceremonies when they put their hands together on a crucifix. The family is not first of all a place of refuge. On the contrary it is where one can find totally healing love, because it is totally selfless, and lifelong, a love of God that it is urgent to pass on. It is time to consecrate ourselves to God in our families, to give ourselves completely and die doing whatever our work is, by loving to death.

Part One

The woman receives and gives life

1. The Woman Receives (Spouse)

It is her very Nature

Woman in Hebrew is nekeva, which means “hollow,” “receptacle,” “to create an inside space.” Whether she wishes it or not, her body shows that she is reception. It is supple and tender. It is made to console and to give life.

Woman by nature needs to be loved. That is why she naturally takes on an attitude that is eminently spiritual, that of letting herself be loved. This comes easier to her than to the man, because she was created for receiving and welcoming. She has a particular disposition to receive – so she can give in return. She is less spontaneously “a doer” than man. She has a greater propensity for an “inside” love (action of receiving), whereas man favors an “outside” love (he lays down his life by giving himself). Woman cannot be all she is meant to be without responding to this ontological need of being loved.

Because she has been created in this way, as woman and spouse, she is predisposed to a privileged relationship with God as spouse. St. Teresa of the Child Jesus clearly illustrates this, for when people talked to her about heaven, she would say, “I think only about the love that I will receive and about the one to whom I can give” and also “I need to love, to infinity.” And for Mary too. There was a priest who used to affirm in the course of his homily that her holiness does not come only from the fact that she is the mother of God, but especially from the fact that she let herself be loved, by believing and receiving the love of God. Mary accepted entering into preferencial love. And God proposes this very same love to each one of us. With Christ, with the Virgin Mary, we should be able to say, “I am the beloved, the chosen, the preferred, the cherished of God.” Yet too often we don’t open ourselves enough to this love. Mary is proclaimed blessed (Lk 1:48) because she believed and adhered with her whole being to that electing love.

She is Naturally Religious

The woman possesses an ability to receive that relates her naturally to the spiritual world. Her other name in Hebrew is ishah (aleph-chin-be) whereas man’s name is ish (aleph-yod-chin). Each has a letter of his or her own. For the woman, it’s the be, signaling spiritual breath. This is a letter twice present in the sacred tatragram YHVH (uod be vav be). One can say that woman is predisposed to a better understanding of spiritual matters. She will be able to help man enter more fully into the presence of God, and will awaken in him the desire to know him, to serve him and to love him. The man has the letter yod, standing for the hand – the hand of man but also of God. Thus, he will be more naturally inclined to action. To him in a special way comes actual realization, the incarnation in the here and now of the plans God has for the couple.

Woman is therefore by nature more religious than man. It is a recognized fact that the number of religious orders of women is three to four times higher than that of the masculine orders, and our Sunday assemblies are often made up of three quarters women. The Jewish tradition estimates, appropriately, that the woman is exempt from observing six hundred and thirteen commandments. Continuously being in touch with the divine thanks to her spousal nature, she has no need to go to the synagogue to pray.

However, this aptitude also makes her more vulnerable to the devil’s attacks. She will be the first to be tempted. For if she is capable of welcoming life and love, she can also be open to evil. Eve was the origin of the fall for man, but Mary, the New Eve, becomes the Annunciation, the Temple of Life, source of our recovery.

Woman’s spousal nature and her open disposition allow her to more easily perceive the work of God, the work of the divine Spouse in her and around her. She hears and receives divine announcements before man does. We see this in Mary who hears what the angel Gabriel has to say six months before St. Joseph is informed. We see it in the holy women (in particular Mary Magdeline) who believe in the Resurrection even as the Apostles are still unbelieving.

She is Prophetic

The woman often receives the prophetic intuition in the couple and she grasps and understands the work of the Holy Spirit well before the man. That is why it is very important for the husband to be particularly attentive to the intuitions of his wife. The Gospel give us several examples of this in Mary’s life. At her words little John the Baptist stirs in his mother’s womb and recognizes in the Spirit the coming of Christ the Messiah. It is again by her words – See how worried your father and I have been, looking for you (Lk 2:48) – that Jesus at age twelve accepts going to Nazareth in order to be about his Father’s business, while being schooled by his adoptive father Joseph. Again, it is her word at Cana which results in Jesus’ first miracle. She says to her son, They have no wine, then she addresses the servants, Do whatever he tells you (Jn 2:5).

However, while it is true that she is prophetic, the woman does not have the ability to pick time and moment: this gift, as we have seen, belongs to the man. She will need her husband to embody her intuitions in the here and now.

She is Interior

A man gives himself foremost in the work of his hands, risking becoming too oriented toward work and by what is exterior to him. Paying less attention to himself, he can take on suffering through giving himself in work, in a calling. The woman cannot do the same, for she is more interior, running the risk of losing herself in her own suffering (hysteria is found more often in women). She can deal with this only by giving herself, through physical or spiritual maternity. She gives direction to her suffering, then, by giving life.

From what we have said, it follows that the woman runs the risk of expecting fulfillment from her husband, whereas she must depend on God in order to live an abundant life. Above all else, she is the daughter of our heavenly Father. If she continues waiting for her fulfillment from her husband, she may be driven to disappointment, concentrating too much on her children to the point of hindering their development, forming a dependent relationship with them. We see right along in women the tendancy to dominate, particularly boys, which can be stiffling for the children.

2. Woman as Daughter of the Father

Woman is the Wonder of Man

The woman is sensitive to how she is perceived to a greater degree than is the man. She needs to please, to be recognized, admired, and especially loved. This affirmative has nothing perjorative about it. She carries within her the echo of the first amazement of man, of Adam for his helpmeet Eve, of the look which would make her fully woman and the echo of the happiness of man. Adam marveled saying: This at last is bone from my bones, and flesh from my flesh! (Gen 2:23) The gaze of the man on the woman fulfills her as a woman and as a spouse. The calling of the woman is to be the wonder of the man, and one of the essential needs of the man is to marvel at his wife. There will be enormous suffering in the couple when the man feels she does not satisfy his expectations of her.

Daughter of the Father

Consequently, it matters that she remember she is her father’s daughter, but also and especially the daughter of her Heavenly Father. Her emotional and spiritual development has been marked by her relationship to her father. He represents her first contact with what is masculine and this will have marked significance for the future. Depending on her own previous choices and how she herself was hurt as a child, she may alternate between two extremes in her relationship to men: total dependency (she abdicates to him, letting herself be dominated, and not becoming all she can be as a woman) and independence (typical of feminism and its “I don’t need you; I can do it on my own”).

If as a child the young girl doesn’t obtain a certain degree of freedom from her father, then as an adult she will not be truly ready to become a spouse. For if she has not distanced herself from the male, she cannot be a true counterpart. She risks going from obedient daughter, conforming to expectations in order to please her parents, to totally dependent wife. Being a spouse is all about loving. Being married is to get beyond ourselves in order to give ourselves to the other. But we can only give what we have, what we are, and if our self is not fully formed and finished, inhabited by God’s presence indwelling in us, then the self remains waiting, and is not a giving self.

Under the Father’s Tender Gaze

True freedom comes only when we liberate ourselves from worrying about how others perceive us and commit ourselves to living under God’s loving gaze. This is true of Mary, where tradition has it that she lived in the Temple at Jerusalem in her Father’s tender care. We see her totally attentive to the Father. At the Annunciation, she ponders in her heart the mystery of the birth told to her, and leaves to the Lord the job of informing St. Joseph (Mat 1:20: Do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife…)

Similarly, woman cannot find freedom and enter into a beneficial relationship with man unless she assumes some distance from him, placing herself under the Heavenly Father’s tender care. Our relationship to God the Father is foundational to our true self. By rejecting paternalism, patriarchal society and the father’s authority – whose excesses are certainly not to be tolerated – woman has in effect cut herself off from the paternity of God, who has the power to let her become an adult, at the risk of staying an adolescent forever.

3. The Mother Receives and Welcomes Life

It is a very bad thing to stay just a daughter, finishing as an “old maid.” Every woman is made to be fully daughter, then spouse and mother: daughter of the Father, spouse of Christ, mother of mankind, mother of humanity, in and through a maternity which goes beyond that of the flesh and which constitutes her deepest being. Mary is Mother of God, mother of Christ, mother of the Church, and mother of mankind.

Our society is experiencing a crisis of maternity where women no longer want to have children and are refusing to give life. This is really the devil’s strategy: “The Evil One is much more jealous of the woman than of the man, because her first mission is to be life, to give life, to give birth and in this way to participate most intimately in God’s work. The serpent knows that in order to hinder God’s work, he must take on the woman so that he can reduce her capacitities as life giver” (J. Croissant, La Femme sacerdotale ou le sacerdoce du coeur. Note: This chapter was edited with her participation.) If the woman no longer becomes a mother, the world is lost. For if there are no more mothers, what will our future look like? What will become of our children? How will God make them his if nobody brings them forth into the world? (Is 37:3)

The current struggle takes on an eschatological turn which is more and more pronounced, dealing with the very identity of the woman, with maternity, and the integrity of the family. It is certainly not by chance that God said to the woman, Your yearning shall be for your husband yet he shall lord it over you (Gen 3:16), for by nature the woman risks becoming dominant, precisely because of her power over the child she has brought forth; this insidious but profound tendancy is like the derailment of maternal love which can go from giving to possessing.

In order to escape the all powerful male, contemporary woman saw no other solution than that of becoming like him, not realizing that this would lead to a rejection of her feminity. But it is impossible to work like a man does when there are children to care for. Maternity quite naturally became the major handicap she absolutely had to overcome in order to claim equality.

Do we realize the human and spiritual consequences for our society that result from this fact? Women are dissuaded from their calling to have children. They are no longer ready to sacrifice themselves so that their children can become in turn fully realized men and women, and not wounded people, spoiled by too many material things, but lacking in this essential love a mother has, ready to give her life for them.

God chose to need woman so that he might pass on his own life, just as he chose to use man for assigning paternity. To give life is to pour out blood and when blood is lost, life is lost. Shedding blood in order to give life is a significant part of every woman’s nature. Her monthly periods are the powerful sign of this fact.

The woman is responsible for all those that she has taken in and cares for. She is responsible for relationships within the family, having the care of each person. The Jewish tradition recognizes in her this essential role of being the soul of the house, the guardian in a way of the Presence of God in the home. She answers for those whom she has welcomed and received. In recognition of this she is given the blessing of the light which opens the family liturgy of the Sabbath. In fact the sages of Israel mention that since the fall into darkness came through Eve, it is by the woman that the light must be re-introduced. This perspective speaks eloquently to us as Christians, since the new Eve, the Virgin Mary, brought light into the world by giving us her son. And it is remarkable that this tie between the woman and light goes well beyond the bounds of the Judeo-Christian tradition and can be seen in other cultures: in Africa, for example, where the mothers keep a small lamp burning, and when the man returns home he feels a presence, a life.

The woman’s body has been created to welcome and receive life. This physical reality is the sign of a spiritual reality. The woman is the Temple of life. A rabbi said it this way: “When I draw near my spouse, I am accomplishing a priestly act, for I am entering into the temple of life.”

4. The Mother, God’s Tenderness

What are the qualities of a mother? Tenderness, love, patience, sweetness, a listening ear. When looking for the definition of the word “tenderness” in the dictionary, the first example given is the “tenderness of a mother.” For the father is the protector and deliverer, and the mother is the consoler to her child. The liturgy invokes Mary this way, as “tenderness of God,” “consoler of the afflicted.”

Tenderness is not incompatible with strength. The blessed Mary of the Incarnation knew this and wrote: “Mary is the strong woman, the expression of God’s tenderness.” Tenderness which is not cloying or stiffling, but rather strong and exacting. It is standing at the foot of the cross that Mary lets her child go to the Father. She shows not only her own tenderness, but also the strength and tenderness of another. She counts on this Other and this is what allows her to stay courageously nearby her Son. She is willing to be consoled and loved by the Father. God has crowned her with love and tenderness. As tenderly as a father treats his children, so Yahweh treats those who fear him (Ps 103:4 and 13). Now, please let your love comfort me, as you have promised your servant. Treat me tenderly, and I shall live… (Ps 119:76-77). I will betroth you to myself for ever, (…) with tenderness and love; I will betroth you to myself with faithfulness, and you will come to know Yahweh (Hosea 2:21-22). Mary is mother because she receives in her very self the tenderness of God from the time of her Immaculate Conception, and she allows it to flow through her in a unique way starting with the Annunciation.

The presence of the mother is felt in a different way from that of the father. The mother touches her child and speaks to it, awakening it to life. In certain cultures, Hindu, for example, the child is massaged during its first year. Through this, the child develops a consciousness of the body, a confidance in the self and a sense of well-being, essential to his or her growth. Unfortunately, in the West, mothers too often let themselves be overwhelmed by other jobs. They no longer know how to caress their child enough. Because it is the expression of the tenderness of God, the love which passes through the mother will limit the presence of guilt feelings.

When there are shortcomings in mothering, the child lives out two interior conflicts:

- death desires and urges. Difficulties in living and tendancies toward depression that are so frequent today often come from an early maternal hurt, perhaps taking place even before birth;

- a feeling of guilt, meaning an unpleasant impression of not being as one should, shame at what one is, a feeling of indignity or impurity experienced even in the body. This feeling has taken root in separations, negative and perjorative words, and in gestures and attitudes which have not nurtured the child.

Doubtless, we have all received a lot from our mother, and that has made us what we are. But each one of us, however, has been lacking maternal love to some degree, for we have inevitably experienced times in childhood when we were not loved. What we have not received from our mother, the Virgin Mary can give us since she offers us the One who is Life, Jesus Himself.

part two

the mother designates the father

Mary plays an essential role in the discovery of St. Joseph and the Father. We will discover this in three ways:

- The woman brings forth man;

- The woman submits;

- The mother names the father.

1. The Woman Brings Forth the Man

Every man is born of a woman. Thus, Scripture presents Eve as being genuinely the mother of all those who live (Gen 3:20). The psalmist equally sings: But all call Zion “Mother”, since all were born in her (Ps 87:5). And Christ on the Cross asks Mary to be the Mother of all mankind, through designating the disciple he loved to her. So tradition has interpreted his last words, Woman, this is your son. And to John, This is your mother (Jn 19:26,27 The original text even says: This is THE mother.)

Man, then, is born of woman, and it is not merely a question of birth in the flesh. Within the Holy Family, Mary brings forth St. Joseph in his role as father of the Messiah. Mary had already begun to be a mother for six months when Joseph learns, via the angel’s announcement, that he is called to be the adoptive father of the Son of God. Maternity precedes paternity, and it is the absolute condition for it: for the father of course cannot be father except by the mother. If the woman keeps the child for herself, the man is excluded from his paternity. Mary gives Jesus to St. Joseph, and draws her spouse into a pure and selfless love, totally oriented to the Father. In this way he will be prepared to receive in perfection the grace of the amazingly unique paternity laid on him.

The woman, according to what Genesis tells us, is a helpmate for the man (Gen 2:18). But because the woman brings forth the man, because she in some way “gives birth to” her spouse, she can also dominate him. She simply possesses a greater maturity than he does: for this reason she confirms him and helps him grow in his calling. That is why the Word of God asks her to submit (Eph 5:21-24). The temptation which threatens the woman is to dominate the man by her emotional power. The man, weakened by her, risks reacting by using masculine force to overpower her in turn.

If the woman brings forth the man, he, however, is her shepherd. Scripture specifies that the woman is taken from Adam’s rib (Gen 2:21,22). Here we find an expression of the marvelous equilibrium of the Trinity, where none of the divine Persons is self sufficient nor dominates the other. If we forget any part of this communion, we run straight into an anthropological catastrophe. Woman, unfortunately, has held on to the notion that submission implies male domination. Has she forgotten that she is in the strong position because she brings forth the man? God asks her to accept this man as her shepherd (ibid.).

That is why it is said that everything begins with the woman. If she loses her calling, the man can no longer find his. It is because she wants to be like him (feminism) that the man is lost. There is no more father because there is no more mother. The man only comes into paternity with the woman’s help. The man can no longer be father because the woman is dominating him. That is why we insist on the importance of the submission of the woman.

2. The Submission of the Woman

This is the stumbling block for feminism which dares to label the Apostle Paul a woman hater! In fact this comes from past sufferings and from a faulty understanding of Scripture.

A call to love…

Since the woman by her very nature needs to be loved and protected, she has to love her husband. This is why it is only asked of men that they love their spouse. Husbands should love their wives (Eph 5:25) says St. Paul in the immediate continuation of the same text. This implies that herein lies the difficulty for the man and not for the woman. The apostle never said to woman “love your husband.” The invitation consists in loving one’s wife even as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her. How did Jesus love? He who said to us that a man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends (Jn 15:13) offered his life for the Church, his spouse. And he leads us into the same sacrifice. This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you (Jn 15:12). St. Paul’s exhortation comes down to saying: Husbands, love your wives more than your selves, laying down your life for her. In this way St. Joseph loved Mary to death. The calling of the husband is to lay down his life for his wife by giving himself totally to her. And the woman has the right to expect a love which will go all the way.

A calling to be holy

It is to such a spouse that the woman is asked to submit herself faithfully. Because he came from the woman, he can only give himself entirely to a woman who submits to him. The difficulty for the woman is not in loving her husband, but in accepting not to dominate him and also taking him as her shepherd. The man for his part will have a problem faithfully loving his wife. He is weaker than she, taking his roots from her. Thus, if he is in danger of being dominated by her, he risks no longer respecting her and may become unfaithful. A dominating woman becomes a spouse who limits a man by her dependence and emotional childishness, or by the opposite, through searching for independence in work or in marital infidelity. As we see in Scripture, the man has the right to require holiness from his spouse: as beautiful as a bride, all dressed for her husband (Rev 21:2). Woman is the reflection of man’s glory (I Cor 11:7) affirms St. Paul. There is always in man the desire for the perfect woman, this “Eshet Hail” mentioned in the book of Proverbs (Prov 31:10 Eshet Hail means “a perfect woman” in Hebrew). A perfect wife—who can find her? She is far beyond the price of pearls. (Prov 31:10) Happy the husband of a really good wife; the number of his days will be doubled (Ecc 26:1).It is said likewise of Christ and the Church: He made her clean by washing her in water with a form of words, so that when he took her to himself she would be glorious, with no speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless (Eph 5:27).

A man often is looking for a mother in his wife. Mary is the perfect mother who can help a man to reconcile himself with his own mother and to love his wife.

A Helpmate by his side

Man, as we have said, needs woman. Through her he gives his utmost for only she can give life to his virility. Let her again find her rightful place by his side and together they will bear fruit. They will “know” each other. “To know” literally means “to be born with,” to receive together, and one through the other the gift of life, the gift of God. The woman who refuses the seed of her husband and wishes to be self-sufficient condemns herself to sterility; not only herself, but also the whole family circle. She paralyzes them and herself by depriving her husband of all action and responsibility for originating life.

There is between the woman and God something like a passive co-operation, a sort of partnership. She participates in bringing forth man, in the birth of humanity, by uniting herself to God. It is through the yes of Mary that salvation entered the world. The yes of Joseph is second: he will permit the realization of the incarnation. But it is through the yes of the woman, by the unconditional gift of her life, that the world is saved. She precedes man in understanding divine mysteries, and through her welcoming the Word in her body, she brings it forth into the Kingdom. She shows the way. That is why, through her specific mission in the plan of God, it is she who must first change (and why she is the first target of the devil).

“The decline of the two sexes in the fall has led to the subservience of the woman to the man… She who should become his companion…must through her own free will decide to come ‘help’ the man and thus allow him to become what he should be” (E. Stein, Woman and her Destiny, Ed. Amiot Dumont 1956). The woman can only do this by coming back to the Father. Her whole path of conversion will be made up of passing from domination to submission. And this submission will be mysteriously and incredibly redeeming.

From domination to submission…

To submit is “to put oneself under” the protection of the other. Just as Christ is the head of the Church, the husband is the shepherd of his wife precisely in as much as he lays down his life for her. St. Joseph is the head of the Holy Family, whom the Virgin Mary obeys in everything. The angel comes to him, warning: Get up, take the child and his mother with you, and escape into Egypt (Mat 2:13. Also 2:20 and 22) and that is sufficient for Mary, letting herself be guided by the Father through him. Thus, when the woman submits to the man, it is God whom she is obeying through the limitations of her husband, in the hope of carrying out his will (cf. I Ph 3:1-5).

Eve sinned for two very important reasons. For one thing, she was no longer in submission to her husband, by neglecting to consult Adam, and for another, she cut herself off from God, not speaking to him and forgetting the word of the Father which said: You may eat indeed of all the trees in the garden. Nevertheless of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat… (Gen 2:16,17). She even transformed the divine word by adding: nor touch it (Gen 3:3).. Fearing God, Adam and Eve fled his face and found themselves face to face with each other. Man went from marvel to reproach, and from this point on he remains suspicious of woman as the one who can make him fall. At the same time, he will always remain searching for the marvelous being that God has picked out for him. The woman, on the other hand, looks to the man to fill her expectations, expectations that no man could ever fill. She knows from experience that she is weak and that her expectations make her predisposed to be dominated in spite of herself, just as she predisposes man to take advantage of his strength.

Submission is a requirement for the man as much as for the woman. However, the mutual submission of both spouses has its roots in the woman. How can a husband submit to his wife without being dominated, if she isn’t first submissive to him? In the way shown in the Gospels of renouncing ourselves through love of the other, the woman is first. It is she who introduces man into this new type of relationship, which is no longer a search for the self through domination of the other, but a gift of the self for the other.

The submission of the woman is eminently redeeming. For even as her insubmission led all humanity into sin, so her submission and her offering of herself to God is in his plan for humanity’s redemption. This is why one can affirm that, if man is first in the plan of Creation, woman is first in the plan of Redemption. She finds her joy in living in submission to her husband, and he is satisfied in giving himself entirely to his wife.

3. Mary names the Father

If the woman, child of the Father, brings forth the man, if she accepts entering into this submission to her husband, then it is easy for her to name him father. The mother is indispensable to bringing the father out into the open. It is she who first points him out to her child, naming him “daddy” in the child’s presence. Mary names St. Joseph in this way in the episode of finding Jesus in the Temple, when she says to her Son, See how worried your father and I have been, looking for you (Lk 2:48).

It is the same for us. How relations were with our father in childhood in some way lays the foundations of an incarnate relationship with God our Father. On cannot disassociate the two entirely. Mary teaches this to us when she reminds her Son that his father is looking for him. It is as if she were saying to us: “You cannot be about the business of your Heavenly Father if you are not busy with the affairs of your dad. You cannot be about the works of God if you don’t accept the paternity that St. Joseph is desirous of exercising toward you. Like me, he is looking for you so that we can help you enter into the Kingdom, to let Jesus be born and grow in you, to make possible the passage from the mother toward the father, and everything that you were not able to realize in your relationship to your mom and dad.”

Mary would like her spouse to be better known. She shared with St. Teresa of Avila how very happy devotion to St. Joseph made her. In the same way to Mr. Olier, she said, “I have nothing more dear in heaven and on earth, after my Son.”

On certain icons, Jesus is less than three years old He still isn’t weaned, and we see him with his arms around his mother’s neck, his cheek pressed against hers. On other icons it is just the opposite, with Mary presenting the Child Jesus to us. He seems to be looking at us. In fact, he is turned toward his father Joseph, toward his Eternal Father. Here again, we see the role of Mary. Jesus listens attentively to the teaching of Mary who is pointing out St. Joseph to him. He leads us into heartfelt filial devotion for his Father.

Let yourself listen to Mary and ask her, “Lead me to the Father.” She will answer your prayer, and give you Jesus even as she shows us the Father. She will open the way for you into intimacy with St. Joseph and will teach you how to murmur in your heart along with the Holy Spirit the Name of the Father. And the more that Jesus grows in you, the more you will discover the Father, for it is written: No one can come to the Father except through me (Jn 14:6). To have seen me is to have seen the Father (Jn 14:9).

Part Three

The mother offers her child to the father

Offering the fruit of one’s being also entails a separation, meaning suffering. Mary fully consents to separating from her only child She lets him go toward his Father. She has probably glimpsed the necessity and the price of this offering from the time of her fiat at the Annunciation, being troubled and feeling anguish at the words of the angel Gabriel (Lk 1:29). She felt it even deeper when Jesus disappeared for three days in Jerusalem (Lk 2:48). And she suffered fully at the foot of the Cross when her heart was pierced listening to the words of Christ, Woman, behold your son. It is here in fact that the Church Fathers recognize the sword prophesied by Simeon: this horrifying anguish of Mary facing the suffering of separation. From then on her heart is open so that God’s tenderness and his mercy are poured out on all mankind. She becomes “Mother of Mercies” by taking as her children even those who were crucifying her Son. Christ invited her to full pardon by bringing her to where she handed over, as the Eternal Father had done (Jn 3:16: God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son….) her body’s treasure into the hands of man.

It is normal, then, for the woman to suffer at being separated with her little one. For her it is another way to pour out her blood. And it is the calling of the father to be the sword of separation between the mother and her child. And it is for the woman to accept the distancing, even as she agonizes, so that her child might have life and meet with the father.

Mary did not keep her Son for herself, but she gave him. She will know how to take care of the children that we entrust to her. If you are worried about your children, offer them to Mary and implore her with confidance. She will know how to intercede for them and to give them back to the Father.

We can bring in here the testimony of a mother who lived through this agony with Mary’s help, when her son Samuel was called to Heaven:

“When my son was in a coma after his accident, the Lord gave us the grace to fully realize our calling as parents. Instead of trying to hold our son back to keep him for ourselves, we prayed to know what he wanted from us in his last hour, and it was that we accepted letting him go to the Father, and even more, helped him get there quicker. I’ll explain. Because of a painful past, and the death of his little brother Stephen, among other things, and then this last accident where he probably believed his other brother dead, Samuel was in anguish and guilt; we could feel this clearly while praying with him at his bedside. We decided therefore to help him make his “passing” in peace while invoking over him the saving power of the Blood of Jesus poured out for him in his Passion and his Death on the cross. We accepted in faith that this prayer of healing would bring results, and we were then able to tell our son, “go, run into the arms of the Savior and don’t worry about us.” Certainly we were even then hoping for a miracle, but we had done what every parent must do: helped our child be born into Heaven. Two days after his death, a sister in our community told me a recent dream of hers. She had seen Samuel in an immense light, jumping for joy, saying, “Victory, the Blood of Jesus has washed me of all my sins!” She knew nothing of the prayer that we had prayed over Samuel.

Curiously, the great suffering that I was experiencing as a result of these events was much alleviated several times by the Virgin Mary, but in an unusual manner. For example, during the night when I knew that they were taking his heart in order to graft it into someone else, I was imagining as a nurse the whole surgical procedure, and my suffering became so intense that I was sorry I had ever agreed to donate his organs, feeling that I had suffered enough already. And then all of a sudden I thought about the Holy Virgin Mary, and I saw her watching the soldier running his sword through the heart of Jesus, and her horrible suffering became “mixed” with mine. Then I saw that hers was greater and I wanted to console her, and as I was doing that, my own suffering and anguish was changed into peace and I fell asleep.

Another time, just after my son was buried, I was exhausted and upset, and a brother of our community stopped me. He reminded me that he was supposed to be ordained three days later and asked me to come to his ordination, telling me, “If you don’t come, I can’t be ordained…” There again a terrible, heart-wretching suffering overtook me and an enormous “no”, an enormous revolt rose in my heart. No, this isn’t my son. It’s Samuel who should have been the priest and I would have loved to attend his ordination. And then, again, my sadness was eased and I found the strength to say, “Yes, I’ll be there for your ordination.”

The help that the Virgin Mary brings us is to teach us compassion, which lets us get out of ourselves and helps us to be healed of our possessive loves, so we may enter into compassionate love.”

chapter three

Reborn in Mary

Introduction

1. Infinite Need

“I need to love to infinity,” said St. Teresa of the Child Jesus. These words fit exactly with the deep yearning of our heart! We are all searching for absolute happiness, wanting to be loved and to fully love. Yet each day we realize that we can’t do it. Why? Because we forget what the Savior says: What do you have that was not given to you? (I Cor 4:7. Man is made in the image of God (Gen 1:26), and he has been created to love in a divine way. From the very beginning he is “capacity” and he can only give what he has first received.

Each day, we come face to face with our limits, with our incapacities of loving which plunge us back into our misery and show us finally that we are inept at loving, continually running up against an intangible “I can’t,” and “I’ll never make it.” Yet, in the depths of our being there lies a limitless desire, ceaselessly reminding us that we are made for love. It pushes us to the realisation of life’s goal and source of true happiness, that is, giving ourselves in love, as Christ gave himself entirely to the Father.

2. Cut off from our Origins

Why can’t we satisfy such a thirst? Because we are concentrating on reaching our goal but we are cut off from our roots. Can a tree grow to be mature without developing good roots reaching deep into the soil? How can we give something that we haven’t first taken in? How can we offer what we haven’t received? We would like to love even before getting healed from our own incapacities of letting ourselves be loved. We are inevitably discouraged in this hope because we are trying to do and to give what we don’t have. The fundamental error is in fact a sin of pride. It consists in thinking of myself as a spring, whereas my calling is to be a fountain channeling water from the spring.

In order to fulfill our life’s goal and to live in the fulness of love, we must first go back to our origins, drawing from the life force that pours out from its roots. This step is fundamental in the spiritual life. The Talmud puts it this way: “If you want to know where you are going, know where you have been.”

3. A New Birth

Jesus teaches Nicodemus: …Unless a man is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God (John 3:3). Nicodemus doesn’t understand and asks: “Can he go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” Jesus answers him: You, a teacher in Israel, and you do not know these things! (John 3:10) Many people today react just like Nicodemus, especially those who follow the New Age philosophy. They try hard to get reborn in their mother’s womb by looking for a lost paradise, hoping to usher in an era of utopian happiness. Looking or turning back always leads to sterility, as we know from the story of Lot’s wife (cf. Gen. 19:26). Furthermore, Jesus warns us in the Gospel: Once the hand is laid on the plough, no one who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God (Luke 9:62).

Christ’s answer to Nicodemus enlightens us. It is not about returning to a mother’s womb, but rather being born through water and the Spirit (John 3:5). And this new birth happens in Mary, our spiritual mother, figurehead of the Church.

With her, we will go through four successive stages, which are neither exhaustive nor obligatory:

(1) become aware of our refusal to let ourselves be loved,

(2) find our roots,

(3) be reborn in Mary

(4) and consecrate ourselves to Mary.

All along this path we will be learning about spiritual growth, and this will allow us once again to receive and welcome and let ourselves be loved.

Part One

Refusing to let ourselves be loved

1. Doubting Love

The first step is the hardest to take. It calls for opening ourselves up to the very intimate desire to be loved in order to become aware of the often subconscious resistance we have in letting go and letting ourselves be loved. This step calls for a lot of vigilance, time and therefore patience. Without guidance from above, we do not realize the nature of what is blocking us, hindering us from welcoming life and love. Each of us thinks: “But this is exactly what I want! I don’t see where there’s a problem!” By saying that, we don’t realize that we live with an incapacity to welcome. Spiritual life consists in letting ourselves be loved by God so that we in turn can give ourselves to love. If we let love love us, we will be consoled in all our distress and anguish and we in turn will love and will become consolers for our brothers (cf. 2 Cor. 1: 4-6).

To show clearer where the difficulty lies, we will answer this question first: “Where do we have our greatest need for love without ever being successful in letting ourselves be loved?” Without question the answer is, “precisely where we are hurt.”

We see love coming to us daily in different ways. It can be through a person or an event, or by a direct intervention from the Lord in our heart through the gift of grace. But as soon as love gets close to us, to visit and purify our pain, we immediately get our defences up so it will leave us alone. Then we act aggressively, impatiently, and so on.

Why do we act this way almost in spite of ourselves? Because in the original hurt, going back to early childhood, we still keep, even subconsciously, the memory of a very painful experience of the lack of love or even of aggression. The little child we were was born receptive and open to the tenderness that his heart needed in order to live. But several times he ran

HEALING THE FAMILY Excerpts from Bernard Dubois' book: "Guerir en famille" chapter one

1. The Holy Family: a Model

2. Man, a Developing Member of the Family

THE FAMILY, IMAGE OF THE TRINITY

1. The Trinitarian Model

Love: The unique impulse in God

God has included man in trinitarian action.

2. Original Sin

The Refusal to Welcome

The Refusal to Give

Independence and Dependent Relationships

Emotional Immaturity

3. The Work of Mourning

The Courage to be Afraid

From Childishness to the Little Way

Confronting a new Choice

Making a Memorial of the Past

4. The Trinitarian Structure of the Family

The Numbers Two and Three

The Right Distance, Separation and Identity

Receiving and Giving

The Example of Some New Communities

An Answer to the Problems of Today

5. The Holy Family, Place of Healing

To Give All and To Give Oneself

Broken Families

MONSTRANCE OF THE PRESENCE

woman, spouse and mother

introduction

Part One

The woman receives and gives life

1. The Woman Receives (Spouse)

It is her very Nature

She is Naturally Religious

She is Prophetic

She is Interior

2. Woman as Daughter of the Father

Woman is the Wonder of Man

Daughter of the Father

Under the Father’s Tender Gaze

3. The Mother Receives and Welcomes Life

4. The Mother, God’s Tenderness

part two

the mother designates the father

1. The Woman Brings Forth the Man

2. The Submission of the Woman

A call to love…

A calling to be holy

A Helpmate by his side

From domination to submission…

3. Mary names the Father

Part Three

The mother offers her child to the father

chapter three

Reborn in Mary

Introduction

1. Infinite Need

2. Cut off from our Origins

3. A New Birth

Part One

Refusing to let ourselves be loved

1. Doubting Love

HEALING THE FAMILY
Excerpts from Bernard Dubois' book: "Guerir en famille"

chapter one