Do You Love Me?

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I

Do You Love Me?

A talk given to a gathering of men, Dec. 12, 1987.

Copyright © 1987 John L. Barger Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved ISBN 0-918477-57-3

Sophia Institute Press® Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108

1-800-888-9344

t’s easy to scorn women, and most men do.

We see women as physically weak, easy to intimidate, bound to the menial tasks of motherhood, emotional, illogical, and often petty.

Or we see them as temptresses: in desire we idolize them and parade them across the pages of magazines, yet we scorn and hate them for their commanding sexual power over us.

Male scorn for women affects every aspect of our lives: our relations with our mothers, our girlfriends, our secretaries, our wives, our children, the Church, and even God Himself.

I do not speak here merely of your scorn of women; I speak of mine as well. My relatives grew up on the streets during the Depression, learning early the fury and scorn that characterize so many people in dire circumstances: drinking heavily and seeing women alternately as sex objects or servants. Very early, I picked up these same attitudes, had them reinforced in my years in the military, and never had them seriously challenged by our culture.

As a result, I swaggered through marriage for many years, ruling my wife Susan and my seven children with an iron hand while citing Scripture as justification for my privileges and authority: after all, Scripture explicitly commands wives to obey their husbands.

Years of dominating my wife and children left them habitually resentful and fearful of me, yet unwilling to challenge me because of the fury it might provoke.

I lived by the adage that “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

My family experienced the truth of a different adage: “When the tough get going, the going gets tough.”

I alienated Susan and the children, and lost their love. Home was not a pleasant place to be — for them or for me. By 1983, Susan would have left me if it weren’t for the children, and even that bond was losing its force.

1

Then a number of dramatic events occurred, which wrought a profound change in my moral, psychological, and spiritual life. My eyes were opened, and during the past five years my family has been restored.

This morning I will mention some of these personal events to explain to you the understanding I now have of the proper relation between men and women, as well as why I think that such relations profoundly affect your spiritual life.

B

y 1983, we had six children and, despite our spiritual estrangement, Susan was four months pregnant.

Our first six babies had been born without any problems whatsoever. However, in the early morning hours of December 6, 1983, Susan began hemorrhaging and within two hours delivered our seventh baby dead. Little Christopher had died in Susan’s womb when his placenta tore loose from its wall.

What a shock! At two in the morning in a stark, bright hospital delivery room, I held in my left hand my tiny lifeless son, and stared in disbelief at his death.

What an injustice! Others should have died, not him! I should have died, not him. I was guilty but alive! He was innocent but dead!

In an instant (as never before) I saw that there is deeply rooted in this universe an Evil that afflicts even the most innocent. And I realized that many things are simply beyond my power: I could not raise my poor baby from the dead; I could not command my wife’s love.

In that same instant, I was forced to choose: either to rage against the universe that contained this Evil, to hate it for harming and killing my baby — or to acknowledge that although this Evil existed, and although I was powerless to undo many of its effects or fend off many of its attacks, other things remained very much within my power and under my influence: particularly my living children and my wife, whom to that point I had treated so poorly.

I had the power to make their lives worse by raging against my baby’s death and my wife’s lack 2

+

+

+

I

Do You Love Me?

A talk given to a gathering of men, Dec. 12, 1987.

Copyright © 1987 John L. Barger Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved ISBN 0-918477-57-3

Sophia Institute Press® Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108

1-800-888-9344

t’s easy to scorn women, and most men do.

We see women as physically weak, easy to intimidate, bound to the menial tasks of motherhood, emotional, illogical, and often petty.

Or we see them as temptresses: in desire we idolize them and parade them across the pages of magazines, yet we scorn and hate them for their commanding sexual power over us.

Male scorn for women affects every aspect of our lives: our relations with our mothers, our girlfriends, our secretaries, our wives, our children, the Church, and even God Himself.

I do not speak here merely of your scorn of women; I speak of mine as well. My relatives grew up on the streets during the Depression, learning early the fury and scorn that characterize so many people in dire circumstances: drinking heavily and seeing women alternately as sex objects or servants. Very early, I picked up these same attitudes, had them reinforced in my years in the military, and never had them seriously challenged by our culture.

As a result, I swaggered through marriage for many years, ruling my wife Susan and my seven children with an iron hand while citing Scripture as justification for my privileges and authority: after all, Scripture explicitly commands wives to obey their husbands.

Years of dominating my wife and children left them habitually resentful and fearful of me, yet unwilling to challenge me because of the fury it might provoke.

I lived by the adage that “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

My family experienced the truth of a different adage: “When the tough get going, the going gets tough.”

I alienated Susan and the children, and lost their love. Home was not a pleasant place to be — for them or for me. By 1983, Susan would have left me if it weren’t for the children, and even that bond was losing its force.

1

Then a number of dramatic events occurred, which wrought a profound change in my moral, psychological, and spiritual life. My eyes were opened, and during the past five years my family has been restored.

This morning I will mention some of these personal events to explain to you the understanding I now have of the proper relation between men and women, as well as why I think that such relations profoundly affect your spiritual life.

B

y 1983, we had six children and, despite our spiritual estrangement, Susan was four months pregnant.

Our first six babies had been born without any problems whatsoever. However, in the early morning hours of December 6, 1983, Susan began hemorrhaging and within two hours delivered our seventh baby dead. Little Christopher had died in Susan’s womb when his placenta tore loose from its wall.

What a shock! At two in the morning in a stark, bright hospital delivery room, I held in my left hand my tiny lifeless son, and stared in disbelief at his death.

What an injustice! Others should have died, not him! I should have died, not him. I was guilty but alive! He was innocent but dead!

In an instant (as never before) I saw that there is deeply rooted in this universe an Evil that afflicts even the most innocent. And I realized that many things are simply beyond my power: I could not raise my poor baby from the dead; I could not command my wife’s love.

In that same instant, I was forced to choose: either to rage against the universe that contained this Evil, to hate it for harming and killing my baby — or to acknowledge that although this Evil existed, and although I was powerless to undo many of its effects or fend off many of its attacks, other things remained very much within my power and under my influence: particularly my living children and my wife, whom to that point I had treated so poorly.

I had the power to make their lives worse by raging against my baby’s death and my wife’s lack 2

+

+

+

I

Do You Love Me?

A talk given to a gathering of men, Dec. 12, 1987.

Copyright © 1987 John L. Barger Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved ISBN 0-918477-57-3

Sophia Institute Press® Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108

1-800-888-9344

t’s easy to scorn women, and most men do.

We see women as physically weak, easy to intimidate, bound to the menial tasks of motherhood, emotional, illogical, and often petty.

Or we see them as temptresses: in desire we idolize them and parade them across the pages of magazines, yet we scorn and hate them for their commanding sexual power over us.

Male scorn for women affects every aspect of our lives: our relations with our mothers, our girlfriends, our secretaries, our wives, our children, the Church, and even God Himself.

I do not speak here merely of your scorn of women; I speak of mine as well. My relatives grew up on the streets during the Depression, learning early the fury and scorn that characterize so many people in dire circumstances: drinking heavily and seeing women alternately as sex objects or servants. Very early, I picked up these same attitudes, had them reinforced in my years in the military, and never had them seriously challenged by our culture.

As a result, I swaggered through marriage for many years, ruling my wife Susan and my seven children with an iron hand while citing Scripture as justification for my privileges and authority: after all, Scripture explicitly commands wives to obey their husbands.

Years of dominating my wife and children left them habitually resentful and fearful of me, yet unwilling to challenge me because of the fury it might provoke.

I lived by the adage that “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

My family experienced the truth of a different adage: “When the tough get going, the going gets tough.”

I alienated Susan and the children, and lost their love. Home was not a pleasant place to be — for them or for me. By 1983, Susan would have left me if it weren’t for the children, and even that bond was losing its force.

1

Then a number of dramatic events occurred, which wrought a profound change in my moral, psychological, and spiritual life. My eyes were opened, and during the past five years my family has been restored.

This morning I will mention some of these personal events to explain to you the understanding I now have of the proper relation between men and women, as well as why I think that such relations profoundly affect your spiritual life.

B

y 1983, we had six children and, despite our spiritual estrangement, Susan was four months pregnant.

Our first six babies had been born without any problems whatsoever. However, in the early morning hours of December 6, 1983, Susan began hemorrhaging and within two hours delivered our seventh baby dead. Little Christopher had died in Susan’s womb when his placenta tore loose from its wall.

What a shock! At two in the morning in a stark, bright hospital delivery room, I held in my left hand my tiny lifeless son, and stared in disbelief at his death.

What an injustice! Others should have died, not him! I should have died, not him. I was guilty but alive! He was innocent but dead!

In an instant (as never before) I saw that there is deeply rooted in this universe an Evil that afflicts even the most innocent. And I realized that many things are simply beyond my power: I could not raise my poor baby from the dead; I could not command my wife’s love.

In that same instant, I was forced to choose: either to rage against the universe that contained this Evil, to hate it for harming and killing my baby — or to acknowledge that although this Evil existed, and although I was powerless to undo many of its effects or fend off many of its attacks, other things remained very much within my power and under my influence: particularly my living children and my wife, whom to that point I had treated so poorly.

I had the power to make their lives worse by raging against my baby’s death and my wife’s lack 2

+

+

+

I

Do You Love Me?

A talk given to a gathering of men, Dec. 12, 1987.

Copyright © 1987 John L. Barger Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved ISBN 0-918477-57-3

Sophia Institute Press® Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108

1-800-888-9344

t’s easy to scorn women, and most men do.

We see women as physically weak, easy to intimidate, bound to the menial tasks of motherhood, emotional, illogical, and often petty.

Or we see them as temptresses: in desire we idolize them and parade them across the pages of magazines, yet we scorn and hate them for their commanding sexual power over us.

Male scorn for women affects every aspect of our lives: our relations with our mothers, our girlfriends, our secretaries, our wives, our children, the Church, and even God Himself.

I do not speak here merely of your scorn of women; I speak of mine as well. My relatives grew up on the streets during the Depression, learning early the fury and scorn that characterize so many people in dire circumstances: drinking heavily and seeing women alternately as sex objects or servants. Very early, I picked up these same attitudes, had them reinforced in my years in the military, and never had them seriously challenged by our culture.

As a result, I swaggered through marriage for many years, ruling my wife Susan and my seven children with an iron hand while citing Scripture as justification for my privileges and authority: after all, Scripture explicitly commands wives to obey their husbands.

Years of dominating my wife and children left them habitually resentful and fearful of me, yet unwilling to challenge me because of the fury it might provoke.

I lived by the adage that “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

My family experienced the truth of a different adage: “When the tough get going, the going gets tough.”

I alienated Susan and the children, and lost their love. Home was not a pleasant place to be — for them or for me. By 1983, Susan would have left me if it weren’t for the children, and even that bond was losing its force.

1

Then a number of dramatic events occurred, which wrought a profound change in my moral, psychological, and spiritual life. My eyes were opened, and during the past five years my family has been restored.

This morning I will mention some of these personal events to explain to you the understanding I now have of the proper relation between men and women, as well as why I think that such relations profoundly affect your spiritual life.

B

y 1983, we had six children and, despite our spiritual estrangement, Susan was four months pregnant.

Our first six babies had been born without any problems whatsoever. However, in the early morning hours of December 6, 1983, Susan began hemorrhaging and within two hours delivered our seventh baby dead. Little Christopher had died in Susan’s womb when his placenta tore loose from its wall.

What a shock! At two in the morning in a stark, bright hospital delivery room, I held in my left hand my tiny lifeless son, and stared in disbelief at his death.

What an injustice! Others should have died, not him! I should have died, not him. I was guilty but alive! He was innocent but dead!

In an instant (as never before) I saw that there is deeply rooted in this universe an Evil that afflicts even the most innocent. And I realized that many things are simply beyond my power: I could not raise my poor baby from the dead; I could not command my wife’s love.

In that same instant, I was forced to choose: either to rage against the universe that contained this Evil, to hate it for harming and killing my baby — or to acknowledge that although this Evil existed, and although I was powerless to undo many of its effects or fend off many of its attacks, other things remained very much within my power and under my influence: particularly my living children and my wife, whom to that point I had treated so poorly.

I had the power to make their lives worse by raging against my baby’s death and my wife’s lack 2

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of love, or to make their lives better by learning to love them properly.

I had to choose.

And it was a clear choice, presented in an instant as I stared at my tiny, helpless, stillborn infant cradled in my hand.

In that critical instant, with God’s grace, I chose the arduous, undramatic, discouraging path of trying to be good.

I don’t have time this morning to tell you of all the afflictions we endured in the next four years: sick children, my mother’s sudden death, my losing my job as a teacher, three more miscarriages, and finally a secret sorrow that pierced both of us to the very core of our beings.

In the midst of these many afflictions, I found that the only way I could learn to love and to cease being a cause of pain, was to suffer, endure, and strive every minute to repudiate my anger, my resentment, my scorn, my jealousy, my lust, my pride, and my dozens of other vices.

I began holding my tongue.

I started admitting my faults and apologizing for them.

I quit defending myself when I was judged too harshly — for the important thing was not to be right (or to be thought well of) but to love.

As I had made myself the center of my attention for too many years already, I said little about my own labors and sorrows; I sought to know Susan’s, and to help her to bear them.

A

nd, frankly, once I started listening to Susan — once I began really hearing her and drawing her out — I was startled at how many and how deep were her wounds and her sorrows.

Some were rooted in her own particular family circumstances and would not be helpful for you to know; but most were not sorrows unique to Susan.

They were the sorrows that all women feel: — sorrows that arise from the particular physiology of women and from their vocation as mothers, which gives them heavy duties and responsibilities while leaving them almost totally dependent on men for their material well-being and their spiritual support; 3

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+

— sorrows that arise from loving their husbands and children intensely, but not being able to keep harm from those they love; — sorrows that arise from the fact that in our society even the most chaste of women are regularly threatened by the lustful stares, remarks, and advances of men; — and sorrows that arise because our society in general still considers women stupid, flighty, and superficial, and still places very little value on women and shows very little respect for them.

Of course, women (being more attentive, more contemplative, and more tender than we are) suffer these wounds far more often and with a greater intensity than most of us men ever realize.

And unless we ask them, women generally do not speak to us of these sorrows — perhaps because we men so often dismiss their troubles as insignificant or write off women themselves as simply weak and whiny.

Perhaps you reject my claims that women suffer deeply. Perhaps your experience is only of cool women, tough women. Yet think of the strongest of women, the Virgin Mary, whose incredible strength and courage we celebrate today, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She is revered in Mexico and the world over for having crushed the head of the Serpent himself. Mary is certainly a woman of power!

Yet remember what also is said about her: “Her heart was pierced by a sword of sorrow because of the suffering of her Son.”

Their problems are generally not the kind that have a solution, but rather form the very fabric of their daily existence.

Women rightly worry about the health and spiritual well-being of their children. Their workload in the home cannot easily be lightened. The diapers always need to be changed and the dishes washed. They are troubled by the fact of war and the horror of sin. There is little we can do to eliminate any of these causes of their suffering.

One of my friends, when confronted at the end of his long workday with his wife’s complaints about the noise, the troubles, and the unending housework, snapped back at her in exasperation: “Well, do you want me to stay home and do the housework while you go off to the office?”

You understand his point: he couldn’t solve her problems. What did she want him to do?

I’ll tell you: she wanted him to listen, to understand, and to sympathize. She wanted him to let her know that despite her problems, her exhaustion, her dishevelment, he loved her — to let her know that it caused him sorrow that she was suffering and that if it were possible, he would change it for her.

That’s all she wanted, and yet that’s everything.

She knew as well as he did that hers are the perennial problems of wives and mothers — and that there is no avoiding them.

These problems can’t be eliminated or even really diminished in their frequency or their burdensome character — but we men can make them easier for women to bear.

O

I

nce you really get to know most women, and once they come to trust you enough to reveal themselves fully to you, you discover that regardless of their exterior strength and their coolness, their hearts (like Mary’s) are also pierced by a sword of sorrow.

Can men change that fact? Can we withdraw the sword of sorrow that pierces every woman’s heart?

I don’t think so.

4

f we are to love our wives, if we are to be more than breadwinners and bedmates sharing a home the way college roommates share a room, if we are to become full partners in our wives’ spiritual and emotional lives, then we men must put away our impatience, our swagger, our tough-guy attitudes, and let our hearts, too, come to know and then to be pierced by the swords of sorrow endured by our wives and by our children.

We must (at least emotionally) help them carry the terrible burden of their lives. We must share 5

the cup of their pain instead of pouring more pain into their cup.

We must listen to them — not passively while we think of other matters or read the paper — but actively: asking questions sympathetically, drawing them out, helping them to identify more specifically and to articulate more clearly what troubles them.

We must comfort them spiritually and even physically, touching and holding them frequently — but tenderly not sexually — so they can come to see that we are not simply present to make love; rather we love to be in their presence.

In fact, if you really desire to deepen your wife’s love for you and your love for her and to increase your intimacy with her, you should consider total celibacy for a few months while you build spiritual trust between you.

Since sexual love by its nature is meant as a manifestation of spiritual love (rather than a quick tumble in the hay), the resulting growth of your spiritual closeness will necessarily also bring you sexually closer to your wife.

B

ut you must be patient: women’s hearts are quickly won and only slowly lost; but once lost, they are even more slowly regained. Your watchword must above all be patience.

You must have the strength to be gentle and the courage to be vulnerable, to let them know you as you really are so that they can love you for who you are.

You must be willing to risk rejection when your wife finds that you don’t have all the answers and aren’t as tough and as self-contained as you would like the world to believe.

Don’t be afraid that revealing your weaknesses and doubts to your wife will cause her to love you less. Remember how she loves the weakness of babies and little children. Weakness melts the hearts of women and enables them to give you the space and the time necessary to grow strong in real virtue.

Learn to distinguish between that which is urgent and that which is important. Fixing the car, paying the bills, rushing out of the house this 6

+

of love, or to make their lives better by learning to love them properly.

I had to choose.

And it was a clear choice, presented in an instant as I stared at my tiny, helpless, stillborn infant cradled in my hand.

In that critical instant, with God’s grace, I chose the arduous, undramatic, discouraging path of trying to be good.

I don’t have time this morning to tell you of all the afflictions we endured in the next four years: sick children, my mother’s sudden death, my losing my job as a teacher, three more miscarriages, and finally a secret sorrow that pierced both of us to the very core of our beings.

In the midst of these many afflictions, I found that the only way I could learn to love and to cease being a cause of pain, was to suffer, endure, and strive every minute to repudiate my anger, my resentment, my scorn, my jealousy, my lust, my pride, and my dozens of other vices.

I began holding my tongue.

I started admitting my faults and apologizing for them.

I quit defending myself when I was judged too harshly — for the important thing was not to be right (or to be thought well of) but to love.

As I had made myself the center of my attention for too many years already, I said little about my own labors and sorrows; I sought to know Susan’s, and to help her to bear them.

A

nd, frankly, once I started listening to Susan — once I began really hearing her and drawing her out — I was startled at how many and how deep were her wounds and her sorrows.

Some were rooted in her own particular family circumstances and would not be helpful for you to know; but most were not sorrows unique to Susan.

They were the sorrows that all women feel: — sorrows that arise from the particular physiology of women and from their vocation as mothers, which gives them heavy duties and responsibilities while leaving them almost totally dependent on men for their material well-being and their spiritual support; 3

+

+

— sorrows that arise from loving their husbands and children intensely, but not being able to keep harm from those they love; — sorrows that arise from the fact that in our society even the most chaste of women are regularly threatened by the lustful stares, remarks, and advances of men; — and sorrows that arise because our society in general still considers women stupid, flighty, and superficial, and still places very little value on women and shows very little respect for them.

Of course, women (being more attentive, more contemplative, and more tender than we are) suffer these wounds far more often and with a greater intensity than most of us men ever realize.

And unless we ask them, women generally do not speak to us of these sorrows — perhaps because we men so often dismiss their troubles as insignificant or write off women themselves as simply weak and whiny.

Perhaps you reject my claims that women suffer deeply. Perhaps your experience is only of cool women, tough women. Yet think of the strongest of women, the Virgin Mary, whose incredible strength and courage we celebrate today, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She is revered in Mexico and the world over for having crushed the head of the Serpent himself. Mary is certainly a woman of power!

Yet remember what also is said about her: “Her heart was pierced by a sword of sorrow because of the suffering of her Son.”

Their problems are generally not the kind that have a solution, but rather form the very fabric of their daily existence.

Women rightly worry about the health and spiritual well-being of their children. Their workload in the home cannot easily be lightened. The diapers always need to be changed and the dishes washed. They are troubled by the fact of war and the horror of sin. There is little we can do to eliminate any of these causes of their suffering.

One of my friends, when confronted at the end of his long workday with his wife’s complaints about the noise, the troubles, and the unending housework, snapped back at her in exasperation: “Well, do you want me to stay home and do the housework while you go off to the office?”

You understand his point: he couldn’t solve her problems. What did she want him to do?

I’ll tell you: she wanted him to listen, to understand, and to sympathize. She wanted him to let her know that despite her problems, her exhaustion, her dishevelment, he loved her — to let her know that it caused him sorrow that she was suffering and that if it were possible, he would change it for her.

That’s all she wanted, and yet that’s everything.

She knew as well as he did that hers are the perennial problems of wives and mothers — and that there is no avoiding them.

These problems can’t be eliminated or even really diminished in their frequency or their burdensome character — but we men can make them easier for women to bear.

O

I

nce you really get to know most women, and once they come to trust you enough to reveal themselves fully to you, you discover that regardless of their exterior strength and their coolness, their hearts (like Mary’s) are also pierced by a sword of sorrow.

Can men change that fact? Can we withdraw the sword of sorrow that pierces every woman’s heart?

I don’t think so.

4

f we are to love our wives, if we are to be more than breadwinners and bedmates sharing a home the way college roommates share a room, if we are to become full partners in our wives’ spiritual and emotional lives, then we men must put away our impatience, our swagger, our tough-guy attitudes, and let our hearts, too, come to know and then to be pierced by the swords of sorrow endured by our wives and by our children.

We must (at least emotionally) help them carry the terrible burden of their lives. We must share 5

the cup of their pain instead of pouring more pain into their cup.

We must listen to them — not passively while we think of other matters or read the paper — but actively: asking questions sympathetically, drawing them out, helping them to identify more specifically and to articulate more clearly what troubles them.

We must comfort them spiritually and even physically, touching and holding them frequently — but tenderly not sexually — so they can come to see that we are not simply present to make love; rather we love to be in their presence.

In fact, if you really desire to deepen your wife’s love for you and your love for her and to increase your intimacy with her, you should consider total celibacy for a few months while you build spiritual trust between you.

Since sexual love by its nature is meant as a manifestation of spiritual love (rather than a quick tumble in the hay), the resulting growth of your spiritual closeness will necessarily also bring you sexually closer to your wife.

B

ut you must be patient: women’s hearts are quickly won and only slowly lost; but once lost, they are even more slowly regained. Your watchword must above all be patience.

You must have the strength to be gentle and the courage to be vulnerable, to let them know you as you really are so that they can love you for who you are.

You must be willing to risk rejection when your wife finds that you don’t have all the answers and aren’t as tough and as self-contained as you would like the world to believe.

Don’t be afraid that revealing your weaknesses and doubts to your wife will cause her to love you less. Remember how she loves the weakness of babies and little children. Weakness melts the hearts of women and enables them to give you the space and the time necessary to grow strong in real virtue.

Learn to distinguish between that which is urgent and that which is important. Fixing the car, paying the bills, rushing out of the house this 6

+

of love, or to make their lives better by learning to love them properly.

I had to choose.

And it was a clear choice, presented in an instant as I stared at my tiny, helpless, stillborn infant cradled in my hand.

In that critical instant, with God’s grace, I chose the arduous, undramatic, discouraging path of trying to be good.

I don’t have time this morning to tell you of all the afflictions we endured in the next four years: sick children, my mother’s sudden death, my losing my job as a teacher, three more miscarriages, and finally a secret sorrow that pierced both of us to the very core of our beings.

In the midst of these many afflictions, I found that the only way I could learn to love and to cease being a cause of pain, was to suffer, endure, and strive every minute to repudiate my anger, my resentment, my scorn, my jealousy, my lust, my pride, and my dozens of other vices.

I began holding my tongue.

I started admitting my faults and apologizing for them.

I quit defending myself when I was judged too harshly — for the important thing was not to be right (or to be thought well of) but to love.

As I had made myself the center of my attention for too many years already, I said little about my own labors and sorrows; I sought to know Susan’s, and to help her to bear them.

A

nd, frankly, once I started listening to Susan — once I began really hearing her and drawing her out — I was startled at how many and how deep were her wounds and her sorrows.

Some were rooted in her own particular family circumstances and would not be helpful for you to know; but most were not sorrows unique to Susan.

They were the sorrows that all women feel: — sorrows that arise from the particular physiology of women and from their vocation as mothers, which gives them heavy duties and responsibilities while leaving them almost totally dependent on men for their material well-being and their spiritual support; 3

+

+

— sorrows that arise from loving their husbands and children intensely, but not being able to keep harm from those they love; — sorrows that arise from the fact that in our society even the most chaste of women are regularly threatened by the lustful stares, remarks, and advances of men; — and sorrows that arise because our society in general still considers women stupid, flighty, and superficial, and still places very little value on women and shows very little respect for them.

Of course, women (being more attentive, more contemplative, and more tender than we are) suffer these wounds far more often and with a greater intensity than most of us men ever realize.

And unless we ask them, women generally do not speak to us of these sorrows — perhaps because we men so often dismiss their troubles as insignificant or write off women themselves as simply weak and whiny.

Perhaps you reject my claims that women suffer deeply. Perhaps your experience is only of cool women, tough women. Yet think of the strongest of women, the Virgin Mary, whose incredible strength and courage we celebrate today, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She is revered in Mexico and the world over for having crushed the head of the Serpent himself. Mary is certainly a woman of power!

Yet remember what also is said about her: “Her heart was pierced by a sword of sorrow because of the suffering of her Son.”

Their problems are generally not the kind that have a solution, but rather form the very fabric of their daily existence.

Women rightly worry about the health and spiritual well-being of their children. Their workload in the home cannot easily be lightened. The diapers always need to be changed and the dishes washed. They are troubled by the fact of war and the horror of sin. There is little we can do to eliminate any of these causes of their suffering.

One of my friends, when confronted at the end of his long workday with his wife’s complaints about the noise, the troubles, and the unending housework, snapped back at her in exasperation: “Well, do you want me to stay home and do the housework while you go off to the office?”

You understand his point: he couldn’t solve her problems. What did she want him to do?

I’ll tell you: she wanted him to listen, to understand, and to sympathize. She wanted him to let her know that despite her problems, her exhaustion, her dishevelment, he loved her — to let her know that it caused him sorrow that she was suffering and that if it were possible, he would change it for her.

That’s all she wanted, and yet that’s everything.

She knew as well as he did that hers are the perennial problems of wives and mothers — and that there is no avoiding them.

These problems can’t be eliminated or even really diminished in their frequency or their burdensome character — but we men can make them easier for women to bear.

O

I

nce you really get to know most women, and once they come to trust you enough to reveal themselves fully to you, you discover that regardless of their exterior strength and their coolness, their hearts (like Mary’s) are also pierced by a sword of sorrow.

Can men change that fact? Can we withdraw the sword of sorrow that pierces every woman’s heart?

I don’t think so.

4

f we are to love our wives, if we are to be more than breadwinners and bedmates sharing a home the way college roommates share a room, if we are to become full partners in our wives’ spiritual and emotional lives, then we men must put away our impatience, our swagger, our tough-guy attitudes, and let our hearts, too, come to know and then to be pierced by the swords of sorrow endured by our wives and by our children.

We must (at least emotionally) help them carry the terrible burden of their lives. We must share 5

the cup of their pain instead of pouring more pain into their cup.

We must listen to them — not passively while we think of other matters or read the paper — but actively: asking questions sympathetically, drawing them out, helping them to identify more specifically and to articulate more clearly what troubles them.

We must comfort them spiritually and even physically, touching and holding them frequently — but tenderly not sexually — so they can come to see that we are not simply present to make love; rather we love to be in their presence.

In fact, if you really desire to deepen your wife’s love for you and your love for her and to increase your intimacy with her, you should consider total celibacy for a few months while you build spiritual trust between you.

Since sexual love by its nature is meant as a manifestation of spiritual love (rather than a quick tumble in the hay), the resulting growth of your spiritual closeness will necessarily also bring you sexually closer to your wife.

B

ut you must be patient: women’s hearts are quickly won and only slowly lost; but once lost, they are even more slowly regained. Your watchword must above all be patience.

You must have the strength to be gentle and the courage to be vulnerable, to let them know you as you really are so that they can love you for who you are.

You must be willing to risk rejection when your wife finds that you don’t have all the answers and aren’t as tough and as self-contained as you would like the world to believe.

Don’t be afraid that revealing your weaknesses and doubts to your wife will cause her to love you less. Remember how she loves the weakness of babies and little children. Weakness melts the hearts of women and enables them to give you the space and the time necessary to grow strong in real virtue.

Learn to distinguish between that which is urgent and that which is important. Fixing the car, paying the bills, rushing out of the house this 6

+

of love, or to make their lives better by learning to love them properly.

I had to choose.

And it was a clear choice, presented in an instant as I stared at my tiny, helpless, stillborn infant cradled in my hand.

In that critical instant, with God’s grace, I chose the arduous, undramatic, discouraging path of trying to be good.

I don’t have time this morning to tell you of all the afflictions we endured in the next four years: sick children, my mother’s sudden death, my losing my job as a teacher, three more miscarriages, and finally a secret sorrow that pierced both of us to the very core of our beings.

In the midst of these many afflictions, I found that the only way I could learn to love and to cease being a cause of pain, was to suffer, endure, and strive every minute to repudiate my anger, my resentment, my scorn, my jealousy, my lust, my pride, and my dozens of other vices.

I began holding my tongue.

I started admitting my faults and apologizing for them.

I quit defending myself when I was judged too harshly — for the important thing was not to be right (or to be thought well of) but to love.

As I had made myself the center of my attention for too many years already, I said little about my own labors and sorrows; I sought to know Susan’s, and to help her to bear them.

A

nd, frankly, once I started listening to Susan — once I began really hearing her and drawing her out — I was startled at how many and how deep were her wounds and her sorrows.

Some were rooted in her own particular family circumstances and would not be helpful for you to know; but most were not sorrows unique to Susan.

They were the sorrows that all women feel: — sorrows that arise from the particular physiology of women and from their vocation as mothers, which gives them heavy duties and responsibilities while leaving them almost totally dependent on men for their material well-being and their spiritual support; 3

+

+

— sorrows that arise from loving their husbands and children intensely, but not being able to keep harm from those they love; — sorrows that arise from the fact that in our society even the most chaste of women are regularly threatened by the lustful stares, remarks, and advances of men; — and sorrows that arise because our society in general still considers women stupid, flighty, and superficial, and still places very little value on women and shows very little respect for them.

Of course, women (being more attentive, more contemplative, and more tender than we are) suffer these wounds far more often and with a greater intensity than most of us men ever realize.

And unless we ask them, women generally do not speak to us of these sorrows — perhaps because we men so often dismiss their troubles as insignificant or write off women themselves as simply weak and whiny.

Perhaps you reject my claims that women suffer deeply. Perhaps your experience is only of cool women, tough women. Yet think of the strongest of women, the Virgin Mary, whose incredible strength and courage we celebrate today, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She is revered in Mexico and the world over for having crushed the head of the Serpent himself. Mary is certainly a woman of power!

Yet remember what also is said about her: “Her heart was pierced by a sword of sorrow because of the suffering of her Son.”

Their problems are generally not the kind that have a solution, but rather form the very fabric of their daily existence.

Women rightly worry about the health and spiritual well-being of their children. Their workload in the home cannot easily be lightened. The diapers always need to be changed and the dishes washed. They are troubled by the fact of war and the horror of sin. There is little we can do to eliminate any of these causes of their suffering.

One of my friends, when confronted at the end of his long workday with his wife’s complaints about the noise, the troubles, and the unending housework, snapped back at her in exasperation: “Well, do you want me to stay home and do the housework while you go off to the office?”

You understand his point: he couldn’t solve her problems. What did she want him to do?

I’ll tell you: she wanted him to listen, to understand, and to sympathize. She wanted him to let her know that despite her problems, her exhaustion, her dishevelment, he loved her — to let her know that it caused him sorrow that she was suffering and that if it were possible, he would change it for her.

That’s all she wanted, and yet that’s everything.

She knew as well as he did that hers are the perennial problems of wives and mothers — and that there is no avoiding them.

These problems can’t be eliminated or even really diminished in their frequency or their burdensome character — but we men can make them easier for women to bear.

O

I

nce you really get to know most women, and once they come to trust you enough to reveal themselves fully to you, you discover that regardless of their exterior strength and their coolness, their hearts (like Mary’s) are also pierced by a sword of sorrow.

Can men change that fact? Can we withdraw the sword of sorrow that pierces every woman’s heart?

I don’t think so.

4

f we are to love our wives, if we are to be more than breadwinners and bedmates sharing a home the way college roommates share a room, if we are to become full partners in our wives’ spiritual and emotional lives, then we men must put away our impatience, our swagger, our tough-guy attitudes, and let our hearts, too, come to know and then to be pierced by the swords of sorrow endured by our wives and by our children.

We must (at least emotionally) help them carry the terrible burden of their lives. We must share 5

the cup of their pain instead of pouring more pain into their cup.

We must listen to them — not passively while we think of other matters or read the paper — but actively: asking questions sympathetically, drawing them out, helping them to identify more specifically and to articulate more clearly what troubles them.

We must comfort them spiritually and even physically, touching and holding them frequently — but tenderly not sexually — so they can come to see that we are not simply present to make love; rather we love to be in their presence.

In fact, if you really desire to deepen your wife’s love for you and your love for her and to increase your intimacy with her, you should consider total celibacy for a few months while you build spiritual trust between you.

Since sexual love by its nature is meant as a manifestation of spiritual love (rather than a quick tumble in the hay), the resulting growth of your spiritual closeness will necessarily also bring you sexually closer to your wife.

B

ut you must be patient: women’s hearts are quickly won and only slowly lost; but once lost, they are even more slowly regained. Your watchword must above all be patience.

You must have the strength to be gentle and the courage to be vulnerable, to let them know you as you really are so that they can love you for who you are.

You must be willing to risk rejection when your wife finds that you don’t have all the answers and aren’t as tough and as self-contained as you would like the world to believe.

Don’t be afraid that revealing your weaknesses and doubts to your wife will cause her to love you less. Remember how she loves the weakness of babies and little children. Weakness melts the hearts of women and enables them to give you the space and the time necessary to grow strong in real virtue.

Learn to distinguish between that which is urgent and that which is important. Fixing the car, paying the bills, rushing out of the house this 6

+

morning to give this lecture: these are the urgent things for which we never have enough time.

But it’s more important that you pause to speak tenderly to your wife and children, offering them the support and encouragement that only a loving father can give and that they can receive only from you.

A

m I offering a recipe that will turn you into a wimp? Here we touch on a tension that penetrates to the very depths of our souls as American men. What should a Real Man be: strong, silent, independent, dominant, with special privileges because the strongest can and (by rights) should rule? Or should a Real Man be a servant, using his strength not to rule the weaker, but to serve and protect them?

Here I ask you to look to St. Joseph as your model. Was he weak?

On the contrary: he was a laborer — physically and morally strong, poor yet independent, able to protect his family from mortal threats and to care for them under the most difficult of circumstances.

His daily labor was probably far more arduous than yours or mine.

Yet although he was strong, he was not a tough man, a spiritually hard man. Mary of the Sorrows trusted herself and her divine Child to his tender care, which offers a lesson for you and me.

I

magine for a moment that you were Joseph, the Christ Child were your foster-child, and Mary were your wife. How would you bear yourself toward them? Would you remain aloof and distant from them? Would you swagger? Would you insist that you’re the head of the family and that Mary’s place is in the kitchen, that her troubles are insignificant compared with yours?

Or would you revere them, and treat them with great tenderness and care, seeking to serve instead of to be served?

I know what I would try to do.

Now think about how you treat your wife and your children. Tell me why your wife should be treated with less respect than Mary, or your children with less tenderness than Jesus. Because they 7

+

are weak and have sinned? Is that a reason to scorn them or afflict them?

Don’t weakness and sinfulness call for greater patience rather than less? Your wife and your children depend on you to set the tone for your family and to create an atmosphere of warmth and trust in which they can grow stronger and deeper, both morally and spiritually.

If they can’t trust you to love them absolutely, who can they trust?

Why should they have to go to their friends for love, comfort, or guidance?

If they can’t speak to you with total openness without fear of encountering indifference, a harsh rebuke, or anger, to whom can they speak?

Is not the community of marriage and the larger community of the family specifically intended as a home for the soul, protected by the walls of your tender love — behind which your wife and children can know and be known, love and be loved without fear or anxiety?

Remember how Joseph bore himself toward Mary and Jesus. Let him become the model for you in your family.

+

barely two years ago, Susan delivered a healthy new baby, James Anthony.

The long years of pain and suffering seemed over. We felt ourselves to be on the verge of a long and happy marriage, and we looked forward finally to being able to raise our children in a family filled with love and peace and holiness.

W

tried these methods, and they worked. After three years of patience, listening, and growing in Susan’s trust — spending literally hundreds of hours talking with her about the deepest and most private aspects of our lives and souls, Susan and I had come to know each other just about as completely as two humans can know each other.

The love I gave her dissipated her anger, overcame her cynicism, softened her and gentled her, so that she was more forgiving of the faults I still have, and so that she became available as a sweet refuge for me in my discouragement and despair.

Over the months, as the atmosphere of our home changed, Susan grew wise and deep and holy.

She became so comfortable in my presence and we came to know each other so well, that often I could merely look at her and know her thoughts.

She was thirty-nine and in three brief years we had gone from the verge of divorce to being best friends. We endured four miscarriages but finally,

hich is why I don’t understand the ways of God — because just then, barely more than a year ago and only four months after the baby was born, Susan quite unexpectedly was diagnosed as having terminal cancer. Operated on two days later, she declined rapidly and just five months ago died at home, holding my hand, surrounded by family and friends, with Father Marc at her side leading us in prayer.

The eight months of her suffering and death crowned our by-then intense friendship and love, drawing us even closer together as Susan grew weaker, more helpless, and dependent.

It was then that I could show her how much I really loved her, caring for her daily and helping her prepare for the death we saw coming.

Throughout those months of increasingly worse medical news, unproductive pills, fruitless operations, and ineffective medical procedures, Susan and I grew closer to God and closer to each other and to our children.

The story of the holiness of her death is very beautiful, but unfortunately there is no time this morning to tell it.

Rather I must limit myself to speaking of our life together as it relates to male spirituality — and specifically as it relates to how we men should bear ourselves toward women — especially our wives.

And although I’m really quite shy, I’ve told you these details of my own life to serve for you as a promise and a warning: I was very lucky — or perhaps I was singled out to have a special gift bestowed upon me so that I could tell others about it.

Seven children and a wife just dead! How can I speak of gifts? It’s not because I myself am particularly saintly. (I’m not.) But even a sinner like me

8

9

I

would have to be blind not to see the goodness that came out of the tragedies of the last few years.

Remember the first part of my story: the horrible estrangement that existed between Susan and me.

I was given the incredible gift of circumstances, grace, and time to overcome that estrangement — four short years in the midst of many painful tragedies and intense personal suffering — time to repair that breach between us, to become my wife’s best friend; time to win her confidence so that she could rest in the shelter of my love when her disease was diagnosed, and nestle closer to me spiritually as each dreadful day went by.

That is a priceless gift: time and desire and patience and grace to learn to love one’s wife properly, to have her learn to accept it in absolute simplicity and trust, to have her permit me to suffer her cancer and death with her. It was the greatest joy I have ever experienced.

I

know only a few of you here today. Therefore, as I conclude by asking a number of questions, you mustn’t think that I am singling you out because of something I know about you personally or about how you treat your family.

Please ask these questions of yourselves as I ask them of myself: “This morning, as you pray with us for holiness, how close are you to your wife and family?”

Remember St. Joseph and the Holy Family — how he loved them tenderly without ceasing to be a man.

Remember your children and your wife, who need you desperately, for you are the strongest among them.

Carry home with you this question: “How close am I to my wife and family, and are there things I can do to become closer?”

“Am I too caught up in the urgent tasks of my life to perform the important ones of caring for those who are my particular responsibility: my wife and my children?”

F

inally, let me leave you with another question (but one that I will answer for you). I indicated earlier that my remarks this morning would be 10

+

morning to give this lecture: these are the urgent things for which we never have enough time.

But it’s more important that you pause to speak tenderly to your wife and children, offering them the support and encouragement that only a loving father can give and that they can receive only from you.

A

m I offering a recipe that will turn you into a wimp? Here we touch on a tension that penetrates to the very depths of our souls as American men. What should a Real Man be: strong, silent, independent, dominant, with special privileges because the strongest can and (by rights) should rule? Or should a Real Man be a servant, using his strength not to rule the weaker, but to serve and protect them?

Here I ask you to look to St. Joseph as your model. Was he weak?

On the contrary: he was a laborer — physically and morally strong, poor yet independent, able to protect his family from mortal threats and to care for them under the most difficult of circumstances.

His daily labor was probably far more arduous than yours or mine.

Yet although he was strong, he was not a tough man, a spiritually hard man. Mary of the Sorrows trusted herself and her divine Child to his tender care, which offers a lesson for you and me.

I

magine for a moment that you were Joseph, the Christ Child were your foster-child, and Mary were your wife. How would you bear yourself toward them? Would you remain aloof and distant from them? Would you swagger? Would you insist that you’re the head of the family and that Mary’s place is in the kitchen, that her troubles are insignificant compared with yours?

Or would you revere them, and treat them with great tenderness and care, seeking to serve instead of to be served?

I know what I would try to do.

Now think about how you treat your wife and your children. Tell me why your wife should be treated with less respect than Mary, or your children with less tenderness than Jesus. Because they 7

+

are weak and have sinned? Is that a reason to scorn them or afflict them?

Don’t weakness and sinfulness call for greater patience rather than less? Your wife and your children depend on you to set the tone for your family and to create an atmosphere of warmth and trust in which they can grow stronger and deeper, both morally and spiritually.

If they can’t trust you to love them absolutely, who can they trust?

Why should they have to go to their friends for love, comfort, or guidance?

If they can’t speak to you with total openness without fear of encountering indifference, a harsh rebuke, or anger, to whom can they speak?

Is not the community of marriage and the larger community of the family specifically intended as a home for the soul, protected by the walls of your tender love — behind which your wife and children can know and be known, love and be loved without fear or anxiety?

Remember how Joseph bore himself toward Mary and Jesus. Let him become the model for you in your family.

+

barely two years ago, Susan delivered a healthy new baby, James Anthony.

The long years of pain and suffering seemed over. We felt ourselves to be on the verge of a long and happy marriage, and we looked forward finally to being able to raise our children in a family filled with love and peace and holiness.

W

tried these methods, and they worked. After three years of patience, listening, and growing in Susan’s trust — spending literally hundreds of hours talking with her about the deepest and most private aspects of our lives and souls, Susan and I had come to know each other just about as completely as two humans can know each other.

The love I gave her dissipated her anger, overcame her cynicism, softened her and gentled her, so that she was more forgiving of the faults I still have, and so that she became available as a sweet refuge for me in my discouragement and despair.

Over the months, as the atmosphere of our home changed, Susan grew wise and deep and holy.

She became so comfortable in my presence and we came to know each other so well, that often I could merely look at her and know her thoughts.

She was thirty-nine and in three brief years we had gone from the verge of divorce to being best friends. We endured four miscarriages but finally,

hich is why I don’t understand the ways of God — because just then, barely more than a year ago and only four months after the baby was born, Susan quite unexpectedly was diagnosed as having terminal cancer. Operated on two days later, she declined rapidly and just five months ago died at home, holding my hand, surrounded by family and friends, with Father Marc at her side leading us in prayer.

The eight months of her suffering and death crowned our by-then intense friendship and love, drawing us even closer together as Susan grew weaker, more helpless, and dependent.

It was then that I could show her how much I really loved her, caring for her daily and helping her prepare for the death we saw coming.

Throughout those months of increasingly worse medical news, unproductive pills, fruitless operations, and ineffective medical procedures, Susan and I grew closer to God and closer to each other and to our children.

The story of the holiness of her death is very beautiful, but unfortunately there is no time this morning to tell it.

Rather I must limit myself to speaking of our life together as it relates to male spirituality — and specifically as it relates to how we men should bear ourselves toward women — especially our wives.

And although I’m really quite shy, I’ve told you these details of my own life to serve for you as a promise and a warning: I was very lucky — or perhaps I was singled out to have a special gift bestowed upon me so that I could tell others about it.

Seven children and a wife just dead! How can I speak of gifts? It’s not because I myself am particularly saintly. (I’m not.) But even a sinner like me

8

9

I

would have to be blind not to see the goodness that came out of the tragedies of the last few years.

Remember the first part of my story: the horrible estrangement that existed between Susan and me.

I was given the incredible gift of circumstances, grace, and time to overcome that estrangement — four short years in the midst of many painful tragedies and intense personal suffering — time to repair that breach between us, to become my wife’s best friend; time to win her confidence so that she could rest in the shelter of my love when her disease was diagnosed, and nestle closer to me spiritually as each dreadful day went by.

That is a priceless gift: time and desire and patience and grace to learn to love one’s wife properly, to have her learn to accept it in absolute simplicity and trust, to have her permit me to suffer her cancer and death with her. It was the greatest joy I have ever experienced.

I

know only a few of you here today. Therefore, as I conclude by asking a number of questions, you mustn’t think that I am singling you out because of something I know about you personally or about how you treat your family.

Please ask these questions of yourselves as I ask them of myself: “This morning, as you pray with us for holiness, how close are you to your wife and family?”

Remember St. Joseph and the Holy Family — how he loved them tenderly without ceasing to be a man.

Remember your children and your wife, who need you desperately, for you are the strongest among them.

Carry home with you this question: “How close am I to my wife and family, and are there things I can do to become closer?”

“Am I too caught up in the urgent tasks of my life to perform the important ones of caring for those who are my particular responsibility: my wife and my children?”

F

inally, let me leave you with another question (but one that I will answer for you). I indicated earlier that my remarks this morning would be 10

+

morning to give this lecture: these are the urgent things for which we never have enough time.

But it’s more important that you pause to speak tenderly to your wife and children, offering them the support and encouragement that only a loving father can give and that they can receive only from you.

A

m I offering a recipe that will turn you into a wimp? Here we touch on a tension that penetrates to the very depths of our souls as American men. What should a Real Man be: strong, silent, independent, dominant, with special privileges because the strongest can and (by rights) should rule? Or should a Real Man be a servant, using his strength not to rule the weaker, but to serve and protect them?

Here I ask you to look to St. Joseph as your model. Was he weak?

On the contrary: he was a laborer — physically and morally strong, poor yet independent, able to protect his family from mortal threats and to care for them under the most difficult of circumstances.

His daily labor was probably far more arduous than yours or mine.

Yet although he was strong, he was not a tough man, a spiritually hard man. Mary of the Sorrows trusted herself and her divine Child to his tender care, which offers a lesson for you and me.

I

magine for a moment that you were Joseph, the Christ Child were your foster-child, and Mary were your wife. How would you bear yourself toward them? Would you remain aloof and distant from them? Would you swagger? Would you insist that you’re the head of the family and that Mary’s place is in the kitchen, that her troubles are insignificant compared with yours?

Or would you revere them, and treat them with great tenderness and care, seeking to serve instead of to be served?

I know what I would try to do.

Now think about how you treat your wife and your children. Tell me why your wife should be treated with less respect than Mary, or your children with less tenderness than Jesus. Because they 7

+

are weak and have sinned? Is that a reason to scorn them or afflict them?

Don’t weakness and sinfulness call for greater patience rather than less? Your wife and your children depend on you to set the tone for your family and to create an atmosphere of warmth and trust in which they can grow stronger and deeper, both morally and spiritually.

If they can’t trust you to love them absolutely, who can they trust?

Why should they have to go to their friends for love, comfort, or guidance?

If they can’t speak to you with total openness without fear of encountering indifference, a harsh rebuke, or anger, to whom can they speak?

Is not the community of marriage and the larger community of the family specifically intended as a home for the soul, protected by the walls of your tender love — behind which your wife and children can know and be known, love and be loved without fear or anxiety?

Remember how Joseph bore himself toward Mary and Jesus. Let him become the model for you in your family.

+

barely two years ago, Susan delivered a healthy new baby, James Anthony.

The long years of pain and suffering seemed over. We felt ourselves to be on the verge of a long and happy marriage, and we looked forward finally to being able to raise our children in a family filled with love and peace and holiness.

W

tried these methods, and they worked. After three years of patience, listening, and growing in Susan’s trust — spending literally hundreds of hours talking with her about the deepest and most private aspects of our lives and souls, Susan and I had come to know each other just about as completely as two humans can know each other.

The love I gave her dissipated her anger, overcame her cynicism, softened her and gentled her, so that she was more forgiving of the faults I still have, and so that she became available as a sweet refuge for me in my discouragement and despair.

Over the months, as the atmosphere of our home changed, Susan grew wise and deep and holy.

She became so comfortable in my presence and we came to know each other so well, that often I could merely look at her and know her thoughts.

She was thirty-nine and in three brief years we had gone from the verge of divorce to being best friends. We endured four miscarriages but finally,

hich is why I don’t understand the ways of God — because just then, barely more than a year ago and only four months after the baby was born, Susan quite unexpectedly was diagnosed as having terminal cancer. Operated on two days later, she declined rapidly and just five months ago died at home, holding my hand, surrounded by family and friends, with Father Marc at her side leading us in prayer.

The eight months of her suffering and death crowned our by-then intense friendship and love, drawing us even closer together as Susan grew weaker, more helpless, and dependent.

It was then that I could show her how much I really loved her, caring for her daily and helping her prepare for the death we saw coming.

Throughout those months of increasingly worse medical news, unproductive pills, fruitless operations, and ineffective medical procedures, Susan and I grew closer to God and closer to each other and to our children.

The story of the holiness of her death is very beautiful, but unfortunately there is no time this morning to tell it.

Rather I must limit myself to speaking of our life together as it relates to male spirituality — and specifically as it relates to how we men should bear ourselves toward women — especially our wives.

And although I’m really quite shy, I’ve told you these details of my own life to serve for you as a promise and a warning: I was very lucky — or perhaps I was singled out to have a special gift bestowed upon me so that I could tell others about it.

Seven children and a wife just dead! How can I speak of gifts? It’s not because I myself am particularly saintly. (I’m not.) But even a sinner like me

8

9

I

would have to be blind not to see the goodness that came out of the tragedies of the last few years.

Remember the first part of my story: the horrible estrangement that existed between Susan and me.

I was given the incredible gift of circumstances, grace, and time to overcome that estrangement — four short years in the midst of many painful tragedies and intense personal suffering — time to repair that breach between us, to become my wife’s best friend; time to win her confidence so that she could rest in the shelter of my love when her disease was diagnosed, and nestle closer to me spiritually as each dreadful day went by.

That is a priceless gift: time and desire and patience and grace to learn to love one’s wife properly, to have her learn to accept it in absolute simplicity and trust, to have her permit me to suffer her cancer and death with her. It was the greatest joy I have ever experienced.

I

know only a few of you here today. Therefore, as I conclude by asking a number of questions, you mustn’t think that I am singling you out because of something I know about you personally or about how you treat your family.

Please ask these questions of yourselves as I ask them of myself: “This morning, as you pray with us for holiness, how close are you to your wife and family?”

Remember St. Joseph and the Holy Family — how he loved them tenderly without ceasing to be a man.

Remember your children and your wife, who need you desperately, for you are the strongest among them.

Carry home with you this question: “How close am I to my wife and family, and are there things I can do to become closer?”

“Am I too caught up in the urgent tasks of my life to perform the important ones of caring for those who are my particular responsibility: my wife and my children?”

F

inally, let me leave you with another question (but one that I will answer for you). I indicated earlier that my remarks this morning would be 10

+

morning to give this lecture: these are the urgent things for which we never have enough time.

But it’s more important that you pause to speak tenderly to your wife and children, offering them the support and encouragement that only a loving father can give and that they can receive only from you.

A

m I offering a recipe that will turn you into a wimp? Here we touch on a tension that penetrates to the very depths of our souls as American men. What should a Real Man be: strong, silent, independent, dominant, with special privileges because the strongest can and (by rights) should rule? Or should a Real Man be a servant, using his strength not to rule the weaker, but to serve and protect them?

Here I ask you to look to St. Joseph as your model. Was he weak?

On the contrary: he was a laborer — physically and morally strong, poor yet independent, able to protect his family from mortal threats and to care for them under the most difficult of circumstances.

His daily labor was probably far more arduous than yours or mine.

Yet although he was strong, he was not a tough man, a spiritually hard man. Mary of the Sorrows trusted herself and her divine Child to his tender care, which offers a lesson for you and me.

I

magine for a moment that you were Joseph, the Christ Child were your foster-child, and Mary were your wife. How would you bear yourself toward them? Would you remain aloof and distant from them? Would you swagger? Would you insist that you’re the head of the family and that Mary’s place is in the kitchen, that her troubles are insignificant compared with yours?

Or would you revere them, and treat them with great tenderness and care, seeking to serve instead of to be served?

I know what I would try to do.

Now think about how you treat your wife and your children. Tell me why your wife should be treated with less respect than Mary, or your children with less tenderness than Jesus. Because they 7

+

are weak and have sinned? Is that a reason to scorn them or afflict them?

Don’t weakness and sinfulness call for greater patience rather than less? Your wife and your children depend on you to set the tone for your family and to create an atmosphere of warmth and trust in which they can grow stronger and deeper, both morally and spiritually.

If they can’t trust you to love them absolutely, who can they trust?

Why should they have to go to their friends for love, comfort, or guidance?

If they can’t speak to you with total openness without fear of encountering indifference, a harsh rebuke, or anger, to whom can they speak?

Is not the community of marriage and the larger community of the family specifically intended as a home for the soul, protected by the walls of your tender love — behind which your wife and children can know and be known, love and be loved without fear or anxiety?

Remember how Joseph bore himself toward Mary and Jesus. Let him become the model for you in your family.

+

barely two years ago, Susan delivered a healthy new baby, James Anthony.

The long years of pain and suffering seemed over. We felt ourselves to be on the verge of a long and happy marriage, and we looked forward finally to being able to raise our children in a family filled with love and peace and holiness.

W

tried these methods, and they worked. After three years of patience, listening, and growing in Susan’s trust — spending literally hundreds of hours talking with her about the deepest and most private aspects of our lives and souls, Susan and I had come to know each other just about as completely as two humans can know each other.

The love I gave her dissipated her anger, overcame her cynicism, softened her and gentled her, so that she was more forgiving of the faults I still have, and so that she became available as a sweet refuge for me in my discouragement and despair.

Over the months, as the atmosphere of our home changed, Susan grew wise and deep and holy.

She became so comfortable in my presence and we came to know each other so well, that often I could merely look at her and know her thoughts.

She was thirty-nine and in three brief years we had gone from the verge of divorce to being best friends. We endured four miscarriages but finally,

hich is why I don’t understand the ways of God — because just then, barely more than a year ago and only four months after the baby was born, Susan quite unexpectedly was diagnosed as having terminal cancer. Operated on two days later, she declined rapidly and just five months ago died at home, holding my hand, surrounded by family and friends, with Father Marc at her side leading us in prayer.

The eight months of her suffering and death crowned our by-then intense friendship and love, drawing us even closer together as Susan grew weaker, more helpless, and dependent.

It was then that I could show her how much I really loved her, caring for her daily and helping her prepare for the death we saw coming.

Throughout those months of increasingly worse medical news, unproductive pills, fruitless operations, and ineffective medical procedures, Susan and I grew closer to God and closer to each other and to our children.

The story of the holiness of her death is very beautiful, but unfortunately there is no time this morning to tell it.

Rather I must limit myself to speaking of our life together as it relates to male spirituality — and specifically as it relates to how we men should bear ourselves toward women — especially our wives.

And although I’m really quite shy, I’ve told you these details of my own life to serve for you as a promise and a warning: I was very lucky — or perhaps I was singled out to have a special gift bestowed upon me so that I could tell others about it.

Seven children and a wife just dead! How can I speak of gifts? It’s not because I myself am particularly saintly. (I’m not.) But even a sinner like me

8

9

I

would have to be blind not to see the goodness that came out of the tragedies of the last few years.

Remember the first part of my story: the horrible estrangement that existed between Susan and me.

I was given the incredible gift of circumstances, grace, and time to overcome that estrangement — four short years in the midst of many painful tragedies and intense personal suffering — time to repair that breach between us, to become my wife’s best friend; time to win her confidence so that she could rest in the shelter of my love when her disease was diagnosed, and nestle closer to me spiritually as each dreadful day went by.

That is a priceless gift: time and desire and patience and grace to learn to love one’s wife properly, to have her learn to accept it in absolute simplicity and trust, to have her permit me to suffer her cancer and death with her. It was the greatest joy I have ever experienced.

I

know only a few of you here today. Therefore, as I conclude by asking a number of questions, you mustn’t think that I am singling you out because of something I know about you personally or about how you treat your family.

Please ask these questions of yourselves as I ask them of myself: “This morning, as you pray with us for holiness, how close are you to your wife and family?”

Remember St. Joseph and the Holy Family — how he loved them tenderly without ceasing to be a man.

Remember your children and your wife, who need you desperately, for you are the strongest among them.

Carry home with you this question: “How close am I to my wife and family, and are there things I can do to become closer?”

“Am I too caught up in the urgent tasks of my life to perform the important ones of caring for those who are my particular responsibility: my wife and my children?”

F

inally, let me leave you with another question (but one that I will answer for you). I indicated earlier that my remarks this morning would be 10

+

relevant not merely to your relations with women and in particular to your relations with your wife, but also to your relations with the rest of your family, with other people, and ultimately with God Himself.

Let me now show why that’s so.

Consider the virtues I have recommended as necessary to a deep relation with your wife: patience, listening, humility, service, and faithful, tender love.

I hope it is not heretical for me to claim that in His dealings with us, God acts in many ways like a woman.

Women are capable of and sometimes commit magnificent acts that manifest incredible power and awaken in us men a profound awe, if not fear and trembling.

Yet when they love, they love quietly; they speak, as it were, in whispers, and we have to listen carefully, attentively, to hear their words of love and to know them.

Isn’t God also this way?

Doesn’t He intervene in most of our lives in whispers, which we miss if we fail to recollect ourselves and pay careful attention — if we do not constantly strive to hear those whispers of Divine love?

+

Must I therefore allege that the God Whom we call Father is feminine?

No. Rather, I claim that we have falsely identified masculinity with coldness, power, and remoteness.

A good father — and God is preeminently the Good Father — bears his authority and power with love and tenderness.

This is true masculinity: masculinity which has the strength, courage, and will to shelter the weak against the most powerful forces of evil, but which does not use its power to hurt those it should protect.

T

he virtues necessary in truly loving a woman and having that love returned — the virtues of listening, patience, humility, service, and faithful love — are the very virtues necessary for us to love God and to feel His love returned. As we cannot lord it over women if we are to know them and grow intimate with them, so we cannot lord it over God if we are to know Him and grow intimate with Him. We cannot successfully demand the love of a woman or the love of God. We have to wait.

And just as a woman’s heart is melted when she encounters in us weakness accompanied by our humble admission of it, so God’s heart is melted and He is most tender and gracious to us when He encounters in us weakness accompanied by our humble admission of it.

his morning I have briefly considered relations between men and women, between parents and children, and between humans and God. But my points can be extended to all persons, divine or human, in their relations with each other.

Although the relations between human persons and between human persons and God take many forms, at the heart of each of these encounters there is only one question that is always asked — sometimes explicitly but always implicitly — and which is in fact the only important question that persons, whether human or divine, ever ask each other: “Do you love me?”

Daily your wife asks you that question in her looks, in her actions, perhaps in her words. So do your children: “Daddy, do you love me?”

And daily we ask it of them.

Daily in our discouragement or despair and perhaps in our hopes we ask God, “Do you love me?”

“Do you really love me?”

Daily God asks us, “Do you love me?”

That one question is at the heart of all relations between persons, divine or human.

It is the only important question that persons ever ask each other.

And regardless of who is asking it (you, me, your wife, your child, God Himself) — and regardless of who is answering it — there is really only one satisfactory answer: “Yes, I love you.”

“Yes, my beloved wife, I love you.”

“Yes, my dear child, I love you.”

“Yes, my Jesus, I love you.”

11

12

T

+

I

was very fortunate in learning this before it was too late. I was blessed in having discovered that “Do you love me?” was really the question Susan was asking me all those years — — blessed these past few years in having the time and opportunity to give Susan the right answer while she could still hear it; — blessed in discovering that this is the question that my children are asking me this very morning and every other morning; — and blessed in learning to hope and to pray that in my words and in my actions I may answer this question: “Yes” and “Yes,” and “Yes” again — until finally I may lie down to take my rest next to Susan — embraced fully by God’s tender, eternal love — and that then, despite my sinfulness, I may finally be able to hear Him say to me, too, that Divine “Yes” which you and I most secretly long to hear:

Biographical Note Dr. John Barger converted to Catholicism in 1974 and soon thereafter undertook graduate studies in philosophy and literature at the University of Dallas. Receiving his doctorate in 1979, he then taught philosophy for six years in New Hampshire.

John established Sophia Institute Press in his basement in 1983. This nonprofit enterprise publishes out-of-print Catholic classics in readable new editions. In 1987, his wife Susan died prematurely of cancer, leaving John with seven children, including a one-year-old. With the help of his other children, John continued his work full-time for Sophia, moving his office from his basement to his firstfloor bedroom so he could keep an eye on the children while he edited and published books.

John has since remarried. With his new wife, Eva, he now has eleven children. He runs a much larger Sophia Institute Press from a nineteenth-century mill building in downtown Manchester, New Hampshire.

He devotes his time to his family, to his parish (where he is a lector), and to the Press.

John notes that more than 50,000 people have already been helped by this booklet and that, along with them, he struggles daily to live up to the simple, life-transforming principles he discovered in loving and caring for Susan.

“Yes, John, I love you!”

“Yes, all you poor, suffering souls — whoever you are and wherever you are — I love you!”

Finally, I pray that you, my wife, my children, our friends, our benefactors, and even our enemies may at last be joined together in one eternal, resplendent, divinely echoing, “Yes!” “Yes!”

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS® Sophia Institute Press® publishes Catholic classics in handsome, readable formats. Authors include St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis de Sales, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Romano Guardini, and other reliable Catholic writers. For a free catalog, call toll-free 1-800-888-9344, or write to Sophia Institute Press, Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108.

“Yes, I love you!”

Additional copies of this pamphlet can be obtained from Sophia Institute Press® Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108 1-800-888-9344 Price: $1.25 per pamphlet

13

Special offers: 40 pamphlets with display — $25 1000+ pamphlets — $.25 each, plus S&H (call for details)

+

relevant not merely to your relations with women and in particular to your relations with your wife, but also to your relations with the rest of your family, with other people, and ultimately with God Himself.

Let me now show why that’s so.

Consider the virtues I have recommended as necessary to a deep relation with your wife: patience, listening, humility, service, and faithful, tender love.

I hope it is not heretical for me to claim that in His dealings with us, God acts in many ways like a woman.

Women are capable of and sometimes commit magnificent acts that manifest incredible power and awaken in us men a profound awe, if not fear and trembling.

Yet when they love, they love quietly; they speak, as it were, in whispers, and we have to listen carefully, attentively, to hear their words of love and to know them.

Isn’t God also this way?

Doesn’t He intervene in most of our lives in whispers, which we miss if we fail to recollect ourselves and pay careful attention — if we do not constantly strive to hear those whispers of Divine love?

+

Must I therefore allege that the God Whom we call Father is feminine?

No. Rather, I claim that we have falsely identified masculinity with coldness, power, and remoteness.

A good father — and God is preeminently the Good Father — bears his authority and power with love and tenderness.

This is true masculinity: masculinity which has the strength, courage, and will to shelter the weak against the most powerful forces of evil, but which does not use its power to hurt those it should protect.

T

he virtues necessary in truly loving a woman and having that love returned — the virtues of listening, patience, humility, service, and faithful love — are the very virtues necessary for us to love God and to feel His love returned. As we cannot lord it over women if we are to know them and grow intimate with them, so we cannot lord it over God if we are to know Him and grow intimate with Him. We cannot successfully demand the love of a woman or the love of God. We have to wait.

And just as a woman’s heart is melted when she encounters in us weakness accompanied by our humble admission of it, so God’s heart is melted and He is most tender and gracious to us when He encounters in us weakness accompanied by our humble admission of it.

his morning I have briefly considered relations between men and women, between parents and children, and between humans and God. But my points can be extended to all persons, divine or human, in their relations with each other.

Although the relations between human persons and between human persons and God take many forms, at the heart of each of these encounters there is only one question that is always asked — sometimes explicitly but always implicitly — and which is in fact the only important question that persons, whether human or divine, ever ask each other: “Do you love me?”

Daily your wife asks you that question in her looks, in her actions, perhaps in her words. So do your children: “Daddy, do you love me?”

And daily we ask it of them.

Daily in our discouragement or despair and perhaps in our hopes we ask God, “Do you love me?”

“Do you really love me?”

Daily God asks us, “Do you love me?”

That one question is at the heart of all relations between persons, divine or human.

It is the only important question that persons ever ask each other.

And regardless of who is asking it (you, me, your wife, your child, God Himself) — and regardless of who is answering it — there is really only one satisfactory answer: “Yes, I love you.”

“Yes, my beloved wife, I love you.”

“Yes, my dear child, I love you.”

“Yes, my Jesus, I love you.”

11

12

T

+

I

was very fortunate in learning this before it was too late. I was blessed in having discovered that “Do you love me?” was really the question Susan was asking me all those years — — blessed these past few years in having the time and opportunity to give Susan the right answer while she could still hear it; — blessed in discovering that this is the question that my children are asking me this very morning and every other morning; — and blessed in learning to hope and to pray that in my words and in my actions I may answer this question: “Yes” and “Yes,” and “Yes” again — until finally I may lie down to take my rest next to Susan — embraced fully by God’s tender, eternal love — and that then, despite my sinfulness, I may finally be able to hear Him say to me, too, that Divine “Yes” which you and I most secretly long to hear:

Biographical Note Dr. John Barger converted to Catholicism in 1974 and soon thereafter undertook graduate studies in philosophy and literature at the University of Dallas. Receiving his doctorate in 1979, he then taught philosophy for six years in New Hampshire.

John established Sophia Institute Press in his basement in 1983. This nonprofit enterprise publishes out-of-print Catholic classics in readable new editions. In 1987, his wife Susan died prematurely of cancer, leaving John with seven children, including a one-year-old. With the help of his other children, John continued his work full-time for Sophia, moving his office from his basement to his firstfloor bedroom so he could keep an eye on the children while he edited and published books.

John has since remarried. With his new wife, Eva, he now has eleven children. He runs a much larger Sophia Institute Press from a nineteenth-century mill building in downtown Manchester, New Hampshire.

He devotes his time to his family, to his parish (where he is a lector), and to the Press.

John notes that more than 50,000 people have already been helped by this booklet and that, along with them, he struggles daily to live up to the simple, life-transforming principles he discovered in loving and caring for Susan.

“Yes, John, I love you!”

“Yes, all you poor, suffering souls — whoever you are and wherever you are — I love you!”

Finally, I pray that you, my wife, my children, our friends, our benefactors, and even our enemies may at last be joined together in one eternal, resplendent, divinely echoing, “Yes!” “Yes!”

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS® Sophia Institute Press® publishes Catholic classics in handsome, readable formats. Authors include St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis de Sales, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Romano Guardini, and other reliable Catholic writers. For a free catalog, call toll-free 1-800-888-9344, or write to Sophia Institute Press, Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108.

“Yes, I love you!”

Additional copies of this pamphlet can be obtained from Sophia Institute Press® Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108 1-800-888-9344 Price: $1.25 per pamphlet

13

Special offers: 40 pamphlets with display — $25 1000+ pamphlets — $.25 each, plus S&H (call for details)

+

relevant not merely to your relations with women and in particular to your relations with your wife, but also to your relations with the rest of your family, with other people, and ultimately with God Himself.

Let me now show why that’s so.

Consider the virtues I have recommended as necessary to a deep relation with your wife: patience, listening, humility, service, and faithful, tender love.

I hope it is not heretical for me to claim that in His dealings with us, God acts in many ways like a woman.

Women are capable of and sometimes commit magnificent acts that manifest incredible power and awaken in us men a profound awe, if not fear and trembling.

Yet when they love, they love quietly; they speak, as it were, in whispers, and we have to listen carefully, attentively, to hear their words of love and to know them.

Isn’t God also this way?

Doesn’t He intervene in most of our lives in whispers, which we miss if we fail to recollect ourselves and pay careful attention — if we do not constantly strive to hear those whispers of Divine love?

+

Must I therefore allege that the God Whom we call Father is feminine?

No. Rather, I claim that we have falsely identified masculinity with coldness, power, and remoteness.

A good father — and God is preeminently the Good Father — bears his authority and power with love and tenderness.

This is true masculinity: masculinity which has the strength, courage, and will to shelter the weak against the most powerful forces of evil, but which does not use its power to hurt those it should protect.

T

he virtues necessary in truly loving a woman and having that love returned — the virtues of listening, patience, humility, service, and faithful love — are the very virtues necessary for us to love God and to feel His love returned. As we cannot lord it over women if we are to know them and grow intimate with them, so we cannot lord it over God if we are to know Him and grow intimate with Him. We cannot successfully demand the love of a woman or the love of God. We have to wait.

And just as a woman’s heart is melted when she encounters in us weakness accompanied by our humble admission of it, so God’s heart is melted and He is most tender and gracious to us when He encounters in us weakness accompanied by our humble admission of it.

his morning I have briefly considered relations between men and women, between parents and children, and between humans and God. But my points can be extended to all persons, divine or human, in their relations with each other.

Although the relations between human persons and between human persons and God take many forms, at the heart of each of these encounters there is only one question that is always asked — sometimes explicitly but always implicitly — and which is in fact the only important question that persons, whether human or divine, ever ask each other: “Do you love me?”

Daily your wife asks you that question in her looks, in her actions, perhaps in her words. So do your children: “Daddy, do you love me?”

And daily we ask it of them.

Daily in our discouragement or despair and perhaps in our hopes we ask God, “Do you love me?”

“Do you really love me?”

Daily God asks us, “Do you love me?”

That one question is at the heart of all relations between persons, divine or human.

It is the only important question that persons ever ask each other.

And regardless of who is asking it (you, me, your wife, your child, God Himself) — and regardless of who is answering it — there is really only one satisfactory answer: “Yes, I love you.”

“Yes, my beloved wife, I love you.”

“Yes, my dear child, I love you.”

“Yes, my Jesus, I love you.”

11

12

T

+

I

was very fortunate in learning this before it was too late. I was blessed in having discovered that “Do you love me?” was really the question Susan was asking me all those years — — blessed these past few years in having the time and opportunity to give Susan the right answer while she could still hear it; — blessed in discovering that this is the question that my children are asking me this very morning and every other morning; — and blessed in learning to hope and to pray that in my words and in my actions I may answer this question: “Yes” and “Yes,” and “Yes” again — until finally I may lie down to take my rest next to Susan — embraced fully by God’s tender, eternal love — and that then, despite my sinfulness, I may finally be able to hear Him say to me, too, that Divine “Yes” which you and I most secretly long to hear:

Biographical Note Dr. John Barger converted to Catholicism in 1974 and soon thereafter undertook graduate studies in philosophy and literature at the University of Dallas. Receiving his doctorate in 1979, he then taught philosophy for six years in New Hampshire.

John established Sophia Institute Press in his basement in 1983. This nonprofit enterprise publishes out-of-print Catholic classics in readable new editions. In 1987, his wife Susan died prematurely of cancer, leaving John with seven children, including a one-year-old. With the help of his other children, John continued his work full-time for Sophia, moving his office from his basement to his firstfloor bedroom so he could keep an eye on the children while he edited and published books.

John has since remarried. With his new wife, Eva, he now has eleven children. He runs a much larger Sophia Institute Press from a nineteenth-century mill building in downtown Manchester, New Hampshire.

He devotes his time to his family, to his parish (where he is a lector), and to the Press.

John notes that more than 50,000 people have already been helped by this booklet and that, along with them, he struggles daily to live up to the simple, life-transforming principles he discovered in loving and caring for Susan.

“Yes, John, I love you!”

“Yes, all you poor, suffering souls — whoever you are and wherever you are — I love you!”

Finally, I pray that you, my wife, my children, our friends, our benefactors, and even our enemies may at last be joined together in one eternal, resplendent, divinely echoing, “Yes!” “Yes!”

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS® Sophia Institute Press® publishes Catholic classics in handsome, readable formats. Authors include St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis de Sales, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Romano Guardini, and other reliable Catholic writers. For a free catalog, call toll-free 1-800-888-9344, or write to Sophia Institute Press, Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108.

“Yes, I love you!”

Additional copies of this pamphlet can be obtained from Sophia Institute Press® Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108 1-800-888-9344 Price: $1.25 per pamphlet

13

Special offers: 40 pamphlets with display — $25 1000+ pamphlets — $.25 each, plus S&H (call for details)

+

relevant not merely to your relations with women and in particular to your relations with your wife, but also to your relations with the rest of your family, with other people, and ultimately with God Himself.

Let me now show why that’s so.

Consider the virtues I have recommended as necessary to a deep relation with your wife: patience, listening, humility, service, and faithful, tender love.

I hope it is not heretical for me to claim that in His dealings with us, God acts in many ways like a woman.

Women are capable of and sometimes commit magnificent acts that manifest incredible power and awaken in us men a profound awe, if not fear and trembling.

Yet when they love, they love quietly; they speak, as it were, in whispers, and we have to listen carefully, attentively, to hear their words of love and to know them.

Isn’t God also this way?

Doesn’t He intervene in most of our lives in whispers, which we miss if we fail to recollect ourselves and pay careful attention — if we do not constantly strive to hear those whispers of Divine love?

+

Must I therefore allege that the God Whom we call Father is feminine?

No. Rather, I claim that we have falsely identified masculinity with coldness, power, and remoteness.

A good father — and God is preeminently the Good Father — bears his authority and power with love and tenderness.

This is true masculinity: masculinity which has the strength, courage, and will to shelter the weak against the most powerful forces of evil, but which does not use its power to hurt those it should protect.

T

he virtues necessary in truly loving a woman and having that love returned — the virtues of listening, patience, humility, service, and faithful love — are the very virtues necessary for us to love God and to feel His love returned. As we cannot lord it over women if we are to know them and grow intimate with them, so we cannot lord it over God if we are to know Him and grow intimate with Him. We cannot successfully demand the love of a woman or the love of God. We have to wait.

And just as a woman’s heart is melted when she encounters in us weakness accompanied by our humble admission of it, so God’s heart is melted and He is most tender and gracious to us when He encounters in us weakness accompanied by our humble admission of it.

his morning I have briefly considered relations between men and women, between parents and children, and between humans and God. But my points can be extended to all persons, divine or human, in their relations with each other.

Although the relations between human persons and between human persons and God take many forms, at the heart of each of these encounters there is only one question that is always asked — sometimes explicitly but always implicitly — and which is in fact the only important question that persons, whether human or divine, ever ask each other: “Do you love me?”

Daily your wife asks you that question in her looks, in her actions, perhaps in her words. So do your children: “Daddy, do you love me?”

And daily we ask it of them.

Daily in our discouragement or despair and perhaps in our hopes we ask God, “Do you love me?”

“Do you really love me?”

Daily God asks us, “Do you love me?”

That one question is at the heart of all relations between persons, divine or human.

It is the only important question that persons ever ask each other.

And regardless of who is asking it (you, me, your wife, your child, God Himself) — and regardless of who is answering it — there is really only one satisfactory answer: “Yes, I love you.”

“Yes, my beloved wife, I love you.”

“Yes, my dear child, I love you.”

“Yes, my Jesus, I love you.”

11

12

T

+

I

was very fortunate in learning this before it was too late. I was blessed in having discovered that “Do you love me?” was really the question Susan was asking me all those years — — blessed these past few years in having the time and opportunity to give Susan the right answer while she could still hear it; — blessed in discovering that this is the question that my children are asking me this very morning and every other morning; — and blessed in learning to hope and to pray that in my words and in my actions I may answer this question: “Yes” and “Yes,” and “Yes” again — until finally I may lie down to take my rest next to Susan — embraced fully by God’s tender, eternal love — and that then, despite my sinfulness, I may finally be able to hear Him say to me, too, that Divine “Yes” which you and I most secretly long to hear:

Biographical Note Dr. John Barger converted to Catholicism in 1974 and soon thereafter undertook graduate studies in philosophy and literature at the University of Dallas. Receiving his doctorate in 1979, he then taught philosophy for six years in New Hampshire.

John established Sophia Institute Press in his basement in 1983. This nonprofit enterprise publishes out-of-print Catholic classics in readable new editions. In 1987, his wife Susan died prematurely of cancer, leaving John with seven children, including a one-year-old. With the help of his other children, John continued his work full-time for Sophia, moving his office from his basement to his firstfloor bedroom so he could keep an eye on the children while he edited and published books.

John has since remarried. With his new wife, Eva, he now has eleven children. He runs a much larger Sophia Institute Press from a nineteenth-century mill building in downtown Manchester, New Hampshire.

He devotes his time to his family, to his parish (where he is a lector), and to the Press.

John notes that more than 50,000 people have already been helped by this booklet and that, along with them, he struggles daily to live up to the simple, life-transforming principles he discovered in loving and caring for Susan.

“Yes, John, I love you!”

“Yes, all you poor, suffering souls — whoever you are and wherever you are — I love you!”

Finally, I pray that you, my wife, my children, our friends, our benefactors, and even our enemies may at last be joined together in one eternal, resplendent, divinely echoing, “Yes!” “Yes!”

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS® Sophia Institute Press® publishes Catholic classics in handsome, readable formats. Authors include St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis de Sales, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Romano Guardini, and other reliable Catholic writers. For a free catalog, call toll-free 1-800-888-9344, or write to Sophia Institute Press, Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108.

“Yes, I love you!”

Additional copies of this pamphlet can be obtained from Sophia Institute Press® Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108 1-800-888-9344 Price: $1.25 per pamphlet

13

Special offers: 40 pamphlets with display — $25 1000+ pamphlets — $.25 each, plus S&H (call for details)