Chapter 34 of 36
Prayer for Each Other
A FATHER and a mother willingly pray for a son in danger, a sick daughter, or a child in distress. But not so frequently do husbands and wives pray for each other. Yet that would be the way they could most easily obtain the graces necessary to achieve their common desires and fulfill their common mission.
How beautiful it would be if, during their evening prayer together, there could be a pause such as the one for the examination of conscience during which time each would pray silently for the other, recommending to God all the other’s intentions sensed, guessed, and known as well as those that only God the Master of consciences could know.
Even more beautiful would it be if they would receive Holy Communion together frequently so that each of them could speak more intimately to Our Lord about the needs of the other, begging not only temporal but spiritual favors for this cherished soul.
Cana Conferences are becoming more widespread. Here both husband and wife listen to the same discourses, make the same meditations and are called upon to form the same resolutions. They are not expected to make their retreat as two married celibates but as a couple together, to be sanctified conjointly.
They will in their Cana Conferences experience at times no doubt a little sly joy—quite pardonable to be sure—at hearing the very things they have been trying to convince their partner of, stressed energetically by a qualified speaker and with every chance of being effective since at such times the soul is more receptive.
They both become compromised in the eyes of the other; neither has any excuse in the future for going off on a tangent.
A further advantage of Cana Conferences is that the couple can more easily advance in holiness if their striving after it is synchronized. In many homes, the wife can manage to slip away for an annual retreat that has become habitual for her while the husband according to his reasoning can never find the time for these periods of recollection. As a consequence, there is a sort of spiritual cleavage between them. They do not advance equally with the consequent danger that to one the piety of the other may seem too rigid or too absorbing.
Let the wife, have, if she will, her additional practices of devotion to supplement the couple’s united prayers; if she is intelligently pious they can only serve for the good of the home. But it remains true that her efforts ought to be directed less to surpassing her husband in spiritual exercises than to elevating his spirituality to the heights of her own, assuming that hers is perfectly balanced, warm and vibrant.
Certain timidities must be overcome. At the beginning of married life, the husband will accept everything from his wife. He expects her to surpass him spiritually and above all he expects her to draw him forward. Let her then use her power prudently, intelligently, delicately in virtue of her love. Let her not be motivated by the desire to count her fine successes but to spiritualize her home. Her husband can only be grateful for it. He will welcome her influence, profit by it, follow it.