My wife reminded me yesterday about a married couple we knew, now deceased, who were a remarkable example of preserving an affectionate and young love far into old age. In particular, she mentioned a story about them that I had forgotten, a story that I would also like to share here.
When this couple first married back in the 1930s, he was too poor to buy his prospective bride a diamond ring. Over the next several years, unbeknownst to his wife, he would skip lunch every day at work and stow away the unspent money. Once he had saved enough money, he bought a diamond ring and presented it to his wife on a wedding anniversary.
How much beauty and how much nuptial wisdom there is in that act!
His perseverance, planning, sacrifice, along with a certain wastefulness in loving her so lavishly guarded the fire of the ‘first love’ that had brought them together in the beginning.
Husbands, to love your wife thus is to love Christ thus. What a witness they were in a world where romance has been severed from Rome, where passion has come unmoored from faithfulness, and where outward beauty has drifted far from inward sacrifice.
Husbands, in regard to loving our wives, we would do well to make these final words of St. Francis our own, ‘let us begin, for up until now we have done nothing.’
No comment on F-Bomb except that I think Webster now officially links it with the 80s Met catcher, now deceased, Gary Carter. But Marriage Love Bomb exploded in front of me today at the hospital as I had the privilege of praying with man and wife as she recovers slowly from a stroke. She could hardly speak but looked at him with deep trust and he had deep strength in his loving and innocent smile toward her as he sat and held her hand. It’s a motif of the Priest-Spouse in the New Evangelization. No renewal without sitting with eyes courageously loving her in her infirmities…she mine! I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same after its detonation.
As only YOU could give it flesh and bones, WC.
Thank you!