The text we present below offers a series of general considerations that Father Henri Caffarel proposed to “Foyers qui souffrent” (suffering households), couples who, faced with difficulties, might be tempted to distance themselves or give up. They are a series of proposals, called remedies, which he thought might be useful to many.

And first of all, you have to make an effort to be clear-sighted; you have to want to see; even if it means making discoveries that hurt, even and especially if it means finding out personal wrongs, condemning yourself. How desirable it would be if this effort could be made by two people! In fact, by the time the spouses undertake it together, they are no longer disunited. Everything must be done to make this honest conversation possible one day. “Doing everything possible” does not mean rushing things: it is often wise to know how to wait, how to temporize; a false move can considerably delay the moment of healing. The fact remains, however, that while it’s wise to wait, out of prudence and patience, it’s culpable to evade questions out of cowardice. Doesn’t everything in the dark take the form of threatening ghosts, which vanish as if by magic when the light is shed?

Shedding light means seeking out the causes of evil. The most visible are not always the most real: we mustn’t allow ourselves to be hypnotized by them. It’s important to look beyond them. Without being afraid to acknowledge the spouse’s faults, we must not blind ourselves to our own. It’s necessary to look them in the face. Not so much to be sorry for them - great despair is no solution

• but to acknowledge them to yourself and perhaps, when the time comes, to the other person. I’d

like to think that many situations fester because spouses shy away from the effort of searching and being frank. Had they done so, all would have been quickly unraveled. Truth is liberating.

Once the causes have been identified, it’s time to look at the real remedies. Palliative treatment momentarily soothes the pain, but as it does not reach the cause, it does not cure.

The first remedy is often a change of heart. Ah, I know we tend to wait for our partner to change, but if they both react like that, chances are nothing will change!

How many things need to be rectified in our hearts! First of all, aren’t the roots of that weed, the illusion of happiness, still alive and well? As if perfect happiness could ever exist on earth, as if marriage were supposed to bring ready-made happiness… How many disasters have their origins in this illusion held by so many young couples! It needs to be exorcised once and for all.

Then we have to tackle the disappointments and their poisonous fruits. I’m thinking in particular of those resentments, those animosities, proliferating in a heart that believes itself wronged. Look a little closer and discern in all this that feeling I haven’t yet named, to which very few dare give its proper name: hatred. Please don’t be too quick to think, when you read this word, that the passion it designates is foreign to you. I’m well aware that, in today’s overloaded lives, nerves very quickly get the better of us, without the heart being bad. And I’m careful not to confuse impatience with hatred. But I also know that it’s dangerous to give free rein to these irritations which, benign at first, contaminate the heart later on and run the risk of arousing hatred: let’s have the courage to call by its name this reptile in us that wakes up at certain times, rears up and hisses. Is it not hatred that betrays itself in so many reactions and reflections?

This joy in catching the other in the wrong, this bitter need to be right against him, this venomous allusion to a past fault, this search for grievances - like a hunter adding arrows to his quiver - this jealous care to leave no opportunity to slip the poison of contempt into a word or a gesture; isn’t this hatred, more or less serious depending on the case, but always pernicious? For a time, it can cohabit in the soul with love, but one day, as an invading parasite, it will suffocate it. I apologize for the cruelty of my words, but you can’t purify a wound without making the patient suffer. There are, of course, generous hearts, infinitely good and merciful, who know nothing of this dreadful evil. No doubt they are rare, and they themselves are not immune to the temptations of hatred.

We need to cultivate within ourselves the antidote to hatred: forgiving mercy. To forgive is to tear up the page on which we wrote, with malice or rage, the debtor account of our spouse, and to rediscover before him or her the attitude of unreserved giving. I believe that this is one of the nerve centers of family life. It’s pointless to look for other remedies until we’ve obtained the grace to know how to forgive, “seventy times seven”, if need be. What a relief in the heart that has forgiven! Gone is that noxious climate of moaning, reproach and demands. No doubt the pain remains, but the bitterness is gone. And because we’ve taken the lead in forgiveness - not the haughty forgiveness of the proud, but the humble forgiveness of the one who doesn’t hesitate to admit his or her own wrongs - perhaps the spouse will be reborn in love.

Changing your heart also means changing your outlook. Abandoning the critical gaze and adopting the loving gaze which, through the more or less rough bark, reveals a living sap, working inside and preparing the buds and flowers of a springtime sometimes closer than we think. Who’s to say that, in this seemingly indifferent, hard-headed or stubborn being, there isn’t a child’s heart crying out, or bleeding and crying out for help? So many so-called wicked adults are just poor kids who need to be cradled! So many things and so many people have disappointed or hurt them, that they no longer dare to believe in love and put on armor to protect themselves from the blows. Your loving gaze will pierce the armor.

But it’s not enough to change your heart; you have to love. And if you’ve unlearned how to love, you have to relearn. Rediscover the love that made you say, on the day of your engagement: am I capable of making him happy? - and promised to spare no effort to do so. Return to the resolutions of those radiant hours. Understand what’s wrong with the way you do things, and avoid it scrupulously. Guess his desires, strive to meet them. Take an interest in his thoughts, his feelings, his joys, his sorrows, his undertakings. Discern in what he is and in what he does what deserves your admiration, and translate it to him. Don’t fail to recognize the delicate gestures, however modest or clumsy, by which he tries to show you a little love. This will encourage him to love. Encourage him to give too: you need to know you need him. Perhaps he hasn’t yet broken that spring in every human being that mirrors the most secret impulse of God’s Heart: the desire to make people happy.

Have you noticed that I haven’t talked to you about pursuing the “conversion” of your spouse - if that’s what’s needed - but only about working for his or her happiness? I readily believe that the best way, preferable to all sermons and zeal, so quickly indiscreet, to obtain the transformation of another, is to work for the joy of that other.

To love is still to share. Sharing is difficult when you’re faced with a person who isn’t hungry, but we must never give up. When I speak of sharing, I’m thinking above all of the pooling of spiritual goods. If you don’t let him see your soul with its desires, its joys, its aspirations, its deepest life, how can you expect him to love you? It was the discovery of your living soul that once held his gaze and awakened his heart; but today, if you pull down the “iron curtain”, if you deny him what in you is lovable, you are no longer helping him to love. Why do so many spouses forget that one of the great laws of love is to work every day to conquer the other? As in the early days, the means remains the same: to please. (…)

I wouldn’t hesitate to add: share your grievances. Beware of the wall of silence that separates two people more surely than seas or continents. But there is a way… Admit to reciprocity. Even provoke it. The hours when, in the calm of the evening, all irritation calmed, spouses confide in each other what weighs on their hearts can be so beneficial. Not to relieve their egotism, but out of love. An admitted grievance…

In closing, I’d like to talk to you about the truest reason for hope: your sacrament of Marriage. It is a force at work in your home, making use of the slightest efforts, even blunders and mistakes, to bring about your union. But it demands your cooperation. “In the same way that, in the natural order, the energies God has poured out are only manifested in their full vigor if men put them to work by their own labor and industry, otherwise they will derive no benefit from them, so the forces of grace, which from the sacrament have sprung up in the soul and remain there, must be fertilized by the good will and labor of men” (Pius XI).

It’s your trust that enables this great sacrament to be fully effective. So multiply your acts of faith in its virtue, to obtain its healing, pacifying, comforting, unifying grace. The same Pius XI wrote: “You are entitled to the help of present-day grace”. Do you understand what is so formidable about these words: you have a right? The defeat of a home is often due to the defeat of its faith. The true Christian knows that there are no hopeless situations: if he strikes the rock, a spring can spring up; the hardest heart can open up; the desert can blossom. Ah, how beautiful is this love after the ordeal, so much stronger, purer and more transparent than on the first day! How good it feels under this roof.

Father Henri Caffarel offers us an anthological manual for resolving conflicts within marriage. He talks about the importance of having the will to work things out, and of showing a lucid effort on the road to healing love: “you have to want to see”. And the best thing is to face this process together, which is not at all easy. You have to know how to wait for the right moment for both of them, but without evading it with cowardice. In the end, God’s grace will always accompany us and shed its light on us. And it takes courage to recognize our weaknesses with honesty. We need to ask Jesus to look at us and see the truth in our relationship.

From the truth, we will gain the freedom to seek remedies and change the heart. The first thing we should change is the idea that it is the other who must change. This may be true, but we have little ability to do so. However, we can change ourselves, our way of seeing and expecting. In a relationship lasting several years, very negative feelings can develop towards our partner, resentment and even hatred. Maybe not towards the person, but towards some of his or her attitudes. If we let this weed grow without treating it, it will choke our love. This is where we need to change our hearts and let in the light of forgiveness, which is the antidote to hatred. Knowing how to forgive “seventy times seven” if necessary, and changing the critical gaze to a loving one, will be our challenges in changing the heart.

But Father Henri Caffarel goes further, saying that it’s not just a matter of changing the heart, but of loving. And if we’ve forgotten this, we need to relearn by remembering how we loved each other during our engagement, when we worked for the other’s happiness and joy, which is the best way to transform him or her.

Finally, our greatest reason for hope lies in our sacrament of marriage. This sacrament, like all sacraments, is a source of grace when we put it to work through prayer and faith. Father Henri Caffarel asserts that the collapse of a marriage often has its origins in the collapse of its faith.

It’s impossible to live together through the years without routine making its inexcusable appearance. Much of life is made up of routines from which there is no escape. Days follow one another with almost the same schedules, the same repetition of gestures, the same tasks, the same difficulties.

Dialogues are shortened or repeated. Words tell only what’s happening, and often what’s going wrong: difficulties at work, disagreements with colleagues, minor problems with children, misunderstandings with families of origin, if not complaints and demands. Routine can provoke an insidious crisis that withers life, projects and feelings.

We’re content to do what we have to do day after day. You know it’s not the other person’s fault, but you’re still angry with them for not being able to break the closed circle of boredom in which they both feel trapped. We’re content to hold out, to put up with it, to tell ourselves that life is like that and there’s nothing we can do about it. On the other hand, to be alive, love needs to integrate the unexpected, the surprise, it needs to go beyond the implied, to manifest itself in words and gestures that from time to time rekindle its vitality.

Finally, we see that forgiveness is possible if it is given and received as it should be given and received. If they are haughty, forgiveness breeds revolt. If they are reticent, they overwhelm the other, who is always afraid of a relapse. Without love, they can neither liberate nor save. True forgiveness, the fruit of a very pure love that only God can engender in our hearts, can bring a living spring to the heart of both the forgiven and the forgiver.

A lucid look at “routine”: routine is what saves couples… A surprising statement. But why? Imagine that every day you jump out of bed and ask yourself the following questions:

• Where will I sleep tonight?

• Where will I be working today?

• Who will I love all day long?

And so on and so forth. It would be unbearable, and anxiety would fill our days. Human beings need a secure base. What for? Precisely to allow for creativity and the unexpected. And this security, this trust in others based on a human organization, enables us to surprise each other and invent “gifts” for each other where love will be nourished.

1: I’m sure we’ve all experienced routine in our married lives, and seen it make our love more bland and boring, or even lead to a crisis that’s more or less overcome. Can we name what constitutes a burdensome routine for either of us? How can we go beyond the sometimes inescapable routine and introduce something new, unexpected, whimsical, humorous? What words and gestures could revitalize our love, and our own vitality?

2: An effort of lucidity that requires preparation. First, which can be a personal preparation to answer the following questions if possible in writing:

• How do we feel about our lives? How do we feel as a couple? Do I have any delicate, painful points that I’d like to discuss with the other person?

• Where does our love stand? How has it evolved since the wonder of the first day? It may have been damaged at times by our attitude.

Second, let’s share with our spouse:

• on what we’ve each written on our own,

• our own shortcomings that we’ve identified. Then, as a couple, let’s try to identify the causes. Finally, let’s try to find remedies for whatever is damaging our married love.

3: Change your heart. Among the remedies identified during the sharing on the previous question, we probably noted the need to change our hearts. Father Henri Caffarel talks about the illusion of happiness, the illusion of perfect, easy happiness on earth. To what extent is this illusion still alive in our minds at times? Only unremitting forgiveness will enable us to rediscover the attitude of unreserved self-giving, a look of love rather than criticism. “Penance (the sacrament of reconciliation) nurtures the hearts of spouses” (chapter 4). In what ways have we been able to have these experiences?

4: Working for your partner’s happiness. “We have to love,” says Father Henri Caffarel, relearning how to love if necessary, rediscovering that love of the first day that was all about the happiness of the spouse. In relation to our spouse, tell us in what ways we take an interest in his or her thoughts, feelings, joys, sorrows and undertakings. Do we always admire our partner? How do we show it, and how does our partner perceive this admiration or not?

5: To love is to share. Let’s talk about how we share spiritual goods, spiritual life, our souls and our deepest hearts. But also our joys and grievances.

6: Finally, could we not, if we haven’t already done so, take time each evening to reread the way in which we have lived and felt married love? Giving thanks for the beautiful things we’ve experienced, and asking forgiveness for our shortcomings.

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body. And be thankful.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

In view of the many important and varied questions in this chapter, which are included in the suggested questions for the sit down, we suggest that sufficient time be set aside for discussion of this endeavor (concrete point of effort), so that whatever the team member wishes to say on this subject is reported at this time, and not during the discussion of the theme, which will therefore have no specific time at this meeting. This requires a deep respect for what each team member would like to say about the issues addressed in his or her marital dialogue.