I think you’ll agree with me that the challenge posed to Christians by atheism urgently requires a response: our witness. If we know and love God, how can we fail to find it intolerable that his true face should be disfigured and mocked in this way? If we love our brothers and sisters, how can we bear the fact that, unaware of the true God, they are plunged into anguish, anxiety and absurdity? If you have a sense of human solidarity, how can you not feel co-responsible for the betrayal of God by Christians?

It’s the responsibility of the whole Church to reveal the true face of God in our time, but this evening I’d like to show you that in a very special sense it’s the responsibility of the home. I can guess your reaction: the mission is great, too great, we have neither the time nor the competence. But what if I told you that you’re particularly suited to this mission precisely because you’re from the homes. You have your own charisma. What’s more, to be the witnesses the world is waiting for, you don’t have to leave your family and professional duties, you don’t have to go off on some distant crusade. Let me explain: it’s from your conjugal love, from your home, that the atheist world, without suspecting it, expects an essential witness. First, I’ll talk about the witness you must bear with your life, and then about the witness of your word.

Allow me to express God’s thoughts on the couple in the manner of Péguy, the French writer perhaps too often forgotten today. God says:

“Christian couple, you are my pride and my hope. When I created heaven and earth, and in heaven, great luminaries, I saw in my creatures vestiges of my perfections and I thought it was good. When I had covered the earth with its great mantle of fields and forests, I saw that it was good; when I had created the innumerable animals according to their species, I contemplated in these living and teeming beings a reflection of my overflowing life, I found that it was good! From all my creation, a great solemn and joyful hymn arose, celebrating my glory and my perfections. And yet nowhere did I see the image of my most secret, most fervent life. So I felt the need to reveal the best of myself, and this was my most beautiful invention. And so I created you, a human couple, in my image and likeness. And I saw, and this time, I thought it was very good. In the midst of this universe where every creature spells out my glory, celebrates my perfections, at last love had arisen to reveal my love. Human couple, my beloved creature, my privileged witness, do you understand why you are dear to me among all creatures? Do you understand the immense hope I place in you? You are the bearer of my reputation, of my glory, you are for the universe the great reason to hope, because you are love.

Let’s take a closer look at your mission as God’s witnesses. The first way to fulfill this mission is to live your love ever more perfectly, to ensure that it unfolds all its potential, that it manifests itself faithfully, happily and fruitfully. It’s true that this is beyond your reach. Men and women soon realize that evil is at work in the home. The grace of Christ, the couple’s saviour, must be called upon, and your union becomes a witness not only to God the Creator, but also to God the Saviour.

Your home will bear witness to God even more explicitly if it is the union of two seekers of God, in the admirable expression of the Psalms. Two seekers, whose minds and hearts are eager to know, to meet God, to be united with him, because they have understood that God is the great reality, because God interests them more than anything else. How many of you I know are? true seekers of God?

Such a home is a place of worship. Not only in the sense that the spouses are worshippers in spirit and in truth, and that their children are brought up to be worshippers too, but also in the sense that this impulse to worship guides hearts and tasks all day long. The Christian home is that Church in reduction of which Saint John Chrysostom spoke, that Church cell of which Paul VI spoke to us… Even if all other places of worship are closed, disused or destroyed, as is the case in certain regions of the world, the Christian family remains God’s dwelling among men.

And because God dwells there, it’s a place where God acts, continues to work his miracles, those great things the Bible tells us about. The existence of a Christian home is a holy story, because it is a story led by God. And those who come to ask for hospitality, whether they are aware of it or not, find the One whose home it is. Where there is love and charity, there God is present.

The visitor discovers this God at work in the home through many clues. A preoccupation with poverty and charity, a habitual way of emphasizing the good side of people and things, a spontaneously evangelical judgment of events, an independence from the world, from intellectual or other fashions.

There’s no danger of such a home becoming a ghetto, where people shut themselves away from the distress of the world. Rather, it’s a place from which we leave to go about all human tasks. The God who is a friend of mankind sends his servants on mission when they have regained their strength through mutual love, prayer and rest. So it’s not surprising that Christian spouses are witnesses to the living God in the midst of mankind. As proof of this, let me quote an atheist scientist to a Catholic friend: “For you, God is as alive as your husband or your kids, so my arguments against God are ridiculous in front of you. It’s as if I were trying to show you that your husband doesn’t exist.”

You may say that this portrait of the Christian home presupposes that we have solved the problem of being saints. Not at all: I’m not talking about sanctity, but about seeking God, honoring God, turning to Christ the Savior to overcome daily temptations and obstacles in married and family life. Penance, by which I mean the humble acknowledgement of one’s sin, of one’s all-too-frequent unfaithfulness to God, already bears witness to God, already reveals his holiness. Indeed, I recall the words of a diplomat from a Latin American country, after a stay in a Teams home where he recognized that the spouses were not perfect, but which was precisely this type of penitent home, in search of God. “I now know that if my country, like this small family community, recognized its transgressions and did penance, it would know the peace that reigns in the home where I have just stayed.”

I would like to have communicated to you my conviction that a home for God-seekers is, in our world that no longer believes in God, that no longer believes in love, a theophany, a manifestation of God as was for Moses that bush in the desert that blazed and was not consumed. That if your home life, if your love bears witness to the God of love, then, but only then, must and can you bear witness to the word, it will be backed up by your life.

Quite often, I hear people say, “to speak of God, but isn’t that to betray him? words, images, concepts are inadequate.” It’s true, Muslims are right to teach that God’s hundredth name, his true name, the other 99 being mere approximations, is unknowable, unspeakable. The Anglican bishop John Robinson wrote along the same lines not long ago: “When we speak of God, all our words are destined to miss the point.” Saint Augustine thought the same, but immediately corrected himself. I read him: “What can he say who speaks of You? And yet, woe to those who are silent about You.”

So the question is not: “Should we talk about God?” The question is: “How can we talk about God so as not to betray him, and so as not to betray him first of all to your children? And here’s the answer I’d like to propose and develop. Our God is, as the Bible puts it, a hidden God, unknowable, but who revealed himself in the man Jesus, who made himself known as love, and who is present in the hearts of his creatures. I’d like to comment briefly on this answer.

Our God is a hidden, unknowable God: images and concepts cannot enclose him, but this conviction, far from alienating the believer from God, draws him closer to him and inspires his adoration. I’ve often seen this with young children. And a Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote some powerful words on the subject: “At the end of our knowledge,” he writes, “we know God as unknown, and it is for our spirit a very perfect way of penetrating into the knowledge of God, of recognizing that the divine essence is above what the intelligence can grasp here below.” To say that God is above all language is to give a foretaste of his unique greatness.

And yet, to make Himself known, God took the risk of using language. A language infinitely more explicit and eloquent than any other, the incarnation of His Word. The Almighty, to approach us without offending us, to familiarize us with Him, revealed His glory to us, but subdued by a human face and smile. He has communicated to us the consuming fire of His holiness, but through a human heart. In this Jesus Christ, God reveals his love. God so loved mankind that he gave them his only son. Love is undoubtedly the least inappropriate concept and word for letting us know what God is like in relation to us. But it’s true that the term love is terribly overused and ends up being ambiguous. It’s always important to be clear about its meaning. Is it not up to you, husbands and wives, to reveal through your lives, as imperfectly as possible, what this word “love” means? Yes, through the love of man and woman, men and women should be guided towards the unknowable mystery.

It’s still up to you, husbands and wives, to give a glimpse of the mystery of the Triune God through your union. For our God is not the sad, impassive celibate of the worlds spoken of by René de Chateaubriand, but a warming sun, a community of 3 people who love each other. Here again, we must hasten to go beyond ideas, beyond words to the realities they designate, and silent prayer is ultimately the best way to access the Trinitarian mystery.

Finally, mankind has not yet been told what, without doubt, matters most to them, until they have been taught that our God is not a God elsewhere, beyond, but very near, present, in the hearts of his children. Without knowing this, Saint Augustine was slow to convert, and he confesses (Confession X 27.38): “Too late did I love You, O Fairness, so ancient, and yet so new! Too late did I love You! For behold, You were within, and I without, and there did I seek You; I, unlovely, rushed heedlessly among the things of beauty You made. You were with me, but I was not with You.”

God is within us, calling us, waiting for us, at work to divinize us, “my Father and I are constantly at work”.

Revealing the true face of God to the people of our time is the responsibility of the whole Church, but it can be a task entrusted to spouses in particular. As demanding as this may seem, Father Henri Caffarel invites us to spread our own charism by being a loving couple. Because that’s all it takes. The human couple who love each other can be considered God’s most perfect work. So, simply by being a focus for “God-seekers” in a world that no longer believes in God or love, we’ll become a theophany, a manifestation of God, just as the burning bush in the desert burned for Moses without being consumed.

If our life and our love reveal the true face of God, this will be the moment when we can use the spoken word to bear witness to God, because our words will be supported by our life as loving spouses. And that’s the best way to avoid betraying the God of Love. Let our words be consistent with our lives.

So it’s up to couples united by the sacrament of marriage to let the mystery of the Triune God shine through their union, a God who is a community of three people who love each other. And we must do so without delay, for our responsibility is great. In this way, we can avoid Saint Augustine’s regret about his late conversion: “Too late did I love You, O Fairness, so ancient, and yet so new! Too late did I love You! For behold, You were within, and I without, and there did I seek You; I, unlovely, rushed heedlessly among the things of beauty You made. You were with me, but I was not with You. “

So what is this inspiration that comes from Father Henri Caffarel, or rather has passed through him, and which gives Équipes Notre-Dame its specific character and charism? It’s the intimate link between spirituality and mission, inner inspiration and effective commitment in the Church and society.

We can’t separate these two elements, which are part and parcel of the movement’s common vocation. At its deepest level, we are convinced that the spiritual life is not a domain reserved for an elite group of Christians, who would make it their privilege and their specialty. It is open to all through the Holy Spirit received at baptism: and for all, married men and women, it also has its source in the sacrament of marriage. There is no need to look elsewhere for methods or paths of sanctification: the “yes” of conjugal commitment is the source of a holy life, of a life of disciples of Jesus Christ, because this “yes” has been captured forever in the Holy Covenant of God through the sacrament of marriage, so that the couple’s mission in the Church and in society is rooted in an existence of men and women who live by this Holy Covenant. ( …)

The question facing our Movement today, every Team and every member is: how can we pass on to all Christian couples the gifts we have received through our participation in this movement of conjugal spirituality? The needs are greater now than at any time in history, and the harvesters are few. It’s easy to leave this to others, but when we think of all that our initiation has brought us personally, the blossoming of our spirituality as a couple and the support received in our homes that have become domestic churches, then we understand that we have a real responsibility.

1: “The atheistic world, without suspecting it, expects an essential testimony of your conjugal love and of your family.” In what way are we the witnesses the world is waiting for? To whom are we privileged witnesses, and in what way? How do we move forward?

2: “It’s to live your love ever more perfectly, to make it unfold all its virtualities, to make it manifest, faithful, happy, fruitful.” Realizing that this is beyond our strength alone, can we testify to the fact that only Christ the Savior can bring us the graces we need to develop a faithful, happy and fruitful love?

3: In what circumstances has He shown Himself to us, and how can we share this experience, which is so beneficial to our relationship? To what extent, then, does Father Henri Caffarel’s famous phrase take on its full meaning for us: “I would like to have communicated to you my conviction that a hotbed of God-seekers is to be found in our world, which no longer believes in God, no longer believes in love, a theophany, a manifestation of God…”? Our first place of witness is our family: our children, our parents, our brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces… Beyond our witness of married life, our witness of love, in what situations have we put into words to bear witness to the beauty of a love where the Lord is truly present at the heart of our lives?

4: What do you do to take care of your relationship? How do you feel about approaching young couples, with delicacy and kindness, in your different living environments, with this question.

“No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

1: More than 60 years ago, Father Henri Caffarel was already pointing out the urgency of the Christian couple’s witness in a world won over by atheism. All the more so today. Are we convinced of this? What have we done since we got married? What are we doing today? Are we doing it primarily for God, or for our brothers and sisters? Please explain.

2: Let’s talk about how our married love can bear witness to the presence of a Trinitarian God? How can our conjugal love reflect the love that flows between the three divine persons? What can we do to make this circulating love (the Holy Spirit) even more present within our couple, so that we can bear greater witness to its benefits? Can the team help us in this?

3: Throughout this year, some of the questions for the sit-down assignment or for the meeting have concerned our witness as a Christian couple. Let’s talk about the ways and circumstances in which we have been able to bear witness, to put into words the beauty but also the necessity of a married love that is based on the living presence of Christ in us and within our couple?