Happy is the husband. . . .
"Happy is the husband of a good wife; the number of his days
will be doubled" Sirach 26:1 (Or Ecclesiasticus 26:1)
Feast of St. Laurence
How many husbands in this world are happy? While it is the husband's job to care for, protect, shelter and love his wife, it is also just as much the wife's job to make her husband happy, as much as she possibly can. While the husband is expected to sacrifice 9,10, even more hours of the day to work in support of the family, the wife should be willing to make this sacrifice as well, and try to outdo her husband in love and kindness. Taking this attitude is rather hard sometimes. We wives want to be happy and when our husbands are thinking of other things, sometimes they forget to do the things that we want in order to be happy, tempting us to take matters into our own hands and make ourselves happy. That, however, is selfish. Our society thrives on selfishness and tries to turn it into good attributes. But what the saints used to do in those kind of situations, was turn to their real spouse, their real love, Jesus. When our husbands disappoint us, or in their tiredness, forget all of the little things we women make so much fuss over, it is an opportunity for us to grow in grace. Instead of treating him back the way we THINK we have been treated (we women also tend to exaggerate things in our own minds), we should always treat our husbands exactly as we would treat Jesus. That is how Christians must act.
It's a little easier to remember the golden rule with people outside of our homes and families. It just makes so much sense, "treat others the way you want to be treated". But you might never see that person again, whom you treated so politely today in the grocery store, or the post office, car wash, soccer game, everywhere we go, while you have to live forever with the husband who's ego you deflate day after day. Just let him take a poke at your ego though and see how you react!
Love makes no sense in the home or anywhere, unless it is directed towards Jesus. This is what holds you up when hard times happen, as they do in every marriage. Whether it be financial, emotional, physical, spiritual, the hard times come in one form or another, but they will not alter your decision to love each other if everything is always done for Jesus.
Sirach will now go into what makes a husband happy, and what is interesting is that the same things also make the wife happy! The things we can do and accomplish for our husband's happiness also serve to make us feel needed, fulfilled, loved, cherished, and beautiful. It is, in miniature, the relationship we also have with God. God gave us rules to follow, which make Him happy, and many of us find out, that when we follow those rules, we are also happy ourselves!
St. Laurence, pray for us. *Between the hours of 10pm and 4am, step outside and watch for "St. Laurence's Tears", the summer meteor showers.
posted by Therese_Rose_Morning at 4:59 PM
2 Comments:
I personally like this movement of putting wives back to where they're happiest. The great liberation experiment didn't work, women are more depressed, suicidal, anxious, and have a host of mental problems nowadays that were basically unheard of back in the "old days". If you make your husband happy, he will make you happy, so you will be happy. . .therefore, it IS about us wives, if you need it in that light. Everything revolves around us, I suppose.
I hardly think such a movement will result in women's right to vote being taken away. That's just silly and over-exaggerated. Besides, if the husband and wife are one, then they vote the same, so you are either doubling your hubby's vote, or cancelling his out. Kind of silly, that.
Sirach is also known as Ecclesiasticus (Latin Vulgate) and if you have a Catholic Bible, it comes right after the book of Wisdom.
While perusing your blog for recipe ideas I came across this post. I think its fine for you to have your beliefs that one should make a husband happy in the hope that it will create a happy wife, there were a great many man-woman behaviour truths in your other posts that you have wisely picked up on. However I strongly disagree with your comment that
"The great liberation experiment didn't work, women are more depressed, suicidal, anxious, and have a host of mental problems nowadays that were basically unheard of back in the "old days".
Did it occur to you that back in the "old days" women were so insignificant nobody would even think of tracking statistics for suicide, depression, anxiety, mental problems. If you want to lie about the male superiority over female inferiority mentality of human civilization you are doing a great disservice to truth and history.
Also, the great liberation movement you are referring to, which might be the second feminist wave came out of the very same depressed, suicidal, housewives of America in the 1960s that were quietly going insane in kitchens all across the country, asking themselves "is this it".
If a style of living works for you, happiness is yours but please do not take it upon yourself to condemn others for a lifestyle that is perfectly fine for them too.
That is a problem with religion. Condemnation and thinking that yours has all the answers, and simplifying everything whilst ignoring history.
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