Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P.

On this earth, legion are the malcontent: the farmer dreams of the town, the senator would like to be president, these are married and miss their single life, those sigh to be married and feel condemned to be forever single. If we had to organize the parade of peole happy with their lot, it would not take long: a great many children, a few retired people, not a single businessman, and a handful of union members.

The other day while I was having coffee, some joker placed an ashtray near me on which I read, painted in lovely round letters, this rather original declaration on happiness: "If you want to be happy for a day, get drunk; if you want to be happy for a week, get married; if you wnat to be happy forever, be a priest." I took the ashtray and denied nothing, since I am a member of the guild.

"Ah!" you tell me, "you chose to be unmarried. That changes everything."

Why not ask yourselves this evening if happiness, instead of depending on the nature of the situation, might not depend on the consent given to situations–consent: that appropriation of a given situation by the personality. This consent takes away none of the tragic consequences of the fact: the natural laws crucified in their most legitimate rights; sentiments repressed to the point of unbalance, neglected to the point of exasperation; stunted social life; humiliating situation as a left-by-the-wayside; tense family relations; inevitable physiological and psychological unbalance–so the best and most healthily objective doctors will all tell me.

"Well then," you tell me, "are you saying it isn't tragic to set off in life that way, frustrated from the outset, devalued in yourself and around yourself, denied in advance all the natural fulfillment of maternity or paternity?"

Does not the countless army of the single have the right to criticize Providence for having badly made the days and the events of their age, since they consider themselves the refuse of an age with which they cannot fully communicate? Are they not condemned to solitude of heart, solitude of sensibility, solitude of thought, solitude of activity. How alone one is when one is single–alone and exposed to the consequences of solitude: selfishness, narrow-mindedness, pettiness, bitterness! Whatever the post of the poor single man or single woman, it will never be more than a way to pass the time, they think; a way to put bread on the table: never a reason for being.

I share, I approve, I recognize all of these lamentations, naturally speaking, that is to say, considering only the nature of the individual. They are cruelly true for our nature, they are a defeat of our nature, a lessening of our nature; but humanly speaking, I no longer agree, and to prove my point I first call marriage to witness, then I will call to witness the philosophy of the human person, and finally I will call God to witness.

Love in Marriage

Let's be fair: we will consider only the nature of the two spouses in marriage, abstracting, as we did with the single life, from the deeper aspects of their humanity–and you are trying to tell me that the natural sufferings applied to those who are single are not just as present in marriage? Let me go through them one by one:  

Natural laws crucified in marriage by the so-human law of fidelity. What married man will claim that this suffering does not exist?

Sentiments repressed to the point of unbalance: in some, by resisting a guilty passion, in others, by being constantly misunderstood.

Sentiments neglected to the point of exasperation of that same misunderstanding.

Social life a success on the worldly or the business level, but stunted in many as regards intellectual and moral maturity: they have no time.

Tense family relations–need I say more?

Happiness frustrated from the outset, alas!

"Those are the bad couples," you throw back in my face, which is precisely what I was waiting for, to answer you very politely: there are also bad singles, unfaithful to the fact of being single, as a husband is unfaithful to his wife. The ideal would be to teach the single person to espouse his unmarried state. "What luck!" he could say: "I am married, with all the advantages of being alone."

Looking cool-headedly at the facts, the laws of nature satisfied in their procreative, sentimental, affective powers, are obviously insufficient to make up a true marriage, as they prove by the infidelities that result, the repeated betrayals, the divorces they demand; these laws themselves have to endure certain sacrifices within marriage for there to be a marriage, and therefore happiness. The law–not natural, but human–of sacrifice, will always preside over the law of happiness, and already there begins to appear and take shape the admirable shadow of Jesus Christ, source of all happiness, because He is above all spirit, capable of containing, of dominating and of mortifying, by His authority over nature, its material and materialist excesses, for nature needs be solicited by the spirit of sacrifice whatever the situation, when one desires to know real happiness.

"Well then," you reply, "everything is tragic–marriage and the single life!"

Absolutely, as soon as a need for ease, or cowardice, or a craving for pleasure, make you refuse to acknowledge that man has the means and the possibilities of taking his nature in hand in order to draw it into authentic happiness.

I take this reasoning as far as it can go: if the sole condition for happiness in the single life is an authentic preference for that life, without your having voluntarily to bring to it anything of yourself, of your heart, of your thought, of your soul, and of your faith; if its sole condition in marriage is an authentic preference of nature for the man or the woman before you, without your having to seek in marriage anything more or better, and without having to bring to it, voluntarily, anything of yourself, of your heart, of your thought, of your soul, and of your faith, then I tell you that not one person in this room is happy, for the laws of nature are a source of pleasure, they are not a source of happiness. Pleasure is common to animals and to man; happiness is the privilege of the spirit, which forms it out of anything by the virtuous bearing which it adopts toward everything.

We always imagine being happy as knowing all pleasures and knowing them with ease, with lots of fun, with abundance, even with intemperance. For many, happiness consists in an abdication of vigilance and control over the appetites of nature, and the poor single man, considered absolutely impoverished as far as nature goes, is stigmatized as unhappy, incomplete, whereas he is in a position to be very rich indeed by his personality.  

And if I went name by name through the litany of those diminished by marriage, once upon a time someone, and today a something angry–emotional, bestial, base–without influence, without prestige, without authority, and without integrity as regards his conjugal engagements? You tell me that being single is a tragedy; do you really believe that, for certain men and women, it is not a tragedy to be married naturally, too naturally, without having made a sacrament of it, that is to say, a divinized human reality, source of spiritual happiness? Precisely because it is a source of happiness–like all that is human–marriage, like every situation, stops being a tragedy when the nature of each person, under the sweet and imperious authority of the conscience and the spirit, is caught up in the blessed demands of the spirit by a sacrifice and a self-control that put a check on the blindness of pleasure.

There will always be tragedy wherever man holds to the pretension of knowing more than God about the meaning of the laws of nature, and about his rights to demand of nature a happiness to which it can and must contribute, though all incapable of shaping it alone.

The Human Person

Whoever would understand the definite possibility of happiness in the single life has to raise the discussion much higher than the worldly slogans, the criticism of companions, scientific declarations, or false spiritualities. He must climb as high as the human person.

We agree: naturally speaking, a girl is made for marriage; without a doubt, her nature as a woman finds there both psychological fulfillment and the joys of motherhood, well designed to fulfill her as a woman, but not necessarily as a person.

What did God say in speaking of the human race: "Male and female have I created them." Therefore masculinity and femininity are two adjectives which modify another reality common to both: the adjective demands a noun; the adjective may change, the noun does not change. The adjectives beautiful, overcast, stormy, calm, apply to the noun sky; the adjectives masculine and feminine apply to the noun human person.

To meet a gentleman or a lady in the street is always to meet a person independently of the adjective masculine or feminine; and when the Incarnate Word shows a glimpse of this mystery to the Apostles–curiously bothered at hearing the Master tell them that a man was only allowed one wife, and that on the other side there would no longer be man and woman but human personalities, transfigured in the fire of eternal Love into Presences full of Life and Affection, all the more able to communicate themselves for no longer being dependent on the manner man or woman of doing so–one feels the horizons deepen and one's own reality awaken to its essentially personal value, to the flowering of which the single life, like marriage–and often better than marriage–can and should result in a splendid success!

"Let those who have ears to hear, understand," said Jesus Christ to a crowd hungry for sensations and to which He spoke of those who have understood by birth or by generosity this great problem of the human being who is a success without having recourse to the senses.

"What is that supposed to mean?" would snap back at you any diocesan catechism.

It is supposed to mean that it is not nature that organizes individual or social happiness, but rather the person proprietor of that nature, drawing it into his ideals, activities, enthusiasm, developments, generosities–into that spiritual and moral verdure which rises like a springtime loaded with the perfumes of its prestige and with the fecundity of its value, over a family, over a social circle, over a village, over a region, over a country.

There are activities, superior by their devotion and by their breadth, indispensable to the life of the community, which demand on behalf of the human personality a time to perfect and cultivate oneself, an independence of action to act and to accomplish, a capacity for renouncement in order to have authority and influence, impossible for a married woman to carry out and possible only in the single life.

Outlaw the single life in France for a week and you will hear the outcry among the married! "So, now I'm the one who has to take care of the children–and Aunt Susie, what has she got to do?" Moreover, married people often take advantage, and sometimes shamefully, of the time and the generosity of the unmarried among their relations, because they themselves have no thought for their own personality, or else they would develop it, like the poor single people, by their duty of state, rather than going "naturally" to the movies, tossing the kids in the arms of Aunt Susie.

Eliminate the single life and you eliminate countless networks of social support; invaluable apostolic activities; assistance and delightful smiles to hundreds of the sick and dying; phenomenal educations for thousands of children; social initiatives on which you yourselves rely very heavily; devotion indispensable to the life of charitable works, apostolates, and the eternal salvation of many. The human person in full activity immolates certain calls of nature, without a doubt. But, alas, how many married women and men have, on the contrary, renounced certain calls and certain rights of the human person?

Materialized as we are, with vulgarity or with elegance, we throw discredit on the single life without suspecting that we are acknowledging our ignorance of what a human person can do of itself and by itself when it draws its nature, not into following its every call, but when it draws its nature into the development of the person by the sacrifice of certain of these calls. Everything is tragedy when there is an abdication of the person in face of his nature, folding under its demands; everything is victory when one possesses a personality capable of keeping the upper hand with nature and with the unending complaints of a society obsessed with pleasure; a personality determined to trim out of the cloth of its existence material for a flag or for a cross, around which countless married people will be thrilled to gather in case of necessity, as though they had become the big, happy family of the single people.

"If you want your life magnificent, ask yourself if, every day, you are capable of being someone, freer and stronger than your nature of man or woman. Then gather up for Me all of your powers, your loves and your gifts, as one gathers a handful of seeds in the hollow of one's hand, striving not to lose a single one. And then advance along the human path with a movement that is young whatever your age, vigorous and unhesitating, laughing with the laughter that rings out like clarions sounding the reveille, cast it all for Me on the soil of your life at the disposition of others, who will come running from all sides: the hungry will regain their strength by eating of your reserves and, thanks to your goodness, from their tears you will draw cascades of diamonds. You will know before God the most considerable of joys: that of having remained pure without even noticing; that of having become someone without bringing any pride to it because, hearing the world weeping, and forgetting your self-seeking flesh, you gave the world your heart, and your heart pounded with happiness."

The great weakness of modern men is to imagine their value conditioned by the exterior and to feel lost the minute they are psychologically single, that is to say, faced with themselves, faced with themselves alone, deprived of reasons to forge their happiness and by it the happiness of others, because deprived of thoughts, interiority, and silence, those three anvils on which are forged characters: the determined, the happy, the persons. They live from day to day following their sensations, their studies, and their whims; they are sad and rich, sad and scholarly, sad and busy; nature pulls them in every direction, they go begging after a succession of exterior variables: one after leisure, one after a salary, one after love, one after pleasure; and they come back even sadder and with their activities depersonalized. "The kingdom of God is within you," Christ declared; but the kingdom is only peopled by persons, and only the person can enter the kingdom within us, not around us. Does the kingdom still exist for all those who are hearing me now?

The Plan of God

This rosary of ideas and considerations is like every rosary: it ends with a Glory be to the Father, Son, and Spirit, in honor of the single life.

Deliberately leaving the springboard of philosophical reasoning, I lose myself in the infinitely deep accents that characterize the views of the Faith and, listening to them, I feel all of the recriminations of nature over the so-called "forced" single life suddenly bathed in a tremendous peace. Indeed, the quality of the Faith is to offer us a complete vision of the human situation. The Faith alone can give a total to the additions of all our reasoning, and an accurate total, judging by the pacified and pacifying results that it brings.

For God, before having a nature, we have a mission. Of this mission, one aspect is given to us, another escapes us, for, well beyond nature, our personalities are registered to fill a role in a play of which God alone knows the detailed program, the reason for being, and the significance for us, for others, for the present, the future, and eternity; the minutiae of the adventure escape us, but we know enough to play it with confidence and understanding.

What do we know of the single life as it relates to God?

We know that God has need of pure souls, and that, by the single life, He proposes to a certain number to live that purity.

We know that His joy is to be among the children of men, and that He loves those lives that are more available to receive His secret confidences thanks to the liberty of their heart.

We know that He saved the world only by the Cross, and that He gives to certain souls to bear the cross of their single life to compensate and make reparation for the abuse which others make of their sensibility.

We know that hundreds and thousands of young men and young women, by resisting the call of their vocation and of their consecration to God, have upset the balance of the Redemption, and, mercifully, God partially assures its recovery by the admirable zeal and the hidden devotion of thousands of young girls who understand their single life enough to rediscover the Redemption in their social service, and to continue it by their share of immolation and of unseen consecrations.

We know that God, in His own plan–which is not natural but super-natural–sees the map of personal destinies with a wisdom which involves the whole world and His very glory. Can we then be surprised that, surpassing our shortsighted views, both human and natural, He draws some into His eternal strategy–the only one which ultimately matters–by calling them to marriage, not so much for their natural satisfaction as for their supernatural mission by natural means; others by calling them through the single life to the honor which He has set aside for His favorites: that of imitating His Son in one manner or another, and of giving to them more intimately than to others: "Whatever you do unto one of these little ones, you do unto Me," "He who takes up his cross is worthy of Me," worthy of My intimacy, of My Presence, and while the world pities the solitude of the single life, the single life accepted and embraced will understand very quickly how much it can pity the solitude of the happy of this world.

Secularism, Nazism, Fascism, Communism–in a word, practical, social, or political materialism has disoriented all of us in our personal reasons to live to the full, because we are no longer reasoning based on a complete program of our destiny. They lie to us all across the board by reducing that board to the inferior, prideful, selfish measures of a thought that instructs on everything except the truth about man; of a thought that flatters nature to the point of suicide, supreme avowal of the abdication of the person; of a thought that dismisses the problem of God by surreptitiously dismissing the problem of man, whom it claims to exalt and whom in reality it abases. Then an army of young people, promises of the tomorrows which await us, betray the todays held out to them under the pretext that today no longer corresponds to the needs of their nature. Victories flourish on decisions, on valiant and audacious choices, because superior to the aptitudes of nature, and on sacrifices which are the honor paid by our person to our flesh and blood, espoused to the renouncements imposed by the spirit.

Then the wastage of tremendous qualities and admirable graces and dispositions becomes the unavoidable conclusion of fruitless waiting, of activities with no zest, of professions with no soul, and of presents with no enthusiasm. And yet there are great joys set aside for a single life sufficiently personal to say yes, to choose, to will, and to experience the joy of living one's game in company of God and of oneself.

Modern life holds out a wealth of personal activities to the young women of this age, which already consecrate them someone, value, and, by the very fact, happiness. From the nursing student to the magnificent intellectual, political or social positions open to them; they have there, for their heart of a woman and for their faith, if they are believers, horizons to make them burst into song; but do they want to be someone in face of life, or do they only want to stamp their feet with regret and anger before the frustration of dreams which are infinitely respectable but not necessarily indispensable for looking happiness in the face?

This evening and tomorrow, we need to rediscover valor, smiles in the face of the cross, decision in the face of the facts, and prayer in the face of decisions, and then, all of us together, think, believe, and will the salvation of all of us together by the enthusiasm of each one to bring to all the cooperation of one's life such as God proposes it to us: that is to say, boldly employed in surpassing ourselves in the single life or in marriage in order to put a little happiness on this poor planet reddened with the blood of God who awaits.

Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from Carnets Spirituels: L'Amour Humain, April 2006, pp.19-30.  Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P. (say: Sheave-ray´) was ordained in 1930. He was an ardent Thomist, student of Scripture, retreat master, and friend of Archbishop Lefebvre. He died in 1984.