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Dear Patti,
I am sorry for your pain, and the betrayal. No,
this situation is not an answer to your prayer.
Marriage
is a state of life, a way to Heaven, and one that
has its own nature. The marital embrace, and marital
harmony, is the way God has chosen to reveal His
love and salvation to you and to your husband. You
are both blocking that revelation by blocking the
power of the sacramental sign (the marital embrace)
and the communion you should share.
Of course, recovery from the past event should not
be one-sided. Your husband must have done something
positive in his spiritual life in order to convert
to Catholicism. The problem seems to be that you
are stuck in the past event, and he is letting you
stay there, perhaps out of a sense of guilt.
I would suggest that you try to renew your relationship
jointly by going to a Catholic marriage program such
as Retrouvaille, a weekend program for deeply troubled
marriages. One does not move past such
a deep wound. One must:
- acknowledge the pain given and received by both
- honestly face the wound, and then
- humbly ask God's grace to forgive
Forgiveness means letting go of our desire to punish
the other, and to let God have the role of Judge.
Perfect forgiveness includes the desire that the
other receive God's forgiveness. When you forgive,
the memory of the sin becomes a reminder of God's
goodness and grace, and the effects of the sin become
material for prayer: we pray that we be healed by
the power of the Holy Spirit, and until we are healed
we offer the effects, the wounds, to God as a prayer
of intercession and reparation. As the Catechism
says,
'It is not in our power not to feel or to
forget an offense; but the heart that offers itself
to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion
and purifies the memory in transforming the hurt
into intercession.' (CCC
2843)
It appears that you may not have recovered from
your past sexual sins, nor even truly accepted God's
forgiveness. Rather, it appears that you have tried
to leave them behind or lock them away,
and you still feel shame and are punishing yourself.
You may have locked away part of your heart, the
forgiving part, because you have not reconciled (forgiven
yourself) about your own behavior.
Face your own weakness honestly and humbly, and
know that our relationship with Christ depends on
our acknowledging of our weaknesses. What a gift!
We are rescued! . . . but only if we admit we can't save
ourselves! Once we know our own weakness, we can
have compassion on the weakness of others. If you
truly had known the joy of God's mercy, you would
be anxious for your husband to know it, too. God's
forgiveness is not just a blank slate, a start-over.
It is a real healing of our hearts, which are turned
now to Him.
Finally, I would like to say that men cope differently.
Failure is hard to admit, and coping comes through
action, not words. Your husband may think he is courageously
atoning at present, rather than giving you the silent
celibate treatment.
As a couple, you guys have a
rock wall between you right now, but you need to
start chipping away or you are going to be buried
alive. That is not a good thing for your baby. You
can both come back to life. God is not a God of death,
but of Life!
Do not be afraid! Go to Retrouvaille. If you can't
do that, say the Rosary together and ask God together
for the grace to know what to do. The duties of your
state of life are a start:
- common courtesy
- kindness, and
- the marital embrace (if he has repented, and
it seems he has).
God bless you both,
Mary Ann
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