On a hurried Saturday afternoon while running some routine errands, I made a quick stop in the local Dollar Store to pick up some wrapping paper. What I encountered at the cash register turned out to be an occasion for some serious reflection. Among my purchases was a pretty gift bag for an upcoming bridal shower. The clerk who was bagging my items commented on what a pretty bag it was, then upon closer look, she commented, “But it’s not true”. Inscribed in the design were the words Happily Ever After. Without even a chance to think, I quickly responded to her with a lighthearted, “Oh sure it is!” Within seconds, the other cashier jumped in, looked at the words on the bag, pondered them for a long second, and said, “What does that even mean?” My not-so-witty comeback was, “You know, when people get married and they live ‘happily ever after’!” The cashier continued in response to his co-worker’s remark, “Oh yeah, that’s not true”, adding a reference to his own failed marriage.
Meanwhile, still stunned, but trying to sound optimistic and encouraging, I replied to both of them with something like “Don’t give up hope. There’s always hope!” Oh how I wished I had had more than half a second to come up with a response. Certainly lots of possibilities went through my head, after the fact of course: Haven’t you ever read Cinderella? Did you ever see The Sound of Music?- it was based on a true story you know! Obviously the Holy Scriptures and Theology of the Body were not on their radar. Don’t you know how much God loves you?!
I’ve been pondering this little interchange ever since it happened. It was quite obvious that this ever-so-brief conversation is a very, very sad commentary on the state of people’s hearts in our world today.
How does the Church respond to this deep-seated lack of hope, the lack of purpose, the restlessness in people’s hearts, and all that goes along with it? So many people with so many sufferings, wandering aimlessly day to day, not recognizing the reality that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and the Answer to their despair. And so, in contemplating how desperately people need hope, and how they need to discover the true meaning of authentic love, both of which can be summed up as the need for God, I trusted the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and turned to two of the Church’s most treasured teachings on hope and love: Pope Benedict XVI’s Spe Salvi and St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.
After reading through Spe Salvi (Saved in Hope), I wished I’d had a copy in my pocket that day at the Dollar Store. What an incredible message for our times! Pope Benedict points out that the present day crisis of faith is essentially a crisis of Christian hope (n. 17), and on multiple occasions throughout the fifty paragraph encyclical, he eloquently emphasizes in various ways that “man needs God, otherwise he remains without hope” (n. 23). This brings to mind the passage from Gaudium et spes, written four decades earlier, which says, “Without the Creator, the creature would disappear; when God is forgotten, the creature itself grows unintelligible” (GS, n. 36). Watching a mere thirty seconds of the evening news suffices to confirm the truth of this statement.
If the clerks in the Dollar Store were generally representative of the population as a whole – and I suspect, sadly, that they are – they would do well to take heart from those who have “been there” and come out on the other side.
Pope Benedict gives the example that St. Augustine’s experience before his conversion was not unlike the state of so many people’s lives today. Quoting St. Augustine’s Confessions in Spe Salvi we read, “Christ intercedes for us, otherwise I should despair. My weaknesses are many and grave, many and gave indeed, but more abundant still is your medicine. We might have thought that your word was far distant from union with man, and so we might have despaired of ourselves, if this Word had not become flesh and dwelt among us” (n. 29). When Augustine turned to Christ it changed everything.
Benedict also explains how man is “redeemed by love”. He says, “When someone has the experience of a great love in his life, this is a moment of ‘redemption’ which gives a new meaning to his life” (n. 26). He goes on to discuss the fragility of human love and the human being’s need for unconditional love – a love that can only be found in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who gave Himself up for us.
So how does this help us to consider the “Happily Ever After”? One of the greatest articulations of the meaning of love in marriage comes from St. Paul in Ephesians 5: “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself up for her.” It is not easy to practice this kind of love. It often entails sacrifice; but it is a sacrifice that one takes on willingly when motivated by authentic love. It is the kind of love that no matter what hardships may befall, whatever sufferings and trials are experienced, love prevails (and God is Love), and we are lead closer to eternity. Husbands and wives are here to help each other get to heaven. That is an awesome gift and an awesome responsibility.
Perhaps it was a “divine coincidence” that the message “happily ever after” appeared on a receptacle meant to hold a gift, but the symbolism does not escape unnoticed. As St. John Paul II explains in his Theology of the Body, “The human body, with its masculinity and femininity…contains ‘from the beginning’ the ‘spousal’ attribute, that is, the power to express love: precisely that love in which the human person becomes a gift and – through this gift – fulfills the very meaning of his being and existence” (TOB15:1, emphasis original). If we strive to be a gift for others, that is, to love as Christ loves, then we will have hope that true love is in fact possible. We will indeed experience the freedom of the gift, and that is a freedom to live, and to love, happily ever after both now and in eternity.
Allison LeDoux is the director of the Respect Life Office and the Office of Marriage and Family for the Diocese of Worcester, MA. Mrs. LeDoux serves as coordinator for the New England region of Diocesan Pro-Life Directors and is a member of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference’s Pro-Life/Pro-Family and Health Care Subcommittees. She received her certification in Catholic Health Care Ethics from the National Catholic Bioethics Center in 2007.Mrs. LeDoux and her husband, John, a permanent deacon, are the parents of eight children.
