I can reassure you at the outset by telling you that in order to sin grievously against God, three things are required: serious matter, full knowledge of the gravity of the act, and full consent of the will.

Your will did not consent to this erotic, impermissible demand made by your husband who claimed to have permission from a priest in confession.

The spiritual ideal of the home must also influence marital fulfillment in the carnal giving of self. This can sometimes beget worry, anxiety and moral problems when a spouse, dominated by passion, thwarts the divine plan by insisting upon the fulfillment of his own erotic demands with no consideration for Christian morality. He thus jeopardizes that harmony which must first exist on the spiritual plane in order that it may then flow down to the level of the affective and the carnal.

Many a man, clinging to selfish illusions, causes sufferings to his wife which she does not – cannot – express, even while she displays a warm and sympathetic understanding out of tenderness and love for him. Have they any idea of the interior distress they cause? The kind you have so painfully set forth in your letter and which I must not reveal here.

You have firmly closed the door on any such further demands and he understood this. You are fortunate. Many others end up living like animals and dragging their companion in life down with them.

Thank God and live in peace. God understands your feelings, your anguish and your regrets. And He understands very well the nuances of strife which can assail the soul divided between fidelity to religious principles and responding to the demands of marriage, provided such demands are licit, and ennoble rather than debase the conjugal act.

You once had an ideal love, a love that was shared. That love vanished leaving you broken and bewildered. It is not necessary to understand why, for God leads souls according to the plan of love He has for each one, and those ways are sometimes baffling. You married, without experiencing a great love, the one He had set apart for you.

You say, “you have suffered but have known the selfless love that gives, the most wonderful of loves!” Yes, it is the most wonderful because centered on the love of God, on abandonment to His will which is clearly manifested through His events, and on the love of that soul confided to you so that you may lead it into the light. For if we are first bound to God, we are also bound in union with all our human brothers, and most especially with those He attaches to us.

You have a source of spiritual riches and graces because “you have learned to bloom there where the Lord has planted you.”

Remain firm in the grace of God and your joy will be ever greater and more profound.

Marie-Paule