Melissa Moschella: A Free Heart Helps to Build Healthy Marriages and Strong Families

During his meeting with young people in Paraguay on July 12, Pope Francis invited those present to join him in praying: “Lord Jesus, give me a heart that is free, that I may not be a slave to all the snares of the world…. That I may not be a slave to a false freedom, which means doing what I feel like at every moment.” In order to build healthy marriages and strong families, it is crucial to attain this freedom of heart, and to reject the false freedom of guiding our actions on the basis of what we feel like doing, rather than on the basis of what is truly good. This false freedom is often at the root of marital breakdown, as couples seek divorce because the feelings of love have faded, or because one of the spouses has fallen in love with someone else.

Melissa Moschella

The story of Carol Riddell and John Partilla, featured in the Vows section of The New York Times in December 2010, is a case in point. Carol and John, both with spouses and children of their own, met at their children’s school, and eventually fell in love. After much painful deliberation, they decided to divorce their current spouses and marry each other. The Times describes their dilemma: “Their options were either to act on their feelings and break up their marriages or to deny their feelings and live dishonestly.”

Carol and John, like many in our culture, had bought into the lie that love is primarily a feeling, and that following your feelings is the only way to be authentic and free, regardless of how many other people are hurt in the process — think of the spouses and children Carol and John left behind. They are poster children of the false freedom the Holy Father warns us against.

The antidote to this destructive attitude is to recognize that marital love is not only or even primarily about feelings, but rather that it is a commitment, a commitment to stick by the other person, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part, to remain faithful through the inevitable emotional ups and downs of life. Love is a choice, not just a feeling, and keeping love alive in marriage means making many choices each day to think and act in ways that will strengthen that love, and to avoid thoughts and actions that will weaken it.

We strengthen love by choosing to dwell on and foster gratitude for a spouse’s good qualities, rather than to nurse resentments and grudges. We strengthen love by overcoming tiredness or a bad mood to smile, by offering a warm greeting when the person comes home, by resisting the temptation to criticize, by really listening to what the other person is saying, by taking a genuine interest in what the other person cares about, by making time to be together one-on-one, and so on. These choices may seem small, but they make all the difference. A daily effort in these little things will, together with God’s grace, take us a long way in attaining that freedom of heart, which Pope Francis exhorts us to seek, and which is essential for a happy marriage.

— Melissa Moschella is an assistant professor at The Catholic University of America School of Philosophy.