{"id":234328,"date":"2026-01-18T16:11:54","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T15:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/caffarel.hyppoweb.fr\/his-thought\/widowhood\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T10:00:32","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T08:00:32","slug":"widowhood","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.henri-caffarel.org\/en\/his-thinking\/widowhood\/","title":{"rendered":"Widowhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Widowhood<\/h1>\n

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“Beyond the death of one of the spouses, the carnal bond no longer exists, nor does the legal bond, nor the sacrament of marriage\u2014which, like all sacraments, belongs to the Church on earth. These realities disappear, as scaffolding falls when the building is completed. But the couple itself remains. If, however, conjugal love remains, the soul of the couple, which between ‘two spiritual and free beings’ transcends the impulse and union of bodies.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Henri Caffarel, “Companions of Eternity,” 1987<\/cite><\/p>\n

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During the war years of 1939-1945, Father Henri Caffarel met with widows on several occasions. Two movements were thus born: the Spiritual Group of Widows and La Fraternit\u00e9 Notre-Dame de la R\u00e9surrection. As always, he did not come up with the idea for these movements by himself: people came to see him, they told him of their desire for a holy life; then he discerned, encouraged and accompanied.<\/p>\n

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The Spiritual Group of Widows<\/h2>\n

[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”RGBA(255,255,255,0)” divider_weight=”3px” _builder_version=”4.27.5″ _module_preset=”default” use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_direction=”90deg” background_color_gradient_stops=”#fea060 0%|#fb6f62 100%” max_width=”100px” module_alignment=”left” max_height=”3px” custom_margin=”-20px||37px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” saved_tabs=”all” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_testimonial author=”Henri Caffarel, Radioscopie, 1973 ” portrait_url=”https:\/\/www.henri-caffarel.org\/mediadoc\/2025\/06\/logo.png” quote_icon_color=”#F86C3B” _builder_version=”4.27.7″ _module_preset=”default” body_text_align=”justify” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1940, I saw several times young women ring at my door and these women who were 22, 24, 25 years old said to me: “You helped us live our marriage, now you must help me live widowhood and tell me if it has a Christian meaning.” And I answered them that I knew nothing about it at all but that I was willing to search with them.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Spiritual Group of Widows, an association created in 1945, became Esp\u00e9rance et Vie<\/a> (Hope and Life) in 1977.<\/p>\n

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La Fraternit\u00e9 Notre-Dame de la R\u00e9surrection<\/h2>\n

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September 1943. A retreat in Lourdes for about thirty widows. Father Henri Caffarel met with all of them, but seven\u2014who did not know one another\u2014approached him independently to say they felt called to dedicate themselves entirely to God, yet found this impossible within religious life because they had young children. Father Henri Caffarel brought these seven widows together and suggested they go down to the Grotto and ask the Virgin Mary to intercede with the Lord, to help them discover what He expected of them. This took place on the evening of September 8, 1943 and this day of offering themselves to the Virgin is considered to be the founding moment of the Fraternit\u00e9 Notre-Dame de la R\u00e9surrection<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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To go further<\/h2>\n

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Widowhood”Beyond the death of one of the spouses, the carnal bond no longer exists, nor does the legal bond, nor the sacrament of marriage\u2014which, like all sacraments, belongs to the Church on earth. These realities disappear, as scaffolding falls when the building is completed. But the couple itself remains. If, however, conjugal love remains, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":234193,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-234328","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.henri-caffarel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/234328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.henri-caffarel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.henri-caffarel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.henri-caffarel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.henri-caffarel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234328"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.henri-caffarel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/234328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235976,"href":"https:\/\/www.henri-caffarel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/234328\/revisions\/235976"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.henri-caffarel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/234193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.henri-caffarel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}