Beautiful words about Jesus and the Church, and about Jesus and your soul. Either way, if you take that as the model, you have an inkling of why the Church teaches what it does about marriage. “Men, love your wives as Christ loves the Church.” That's what I call romance!

Have we become accustomed to thinking about the permanence of marriage as being due to the rigorous keeping of a vow, through thick and thin? That’s not exactly wrong, but that statement assumes that human effort alone is sufficient to hold a marriage together. That’s like the standard apologetic argument for the primacy of Scripture, by showing that it is referred to as being "profitable." Then you get to point out that it doesn’t say “sufficient.” Vows are profitable (heck, they're required) for a marriage, but not sufficient, either. It takes God’s grace.

I cringe when I think about how we glossed over the importance of worship in courtship! But then of course we’d have had to face the fact that we were sinning. Then we would have felt bad, and no American is allowed to feel bad about anything anymore.

Therese Z