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Marriage as the fulfillment of unity.


Those who enter into marriage having been clear and chaste before it learn the mystery of bodily union for the first time in marriage. Because of that a new and careful attitude to the body of the other is born in their soul. Life experience shows that it is exactly due to bodily intimacy in marriage that a deep, bright and joyous feeling of love to one another, a tender feeling of unity flourishes within the two souls. It is here, in this union blessed by God, that one can learn through experience the truth of monogamy (being married to one person at a time) and all the falsehood of "free love."

Sexual intimacy cannot only be separated from other ways of unity, but it also creates a complete wholeness of all mutual relations. When love flourishes between a husband and wife it is reflected in all their life and takes possession of everything. The smallest disharmony at this time is experienced very painfully; carelessness, indifference, rudeness, accusations can all bring grievance and anxiety. Christianity helps a married couple find a way to do away with disharmony in their relationship. Through practicing Christian life under the new conditions of marriage the two mature spiritually and perfect themselves. Family is a great school of piety.

When the first symptoms of pregnancy appear the relations of husband and wife become strengthened through their love for the awaited child — flesh from their flesh. The purity of their mutual love does not only increase due to bodily intimacy, but is also feeding on the latter, and there is nothing more warm than that deep tenderness that blossoms in marriage; its inner meaning is in the acute feeling of being filled with each other. The feeling of one’s own "I" as a separate individual disappears. A husband and wife experience themselves as part of something whole — one does not want to experience anything without the other, there is a desire to see everything together, do everything together, be together in everything. It is an ideal to which a married couple should aspire to.

There should be neither differentiated "spheres of activities" in a family nor any kind of physical or spiritual disconnection: here one thing echoes in another, everything is connected internally and intimately. According to the Creator’s plan family is the only way for the mystery of gender to be actualized in us. There must not be a sexual life outside a marriage; such a life will not be right, it will only pervert our nature and break life’s harmony. For this reason the way of purity before marriage is not just a demand of morality, but it is also dictated by the very nature of the human being. Premarital sexual life is always one-sided. It is therefore a perverted expression of gender that threatens to devastate of the soul and distort its inner structure.

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