Marriage is the real vocation crisis in the United States… We have a vocation crisis to life-long, life-giving, loving, faithful marriage. If we take care of that one, we’ll have all the priests and nuns we’ll need for the Church. – Cardinal Timothy Dolan
There is a truly marvellous design inherent in the Sacrament of Matrimony! And it unfolds in the simplicity and frailty of the human condition. We are well aware of how many difficulties two spouses experience…. The important thing it to keep alive their bond with God, who stands as the foundation of the marital bond. And the true bond is always the Lord. When the family prays, the bond is preserved. – Pope Francis, General Audience, April 2, 2014
Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to. – J.R.R. Tolkien, from a letter to his son, Michael, March 1941 (Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter)
Our life has been given to us from generation to generation, existing in each age in the keeping of other human beings, tended in the Creator’s hands, a little flame carried through darkness and storm, burning palely in a brilliant sunlight, shining out like a star in darkness, life in the brave keeping of love, given from age to age in a kiss. – Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God
The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. – Henry Ward Beecher
Living Differently 