Conjugial Love (Chadwick) n. 102

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102. A married couple, however, becomes this model as the interiors of their minds are opened up, because the opening of the mind lasts from childhood to extreme old age. For a person is by birth immersed in bodily concerns and, as the levels of his mind just above the body are opened up, he becomes rational. Then, as the rational faculty is purified and as it were cleansed of the false ideas which flow in from the bodily senses, and of the lusts which flow in from the lures of the flesh, so the rational faculty is opened up, a process solely possible by the help of wisdom. When the inner levels of the rational mind have been opened up, then the person becomes a model of wisdom, and this is capable of receiving truly conjugial love.

The wisdom which forms this model and receives this love is rational, and at the same time moral, wisdom. Rational wisdom looks on the kinds of truth and good to be seen inwardly present in a person, not as its own, but as flowing in from the Lord. Moral wisdom shuns the evils and falsities which sully conjugial love, especially lewdness, as it would leprosy.

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