 Sister Miriam's talk was so beautiful, I'm tempted to just sit down and have issues this time for prayer. But I think I have an obligation and I want to share the thoughts that are on my heart. This whole weekend has been a feast, a feast. And it's gonna take a lot of time to think and pray it through, isn't it? Probably a year. I wanna talk to you today about the vocation of marriage in particular. And I think that in a way, it's gonna be a little bit of an examination of conscience. Looking out at the number of graying heads I see here, I think it could be something useful to jot down and take home and share with your children who are married. It's not meant as a discouragement, but it's meant to point us on in all the ways that we can grow in our marriage relationship. Before I was a Catholic, I overheard a conversation between a couple of college students at the College of St. Francis in Joliet, Illinois. One of them said, do you have a vocation? And the other one said, no, I wanna get married. And I said to Scott, is that a Catholic answer? That doesn't sound like a Catholic answer and obviously it's not. We all have a vocation. A particular way we have been called to grow in holiness. A gift every one of us has. It's a way to walk with our Lord to grow in faith, hope, and love in obedience and then to live out this incredible plan and God didn't let married people or leave married people out, right? We also can grow in holiness. Between my junior and senior year, Scott was on my heart. Now he had recruited me the year before to work in young life, but throughout the summer, he just kept coming to my heart and I could tell I was starting to have very strong feelings for him and I'm like, Lord, I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna make it seem like I've gotta come back my senior year and not leave without my MRS. And so I will pray for him every time he comes to my heart. But the verses that I used were Psalm 37, four and five. Take delight in the Lord and he'll give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him and he will act. And so I would pray that and I'd say, Lord, I'm gonna be faithful as his sister. I'm gonna pray for him and please keep my feelings at bay. And day after day, I prayed for him and finally we were on a young life retreat one month into the school year and I went out on this rock and I am praying and I said, Lord, I have asked you to take away these feelings and they only keep getting stronger. And so either change my heart or give me what I want. And I left that rock and I started walking up the hill and I ran into Scott Hahn. And he said, where are you going? And I said, I'm not sure. And he said, would you like to take a walk with me? And I said, yes. And because it kind of led through the woods before we could get over to the river, he said, here, take my hand so you don't trip. I'm like, oh, I'll take your hand. We ended up by this waterfall and we were talking about like qualities we saw in a future mate. Really interesting conversation. He says later, he knew I was describing him but it wasn't intentional. It really was the things that were on my heart that I wanted in a future spouse. And I remember he said, I'm interested in possibly having a long-term relationship. And I said, how long-term? I'm not wondering, are we talking about just the senior year? We're talking long-term. And he said, maybe very long-term. And years later when we described it, he almost asked me to marry him. And I remember standing there saying, thinking in my heart, if he asked me to marry him, I would say yes. That was how God worked in our hearts, in our lives, with an intense love for Christ, he brought us together. When Scott and I became Catholics, we realized even more fully what this vocation entails. St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 732 to 34, the unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife and his interests are divided. By the way, there is no clock running. Now that I'm perfectly fine with that, but it could put me in trouble or put you all in trouble. So can someone make sure I have a clock up here? Okay, thank you. On the other hand, by his grace, our marriage is a living witness to the world of the relationship between Christ and the church. So on the one hand, the married man, the married woman has many, many things to think about, to worry about, less so if we were consecrated. But that's part of this vocation, okay? It's not doing an end round it, trying to live the life of a consecrated person in the midst of marriage. It's living marriage to the full. And by doing that, by really bringing it all to the Lord, that's my path to holiness, that's my husband's path to holiness, and it's a witness to the world of the relationship between Christ and the church. So if you are married, this is your vocation. I had one friend tell me, I really think I missed God's will because I was a more contemplative person. I said, you're married. So now you know this is God's will. So you embrace it with everything in your being. You don't wish that you were the other, okay? And God's trustworthiness is that foundation for our faithfulness. Lamentations three, 22 to 23 says, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. His love never wavers. His grace knows no bounds, and he invites us to renew our marriages by his grace. How can we reinforce the foundation of marriage? Okay, I'm gonna break it into a few items about our thoughts, our words, and our deeds. So four areas of thought life, prayer. There isn't a limit to what God can do, but our prayer life is essential. This is where we build on that foundation of trust. This is where we open our hearts, as Sister Miriam so beautifully led us to do, to say, Lord, yes, yes to your will. What do you want me to do? Now, at that moment, you may hear a baby cry. And at that moment, God is saying, it's time to stop praying and go pick up your baby, okay? That's part of this beauty, the challenge of married life. He calls to us and then we return to prayer as we're able. The more we grow in grace, the more our spouse trusts his or her heart to us. You know, Archbishop Fulton Sheen talked about the relationship and marriage being triangular, our Lord and our spouse and ourselves, and the closer we get to the Lord, the closer we get to each other, right? If we yield ourselves to the work of the Spirit and our lives, he's gonna produce his fruit in our marriages. According to Galatians 5, 22, and 23, what's the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. This is the fruit of the Spirit he wants not only to produce in our individual lives, but in our life as a married couple. And that comes from the Spirit. Every day we thank God for our spouse in prayer. The gift he or she is. And we pray for our spouse. Pray for that particular person. And we bring all of the concerns that we have with Thanksgiving. That's so important. It's not just begging God for help, for relief, for wisdom, for grace. It's thanking him in advance that he is listening, that he cares, that he is eager to open our hearts in some new ways so that we have a way forward. How can we help with this situation? Philippians 4, 5 to 7 says this, have no anxiety about anything. But in everything, by prayer and supplication, with Thanksgiving, let your requests be made known into God and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. We have concerns, but those concerns don't have to become anxieties. And what do we do with those concerns? We bring them to him, but we don't just bring them to him. We bring them to him with Thanksgiving. We already set up our hearts to know there is an answer and that peace of God is gonna pass understanding. It's going to work in our lives. So just as we choose Christ every day in prayer, I challenge you, choose your spouse every day in prayer. Secondly, purity of thought. Never entertain impure thoughts. Lust begins in the mind. Jesus said, you've heard it was said not to commit adultery. I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Years and years ago, women struggled with sexual fantasies, but it was more along the lines of soap operas and racing novels and that kind of thing. Pornography was mostly men going to stores and then downloading the internet porn. But now they say up to 40% of the purveyors of pornography online are women. These images distort what is a man, what is a woman? What is the act of marriage? It does such great damage. Men, the only woman you should ever see naked and desire is your spouse. Women, the only man you should desire to see naked and to desire should be your spouse. If you have impure thoughts, realize that the thought itself is not sin, it's entertaining the thought. Okay, so when that thought comes to mind, rebuke it. That's a great time to turn to Mary and say, pray for me. Purify my thoughts, help me desire my spouse. Philippians 4-8 says this. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Third, forgiveness from the heart. I wish so much my parents had explained to me when I was little that you can forgive without feeling like you're forgiving. I thought you had to wait until you felt like you had forgiven someone to say you forgave them. But it's an act of the will. We choose to forgive. Now it's great when the feelings follow, but they don't always. It doesn't depend on the feelings. When an incident or words come back to our mind, we thank God that we have forgiven that person. Instead of mulling it over, one time I went to confession and I said, you know, I'm doing okay, and then I begin to think about what someone said or did, and I just get all revved up again. I get angry again. I get, you know, I said, is that wrong? And he said, actually it is. Don't give in to that, mulling it over because you have forgiven. Walk in that forgiveness. And fourth, in our thoughts, develop that thankful spirit towards your spouse. Realize your spouse is God's good gift to you. His instrument to strengthen you, to call you on. First Thessalonians 516 to 18 says this, rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God and Christ Jesus for you. You know what, I know the will of God, I can tell you one part of it. It is to be thankful, to thank him in all circumstances. We can do so many tasks, we can take care of the house and the kids, but if we allow sourness to be there, if we treat these tasks as perfunctory instead of opportunities to love our children and our spouse, bitterness can grow. And we deplete the joy inside of ourselves, we deplete the joy in our home. There are many distractions in married life, but those distractions can bring us closer to the Lord as we look at them in the light of, he's the one who's called me to this vocation of marriage and family life. There's so many clothes to wash. Thank you God, I have such a large family. There's so much of this house to clean, or there's so much of the yard to keep up with. Thank you that we have a home. There's always a way. I shared this a little earlier in the week. I told my mother, she has a wonderful way of just spiritualizing all the tasks of homemaking. And I said to her, okay, I get a lot of things, but what about doopy diapers? I mean, you know, it's just endless and it's everywhere. And she said, I just think, oh Lord, I have the chance to make this child feel so much better, all cleaned up. And I just pray for that little child, I clean him up and then he's able to go. Or I said, what about ironing? Okay, I hate ironing. I don't hate it as much now, but at that time. And she said, I pray for the person who's gonna wear that garment, that he or she will do things that honor Christ, that they will say things that are good. And it's just like, doesn't that transform it? I mean, there's a way to transform all of it, all of the mundane tasks, even the drive to work. Some of you may have long commutes to work. How can God redeem that time so that even that time, as you're going into the labor for your family or you're returning home from work to your family, God can use that time to refine your heart, to open your heart more in thankfulness for your spouse and your children. And what happens when they act up? Because they do, we do, okay? I love, Alice von Hildebrand had this image that you know how when you go to take a photo, sometimes someone yawns or children go through this phase of doing the big cheese grin that's, you know, they're smiling beautifully. And then you say, okay. And then they go, this big smile. And you say, the photo doesn't do him justice. Can we do that in those moments where we disappoint each other and we let each other down? Can we understand that what drew our hearts to that individual is far greater than what's discouraging us at that moment? And at that moment, it's not doing him or her justice. So we fill our heart with thanksgiving. Okay, seven ways that we can grow in faithfulness in through our words. Number one, again, prayer. Prayer together, prayer alongside each other, prayer drawing the family together. We wanna show our children how dependent we are on him because lifelong, they are as dependent as we are on the Lord, right? So we wanna model that. Number two, speaking the truth in love. Always desiring and this is, you know, just have to stop and ask myself, am I doing this and when am I not doing this? But can I communicate respect and at the same time share things that are difficult? The goal can't be to set the other person straight or even worse to hurt the other person but to speak the truth in love so that our marriage can get stronger. We were on a family vacation and my dad always chose a Bible verse and this was particularly good. You know, we had a lengthy car trip too, took a whole week out to drive out to Washington State and we had a whole week in the car coming back so we had a lot of time in the car and he had us memorize James 1, 19 and 20. Know this, my beloved brethren, let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger for the anger of man doesn't work the righteousness of God. Quick to hear, slow to speak. Oh, wouldn't it be helpful to have that kind of go off like a shining light as you start entering into combat? Slow to anger. Are my words gonna offer more light than heat? Can we make it a goal? More words of affirmation, fewer words of criticism. Scott said this before and I think it's so true. God is more interested in making me holy than in using me to make Scott holy. Okay. Sometimes we get that turned around. Oh, if I could just set you straight, if I could just change you, but what God is saying, honey, you're the one I'm working on, okay? So to raise concerns gently speaking, the truth in love, in love, in love and keeping in mind that timing is everything, all right? Number three, working on our communication skills. You know, the better we understand ourselves, the better we understand each other, the more our love can deepen. There are differences in personality, in temperaments, in birth order, in love languages, in being male and female. Colossians 314 says, and above all these, put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony. I'll just give you one example of how this made an impact on us. I'm a firstborn and firstborns think they're always right. Now you have to give us a little credit. We were the firstborn. So we were a few years ahead of every other sibling in terms of understanding and rationalizing and verbal skills. And so we won a lot of battles, right, with siblings because we tended to be right. We were right a lot. It does not build much humility in a firstborn. My husband is the lastborn. He's the baby of the family. The baby of the family assumes, they kind of approach an argument like, okay, where am I wrong? Then when you get married, you need to both have that attitude. That took a lot of time to work that out for me. So the more self-knowledge we have, I think that helps our communication. Number four, never lie. Never lie. Proverbs 12, 22, lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight. We can only build a foundation in our marriage by always speaking the truth. Okay, number five, practice discretion. Every thought we think is not worth saying. Whoa. And we're both very verbal. But every thought we think is not worth saying. I love, I love this verse. Proverbs 16, 32, in fact, it's a great one for sons. He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty. And he who rules his spirit, then he who takes the city. Do you wanna be powerful? Self-control, control by the Holy Spirit is powerful. We need to honor confidences, both personal and professional. Proverbs 17, nine says, he who forgives and offends seeks love, but he who repeats the matter alienates a friend. Do we make a point of not revealing the weaknesses of our spouse, especially to those he's close to, especially to our children? That's a new temptation for those of us who have adult children. Do you ever give in to revealing something about their dad or their mom that would make them look bad, that would be, it can come out like a joke. Well, you know what dad did the other day or what mom did the other day, but it weakens the relationship. It doesn't strengthen it. Don't turn your adult children into your confidant. If you need a counselor, find a counselor. I would say that very strongly. And sometimes children will do the divide and conquer thing. They'll come to you and they'll say, don't tell dad but, and every time they have said that, I've said now I know I have to talk to daddy about it because your heart knows he needs to know even though you're afraid for him to know. If a friend comes to you and says, I wanna tell you something but don't tell your husband, I always will say then don't tell me because I don't permit things to be anything that could be a wedge between us. Now that doesn't mean I'm gonna run until Scott everything. There isn't enough time in the day to tell him everything that happened, right? But we have to guard that union, that yet union, okay? Number six, forgiveness. God is rich in mercy and we try to imitate him. So we humble ourselves and thereby strengthen each other. 1 Peter 4-8, above all, hold unfailing your love for one another since love covers a multitude of sins. We don't need to remind our spouse about our sins. Unlike God, who the scriptures say forgets our sins. We may be quick to forgive, we're not always quick to forget but the way to be miserable is to reflect on your spouse's flaws and weaknesses. Love chooses a better way. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13-7, love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Number seven, make the choice between being contentious in what you're saying or content. It's a choice. There's some interesting proverbs. There are two different proverbs that talk about a nagging wife being like a constant drip. Just a constant drip. And this was once got quoted and this is also in two different places. Proverbs 21-9 and 25-24, better to live in the corner of a house top than in a house shared with a contentious woman. And when we lived in Milwaukee, we had some doozies of arguments. He'd just become Catholic and I had no interest in even talking about becoming Catholic and at times he would say, his office was on the third floor. I'm going to the corner of the rooftop. That's all he would say. There's also a proverb that addresses this in men differently. Proverbs 26-21, as charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, so was a quarrelsome man for kindling strife. We have a choice. Am I going to become contentious or will I be content? And St. Paul says in 1 Timothy 6-6, there is great gain in godliness with contentment. God isn't finished with me yet. He isn't finished with my spouse yet. Can I give space for grace to work? I'll just mention this one time. You know, someone had given us the advice of don't let the sun go down on your anger. So I remember, I remember that advice and it seemed like almost each night as we went to bed, the first three weeks of marriage, I said to Scott, can I talk to you about something? And he would say, yeah, and I would bring up something, whether it had to do with the toilet seat being up or down, or who was supposed to take out the garbage. That was a very interesting conversation we'll say for another time. Or, you know, other things. And about the third week, he said, can you give this a rest? He's like, you're not going to change me in like the first month of marriage. I'm not going to change you. And I realized, you know, I realized I really wasn't understanding that advice. It didn't mean bringing up every little thing that bothered me before we could go to sleep at night, okay? Okay, okay. Now, make love your aim through deeds, through deeds. I have four ways. The first is to practice the faith with a sincere heart. This means take advantage of the sacraments, get to confession, get to the Eucharist, drink deeply of those instruments of God's grace in our lives. If you don't have a spiritual director, pursue someone who could offer that. Don't wait for mortal sins to go to confession because venial sins beat down the path that mortal sins get there more easily. We want to be a maximalist, not a minimalist. And the more grace we get, the more that we can receive. And the more we receive, the more we can give. And it just is this beautiful loop. I became convinced confession was a sacrament long before I wanted to go to confession because I watched how differently Scott was when he got back from confession. In fact, one time in the kitchen, about a year after he became Catholic, he was a little cantankerous. And I said, when did you go to confession for the last time? And he said, okay, I need to go to confession. But someday I'm going to say the same thing to you. And honestly, he has been so incredibly faithful. He has set the example of weekly confession and he has reproduced this in our children. And one of the greatest gifts we've ever given our daughters-in-law is sons who go to confession regularly. That is a great gift. Don't allow the faith to be a feminine woman thing in your home. We need men and women drinking deeply of the sacraments. Number two, live chastity well. First Thessalonians four, three to six, for this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from unchastity, that each of you know how to take a wife for himself in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like he then who don't know God. And I'm going to follow that up with a quote and then I want to give you a few specifics. St. Josemaria Escarva says this, so beautiful. By divine vocation, some are called to live this purity in marriage. Others forgoing all human love are called to correspond solely and passionately to God's love. Far from being slaves to sensuality, both the married and the unmarried are to be masters of their body and heart in order to give themselves unstintingly to others. Isn't that beautiful? So how do we embrace this? Well, obviously before marriage, chastity means we don't have sexual relations. We talk to our children about the importance of saving ourselves. My dad never held back how awesome and wonderful sexual union was in marriage. He never thought I would want to experience it beforehand because he didn't hold back that it was beautiful. But then he would go on to say, and it gets better every year because I know your mother better. In other words, it had to do with intimacy that flowed from knowing and loving the person. And there's so many times on TV when I hear people talking so glibly about sex. And I think as a 61 year old woman who has been married for 40 years, I can look at you and say, you don't have a clue what sex is. You don't even have a clue. And it's heartbreaking to know how little they understand. We need to live chastity in marriage, which means one and only one has access to our bodies and to our hearts. So modesty in dress, who do we dress for? Are we dressing for our spouse or are we dressing for a boss? Number two, affection, affection between spouses never withholding ourselves from the other to manipulate or to punish. We might, in the midst of conflict, we might need more resolution before there can be intimacy. But there are times when even the intimacy is part of what helps overcome in a good resolution conflict. My mother is about as modest a person as you could ever be in conversation. And it was very difficult to be well-prepared before marriage because she didn't wanna say anything about the act of marriage and what that could be. But she has never held back periodically saying to me, I don't want details, but are you and Scott making love on a regular basis? I'm telling you, I honor her for saying that because there are so many people that feel like it'll be when I say it is. And if the act of marriage is really renewing that covenant and mirrored in receiving our Lord in the Eucharist, receiving each other, then, you know, frequency is a great blessing and it's a ministry to each other. It's a way of affirming, even with all the extra weight you have and the scars you have, that you are the chosen one. I mean, my husband says to me, my body says, sorry, he looks at me and says, your body says you have loved me enough to bear my children. And I mean, I've got scars up and down and sideways from C-sections. I've got all kinds of marks on my body. I don't look like I, when we got married, but it doesn't matter because I have loved him with my body and he loves me with his. We long for that touch, that physical affection. 1 Corinthians 7-5, don't refuse one another except by agreement for a season that you may devote yourselves to prayer, but then come together again lest Satan tempt you through lack of self-control. If any of you are using natural family planning, don't stop being affectionate. You know, it's like, don't touch me, I'm fertile. No, no, touch each other, express your love. One of the funny things to me is seeing my children react. We have something, sometimes I'll be out in the kitchen and Scott'll come out and wrap his arms around me and give me a kiss and we call it snitching in the kitchen. And my kids, if they walk out, they're like, oh gee. But they love it, they love it. I remember one time years and years ago, Hannah, I guess, had been praying for another baby and she said to me, I'm praying for another baby. And I said, great. And she said, I just want to know, is it possible? I said, yes, and don't you ever ask again. But she wanted to know what was it worth to pray if we weren't actually being intimate with each other for some reason. There's another time when David was about four years old and we were hugging close in the kitchen and he wedged himself between us and I thought, I wonder what he's doing? And he said, okay, now squeeze. And he just wanted to feel the crush of love. You know, it was so beautiful. We approach each other as approaching a sanctuary with awe, with reverence, entering the holy of holies of our home in the inner sanctum by cooperating with God's grace in which new life could come. I heard a conversation on a focus on the family radio show that was so disturbing. It was three Christian women sharing about finding out they were expecting and they didn't want to be and how they had considered abortion. They used words like unplanned, accident, unwanted. And I thought about it. I mean, what's unplanned that's so negative? Disasters, illnesses, accidents, but a baby? When you think of accidents, you think of destruction, damage, death maybe. You associate that with a baby? And how about unwanted? I mean, maybe warts, pimples, hair loss, extra pounds, but a baby? It was such an inversion of good and evil as if it's good not to conceive and it's bad to conceive. And these Christian women were in loving marriages, but they had placed their confidence in contraception when contraception let them down, they considered killing the new life that had come from their marital union. Now I trust as Catholics, we would never go there, but it is in measure, it's in part why it's so desperate for us to live this vocation deeply. Yes, we need to be anti-abortion, but so much more we need to be for life. We need to see that God in giving us this vocation of marriage has given us a unique opportunity that in our whole lives we're only married for X number of years and in those years we're only potentially fertile for how many years and out of those years of fertility, how many times could we even conceive? It's a limited time offer. And what God wants to do is out of these unions bring godly offspring, souls who will live forever with him, the Lord of life, welcomes us into this vocation. Is it difficult? Yes, but it's not impossible because with God all things are possible. And those of us who have married children, we have another temptation. You might have lived the churches teaching well, but will you come alongside your sons and your daughters who get married and urge them on to live holy marriages and to never embrace contraception or sterilization? Will you make it clear that this is called mortal sin? The churches teaching has not changed and they could get married and they could marry a strong Catholic and they could marry a strong Catholic, but if they forsake God in this, they kill the life of their soul and they kill the life of their marriage. Now the beautiful thing is you can come to confession, you can change, you can repent, but we need to understand the churches teaching why in her mercy she does not withhold the truth from us, have we withheld the truth from our children? And the children who are already cohabiting before they're getting married, they're not using NFP. They think some are another. They can practice a sacrament they haven't even received and then they'll say, well, I'm glad we cohabited because it didn't work out. Of course it didn't work out because you were trying something that you couldn't even try and you were killing the life of your soul in the process and don't tell me you love that individual because people who love each other don't take each other to hell, they take each other to heaven. Now there's something on my heart, I'm gonna go into a little bit of detail because it's just really on my heart so I wanna share some thoughts. We need to live chastity by guarding our relationship. One of my children came to me and said, I'm so close to this one gal, but now I'm engaged and I don't know what to do. I feel like my fiance is a little uncomfortable with how close I am to this other gal. And I said, you really have two choices. Either you widen the friendship and you include your fiance so that the two of you have a relationship with this gal or you step way back. You don't continue to keep opposite sex close friends as close friends individually. I talked to one girl who was getting too close to a married man. And I said, what are you doing? And she said, well, we just have a very St. Clair, St. Francis relationship. Now St. Clair and St. Francis were very, very protective of their vocations. Okay, don't use them as your excuse. And you might feel more of a soulmate type draw to somebody, but you know what? Your spouse is to be your soulmate. And if he or she isn't, pray that God changed that. He can do that. But we never wanna justify a friendship on the basis of spiritual intimacy when that could open the door to adultery. We have to live chastity in the purity of love making. There was a woman in California who told me that her husband had begun to ask her to watch pornographic videos with him so that they could be better educated in how to make love. And she said, everything in me recoils, but am I wrong? And I said, no, not only are you right, tell him you will never watch another one. You want all the things that you have in your home destroyed and you all need to get to confession for this. There is no one else I'm to desire besides God. Hebrews 13, 4 says, let marriage be honored among all and the marriage bed be kept undefiled for God will judge the immoral and adulterers. We can't give Satan a foothold. We need to guard our marriage. Now there's some very specific things we need to do because temptations will arise. We have to be on our guard. It's not a question of if but when temptations come. What are we going to do about it? 1 Corinthians 10, 13 says, no temptation has overtaken you that's not common to man. God is faithful and he won't let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide a way of escape that you may be able to endure it. How do we do that? We need to guard our friendships. Many of you are in apostolates, okay? Maybe you're working with the youth or the deaconite program or you're leading CCD. You're making significant roads into the kingdom of darkness and you may not realize how vulnerable you become. People get close to each other, working alongside each other spiritually, praying and working together. I talked to one young man and he said, you know, I was doing youth ministry and this woman who's married joined our team. She's in a really lousy marriage. I became her counselor and he said, I'm trying to figure out if we can stay in youth ministry because I think she's gonna leave him and we're gonna get married. I'm like, what is wrong with this picture at so many levels? But she's married to a non-Christian. She's married. You honor that marriage. You don't go ahead and set a horrible example to all the youth in your church. You pull way away and if she won't quit the youth ministry, you quit the youth ministry. You cannot do this. Sometimes we don't notice small expressions of affection or gifts or personal sentiments as inappropriate but they become tiny little hooks. I remember being horrified our first year of marriage. We'd had a real tough argument. I went to work. It's a very kind, sympathetic kind of guy. It was one of the coworkers. It's like, how are you? And my first impulse was to just really spill it because I was still so upset from the night before and I caught myself by the grace of God and I said, I'm okay. And then I just went to prayer. I excused myself, locked out of the office and I'm like, Lord, help me guard my heart. I need to work this out with Scott. I don't need to bring anyone else into my confidence, especially not a man, a person of the opposite sex. And when I finally got over my trauma about that, I said to Scott, I have to tell you what happened at work a few weeks ago and I shared my heart, my vulnerability. And I said, have you ever experienced that? He said, oh yeah. When we got married, his dad had not, his dad's a jeweler and his dad had not made him a wedding band. And so I asked him, please make him a wedding band, but it hadn't arrived yet. And so a girl at the seminary was trying to talk to him and it's kind of sidling up to him and could you help me with this? And then his wedding band came in the mail and he said, I would just stand there kind of playing with my ring. She wasn't getting the hint. And he said, I could tell she's an attractive person. And he said, I just removed myself. I walked out of the library. I made it very clear I have no interest in talking. We have to be honest, there are temptations. But what is our response gonna be? Is it gonna be how close can I get to the fire without getting burned or am I going to flee? The scriptures say flee fornication. Adultery cannot be numbered among us. First Peter 5, 8, be sober, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prows like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. He wants to devour you. He wants to destroy your marriage, to rip it apart, to have it be so damaged in front of your children that your children walk away from God and say I'm not gonna follow God because that's what my parents said and look what's happened. We don't need to live in fear but we've got to be aware. As my husband says, this world is not a playground. It is a battleground. And we've got to be armed. We've got to be watchful because he wants to devour. Don't ever think, oh, he couldn't bother with my marriage, with my family. He's out to get anyone and everyone he can. But the greater power, the greater authority is in our Lord. Stay close to our Lord. Embrace your spouse. He is at work. You can trust him. If any of you are on this path to adultery, I want to say a few quick words. The first one is stop it. Stop it now. Stop it today. It is never too late. It is never too late. Now is the moment of grace. Expose those secrets. Number two, go to compassion. Seek God's face for forgiveness and for grace to resist additional temptations and then accept God's grace. Forgive yourself. When he has forgiven you, do not continue to listen to the accuser who wants to rob you of any future joy with your spouse. Third, cut off that relationship. Cut it off. It's become an attachment. Do not return phone calls and letters that he may use to woo you back. Do not talk to her. Don't have someone call and say, well, can we just get together to talk it over? Absolutely not. Act decisively and then avoid the near occasion of sin. So if you're in a carpool with that person, find another ride. Gas is cheaper than paying a huge consequence for adultery. Okay, get off the committee. Get out of the class. Transfer your job if you have to. If you know that this is someone you work with and you're gonna be sent away on a business trip together, go to your boss and say, you can't go. Do not place yourself in temptation. Number five, don't keep photos or gifts or anything that would rekindle that flame in your heart. This is not just about the survival of your marriage. It is about your soul. Your soul hangs in the balance as does the soul of the person for whom you may feel an attachment. You have sinned against your spouse, not just God. So you need to find the correct time and way to ask your spouse for forgiveness. But I wanna urge you, you do not need to go into details. That just causes more pain, but neither will it be a quick fix. Seek a counselor, seek additional help. Ask your pastor. God wants to bring restoration. He wants to bring healing. He wants to bring wholeness. Build accountability with a pastor, a spiritual director or a same-sex friend. Break any old habits that would lead to this and foster new ones and set your heart on your spouse. Fill your heart with thanksgiving for the spouse God gave you. Perhaps you'd consider a retrovi-retreat. Proverbs 14-1 says, every wise woman builds her house, but the foolish one tears it down with her own hands. And I wanna echo something Scott said on Friday. Father Keef, thinking about Christian marriage, thinking about what we have the privilege of being called to do, said if Catholics lived faithfully, the Catholic teaching on marriage, I think they would transform the world in one generation. May the Holy Spirit help us to have this rich fruit of faithfulness to God and to our spouse in our thoughts, our words and our deeds every day and may he build in us the habits of godliness in our lives and marriages so that we will be faithful witnesses to our children, our grandchildren, and the world, and the world. God bless you, God bless you. Thank you.