Dr. J. Budziszewski

In a lot of ways, I find... Look, I am one of those who... I mean, you know, I was married to my wife.

I loved her.

But a lot of the feelings became pretty darn difficult at one phase.

And...

It was after returning to Christian faith, and especially actually after reception into the Catholic Church, which I had not expected, and access to the sacraments and so forth, and she reports the same thing, that our love deepened incredibly.

And it's so much more fun than anything that we knew when we were kids.

know i hate to sound corny people talk about adventures and there's a lot of hallmark card ways of speaking about that but it is like that so i would say don't worry about don't worry too over much about the feelings um if the feelings go away go on loving go on engaging in the practices of love and uh people say but it's hypocritical you mentioned hypocrisy before

We've talked about Lewis a number of times.

C.S.

Lewis made the remark that even good manners are there like a mask, yes, but it's a mask that your face shapes itself to fit.

And the routines of love, consideration, pulling out the chair, pouring the cup of coffee for the beloved, you know, doing these kinds of things.

train the soul beautiful and they are modes of cooperation with the grace of god by which real charity can enter the soul so that you can love her with the same kind of love although only a finite measure of it with which god himself loves her i i heard uh

Only a little while after becoming Catholic, I heard somebody say something like that in a homily.

I don't remember whether he said it well or not, and I thought, oh, that seems a little bit exaggerated.

But, you know, it's all over the New Testament, these remarkable things that Paul says about marriage.

He says, submit yourselves one to another.

He then talks about the mode of submission of the wife and the mode of submission of the man, which is a lot harder.

He says you have to lay yourself down for her as Christ laid himself down for the church.

No, I should.

Write that down for me before I leave.