Good morning Father,

I am writing to you about what is about to happen in my life.

Some time ago, I wrote to you about young people nowadays and how difficult it is to find someone who has faith and will accompany us in this.

Well, although I had never asked for it in prayer before, one day I did, and shortly afterwards I met this young man.

Months ago now, but even before meeting him, I felt in my heart that he was the one. I had never felt this way before in my life.

After two years of chastity, I fell into temptation, and now it is really difficult to give it up.

For a long time, I dreamed of a guy who would come to Mass with me, pray with me and share with me everything possible about spirituality, and I really found him.

We want to get married. He feels it every time we are at Mass, and so do I. Even though time is short, we are deeply convinced that with a lot of commitment, love and sacrifice, everything will be fine, and with God by our side, we will be even stronger to overcome any obstacle.

This Sunday we’re going to talk to a priest about it.

I must tell you that I am now 21 and he is 25, our parents are more in favour of cohabitation and they don’t seem to be able to accept our choice very well, especially my mother, who seems unwilling to let go of me and doesn’t understand how much my soul suffers from no longer receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist and having temporarily lost grace.

What do you think about it? I would add that we believe the world has changed too much for the worse in this regard, people no longer believe in the bond of marriage and in how great God can be. Love is seen as a mere union of bodies… rather than souls…

We also know that we need to take a premarital course, and we will find out more about it this Sunday at Mass.

I ask for your blessing, Father, for F. and V., that God may accompany us and help us overcome all this!

The priest’s answer

Dearest,

1. I encourage you to continue on the path towards marriage.

I am convinced that God’s law is wiser than our views and that living in purity before marriage is the most beautiful and healthiest way to live marriage according to God’s ways.

2. Living in purity does not mean becoming arbiters of the meaning of sexuality and our own bodies, but recognising the primacy of God, the starting point and destination of our emotional life.

In purity, God is always present as the One who accompanies us on our journey, communicating the strength to overcome temptations and making us stronger in everything.

Above all, God keeps love pure and helps us strive for sanctification.

Purity keeps us constantly open to God’s gifts.

3. Premarital relations, which necessarily also involve contraception, alter God’s plan for sexuality and, without one realising it, effectively exclude God from one’s emotional life.

One remains a Christian, but without the determination to strive for holiness, which is the goal we are called to pursue.

4. For this reason, the first thing I would ask you to do is to return to living in chastity.

Precisely because you feel the difficulty of doing so and your boyfriend feels it too, you particularly need it.

Until you are married, you do not yet belong exclusively to each other.

The impetuosity of passion gives the impression that the desire to be together is very strong. But this is not the case.

It is only in purity that the desire to be together is genuine.

5. Secondly, I advise you not to accept the suggestion of moving in together under any circumstances.

It is true that your mother is suggesting this solution because she probably does not see you as mature and fears that a marriage at your age could soon fall apart.

But cohabitation is a false solution because it forces you to live as if you were married, when you are not.

In cohabitation, there is a strong sense of impermanence, whereas in marriage, you are aware of a bond that commits you to be serious and not to engage in behaviour that could lead to its ruin.

6. Not to mention that cohabitation also has its difficulties. When living together, instead of dissolving, these difficulties tend to worsen.

And even though there seems to be no way out, you don’t have the courage to break up because you have invested too much energy of all kinds in the relationship.

And so you drag on.

Then, when for various reasons you realise that this cohabitation can no longer continue, you suddenly find yourself older, with a lot of time wasted.

Sometimes the sense of failure is so overwhelming that you feel frustrated and greatly weakened.

7.Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mt 24,35). Among these words are also those spoken in the Old Testament: “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor uselessly” (Ps 127:1).

Therefore, I encourage you to resume your Christian life by receiving the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Confession.

At the same time, you would do well to go to the priest so that he can tell you what you need to do to prepare yourself holily for marriage.

I like to remember that the word ‘marriage’ in Hebrew is kadushim, which means sanctification.

Prepare yourselves in the best possible way to lay the foundations for your temporal and eternal future.

With the assurance of my prayers for you and F., I bless you with all my heart and wish you all the best.

Father Angelo

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