List of points

Matrimony is a holy sacrament. When the time comes for you to receive it, ask your spiritual adviser or your confessor to suggest a suitable book. And you will be better prepared to bear worthily the burdens of the home.

You laugh because I tell you that you have a 'vocation for marriage'? Well, you have just that: a vocation.

Commend yourself to the Archangel Raphael that he may keep you pure, as he did Tobias, until the end of the way.

Marriage is for the soldiers and not for the General Staff of Christ's army. For, whereas food is a necessity for each individual, procreation is a necessity for the species only, not for the individual.

Longing for children? Children, many children, and a lasting trail of light we shall leave behind us if we sacrifice the selfishness of the flesh.

'Purity?' they ask. And they smile. They are the very people who approach marriage with worn-out bodies and disillusioned minds.

I promise you a book — if God helps me — which perhaps I will call: 'Celibacy, Marriage and Purity.'

How frankly you laughed when I advised you to put the years of your youth under the protection of Saint Raphael: 'so that he'll lead you, like young Tobias, to a holy marriage, with a girl who is good and pretty and rich', I told you, jokingly.

And then, how thoughtful you became!… when I went on to advise you to put yourself also under the patronage of that young apostle John; in case God were to ask more of you.