p. 49Marriage

Parents, as well as their children, should bear well in mind that company-keeping is a most serious matter. Do not tolerate flirtation, for it is a sign of extreme levity; it is foolish, uncharitable, and unjust, and will sooner or later meet with condign punishment. Do all in your power to prevent long courtships, because long acquaintance and frequent visits are apt to breed dangerous familiarity. Young people should not be permitted to keep company until they are prepared to contract an early marriage. They, after a few interviews, aided by the information derived from their respective parents or discreet and trustworthy friends, do not need a long time to make up their minds whether they want each other. If they do not want each other, all courting between them should forthwith cease, each of them seeking some other more suitable partner. If the young people want each other, let them, after consulting their respective confessors and parents, be at once engaged to each other. Do not oppose their engagement unless you have solid reasons for so doing, and these reasons you should make known to your child. It would have been far better had you made those reasons known before your child’s affections were too deeply engaged. In case of doubt as to the course you ought to pursue, it is your duty to consult your pastor or your confessor.

When the young people, with your consent, make this engagement to marry each other, their marriage should be fixed at once at no very distant date; the reason is, that long engagements are even more dangerous than long courtships. Your watchfulness and solicitude should now redouble until the wedding has taken place. Never leave them alone together, either out of your sight or out of your hearing. Bear well in mind, and impress it well on your child’s mind, that the parties engaged have no right to any familiarities whether in public or in private.

Before the final arrangements for the wedding are made, go with the parties engaged to your pastor, that he may direct them how to comply with the laws of the Church concerning the reception of the great Sacrament of Matrimony. Your pastor will enable you to fix the proper date and hour of the marriage. The banns of matrimony should be thrice published in the parish church of each party. This publication not only renders the engagement more solemn, but also enables the impediments to the marriage, if any exist, to be discovered and even removed in time, and, moreover, will secure prayers for the divine blessing on the marriage. No true Catholic will seek, without serious reasons, dispensation from this important law of the Church. Its non-observance has been fraught with great evils, and has occasioned p. 50many unlawful, invalid, and scandalous marriages, which have proved the source of irreparable injury both in time and in eternity.

See that your children prepare for marriage by a good confession. Be far more solicitous about the purity of their soul and its spiritual adornments than about the fine and expensive dresses they are to wear, etc. A few days before the marriage give your child, with all possible gravity and modesty, the necessary practical instructions concerning the reciprocal duties of married people. Induce them to choose as groomsmen and bridesmaids such persons as will be able to receive holy communion with them at the Nuptial Mass. Do not fail to join them yourselves in this great act, offering up your holy communion to obtain the divine blessing on their union.

Let the young people enjoy on their wedding-day a little feast and some innocent amusement, according to the advice of St. Paul: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice” (Phil. iv. 4). Do not, however, make too great a display, or incur too heavy an expense. Be sure to banish from the feast all intemperance, all obscene conversation and remarks, and all unbecoming conduct, for all such things draw down God’s curse instead of His blessing.

After the marriage of your children, carefully abstain from all interference in their domestic affairs, unless it be necessary to come to their assistance, or to restore peace and harmony between husband and wife. Beware of sowing seeds of discord in the family. Your children, when married, should keep house for themselves, and earn their own living, and ought not to depend on you for anything except good advice and consolation in time of trouble and sickness. Treat them always in a friendly and loving manner, earnestly recommending to them patience, meekness, mutual forbearance, and the leading of a truly Christian life.

Those parents who heed and put in practise the advice we have given them in these pages will not fail to draw down the divine blessing both on themselves and on their children in this life, and to merit an eternal reward in heaven. Amen.