Just to whet your appetite:
Q: How does marriage achieve, deepen, mature and make permanent one's personal happiness?
Monsignor Burke: Above all by drawing out of ourselves. We will never get started on the way to happiness until we realize that the main obstacle is our own self -- our self-centered concerns, worries and calculations. Paradoxically all these are absolute obstacles to personal happiness.
The paradox should not be difficult for the Christian to understand, for it goes to the heart of Christ's teaching on those who selfishly, calculatingly seek their lives: "Whoever seeks his life will lose it; whoever loses it for my sake, will find it." The phrase "for my sake" points to all that is good, generous, pure and worthwhile.
One of the most common modern errors is to think that happiness comes by calculation. We think that our happiness depends on thinking things out cleverly and accurately: "Will this plus that, minus the other, make me happy?" It is not so. Personal happiness and the happiness of marriage depend mainly on generosity and sacrifice.
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