The word of God
and Holy Scripture further teaches that one should not consummate the
marriage immediately after one has been married, but that one should
wait for three days while praying earnestly to God to bless their
marriage, “because for these three nights we are joined to God:
and when the third night is over, we will be in our own wedlock.”
(Tobias
8:4) The Holy Archangel Raphael, acting as God’s
messenger, instructs husbands and wives to always wait three days in
prayer before consummating the marriage.“But thou when thou
shalt take her, go into the chamber, and for three days keep thyself
continent from her, and give thyself to nothing else but to prayers
with her.” (Tobias 6:18)
These words shows
us that spouses must remember their bond with the Lord first and
foremost and that the fleshly or physical part of the marriage must
always come secondhand. By this highly virtuous act of abstaining
from marital relations for three days, the devil’s power over
married couples is undoubtedly thwarted and diminished. Holy
Scripture thus advices spouses to be “joined to God” for three
days in prayer before performing the marital act. Not only that, but
spouses should always fervently pray to God before every marital act
and ask Him to protect them from falling into sin, and also after the
marital act in order to ask Our Lord to forgive them if they
committed any sin during the act. This is the safe road of the fear
of God that every righteous man or woman should follow if they wish
to enter Heaven.
Tobias
6:18, 20-22 “[St. Raphael said to Tobias:] But thou when thou shalt
take her, go into the chamber, and for three days keep thyself
continent from her, and give thyself to nothing else but to prayers
with her.… But the second night thou shalt be admitted into the
society of the holy Patriarchs. And the third night thou shalt obtain
a blessing that sound children may be born of you. And when the third
night is past, thou shalt take the virgin with the fear of the Lord,
moved rather for love of children than for lust, that in the seed of
Abraham thou mayst obtain a blessing in children.”
Haydock
Commentary explains: “Verse 18. Days. No morality could be
more pure. The Christian Church has given similar counsels [of
abstinence before marital consummation], in the Capitulars of France,
and of Erard, archbishop of Tours, and in many rituals published in
the 16th century. The council of Trent only advises people to
approach to the sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist, three
days at least before marriage. The Greeks, in their third council of
Carthage, (canon 13) order the first night to be spent in
continence.”
Notice
how Our Lord and God in the biblical book of Tobias promises that
those who pray and abstain from the marital act for three days before
having marital relations shall receive the inestimable graces of
“sound children” on the third night and that they shall be
admitted “into the society of the holy Patriarchs” on the second.
The honor of being “admitted into the society of the holy
Patriarchs” is of course too great to even describe in human terms.
The blessing on the third night of “sound children” obviously
means that those couples who do not perform the marital act for the
sake of lust or too often, and who are virtuous and wait for three
days in accordance with the promise of Holy Scripture, will receive a
child without birth deformities or defects. This may be hard for many
to believe, but this is really and truly what Holy Scripture is
promising and saying.
It is sad to see
that none today seem to care anything about these promises or
virtuous deeds that promise these remarkable and wondrous graces that
Our Lord said He would bless a virtuous couple with. One could think
that even a worldly or ungodly couple would appreciate the grace of
not receiving a child that is deformed and that they, if they
believed in God or were aware of these promises, would act in
accordance to the words of the Holy Scripture; but now neither
“Catholics” or so-called Christians nor any people of the world
care anything about these words of our Lord that promises the
inestimable grace of receiving “a blessing that sound children may
be born of you.”
Tobias
8:4-10 “Then Tobias exhorted the virgin, and said to her: Sara,
arise, and let us pray to God today, and tomorrow, and the next
day: because for these three nights we are joined to God: and
when the third night is over, we will be in our own wedlock. For
we are the children of saints, and we must not be joined together
like heathens that know not God. So they both arose, and
prayed earnestly both together that health might be given them,
And Tobias said: Lord God of our father, may the heavens and the
earth, and the sea, and the fountains, and the rivers, and all thy
creatures that are in them, bless thee. Thou made Adam of the slime
of the earth, and gave him Eve for a helper. And now, Lord, thou know
that not for fleshly lust do I take my sister to wife, but only for
the love of posterity, in which thy name may be blessed for ever and
ever. Sara also said: Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us, and
let us grow old both together in health.”
St. Augustine
also taught that the first man and woman were waiting for God’s
order and commandment to engage in intercourse since God created Adam
and Eve without sexual desire for each other. Thus, St. Augustine,
with the rest of the Church, understood that sexual desire was not an
aspect of God’s design for the male and the female: “For why
should they not await God’s authorization for this, since there was
no drive of concupiscence coming from rebellious flesh?” Augustine
concluded that sexual intercourse was “fundamentally alien to the
original definition of humanity.” By this we can understand that
the biblical teaching (in Tobias 6:18) of chaste and humble prayer
for three days (before one consummates the marriage by the marital
act) comes directly from God’s original plan and will for humanity
before the fall and original sin of Adam and Eve in the garden of
Eden; for before the fall, the human will was infinitely more
directed to obeying and following God’s perfect will and direction
in all things rather than their own reason and judgment, as it sadly
is now.
This
is also why St. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215) taught that “the
first man of our race [Adam] did not await the appropriate time,
desiring the favor of marriage before the proper hour and he fell
into sin by not waiting the time of God’s will… they [Adam and
Eve] were impelled to do it before the normal time because they were
still young and were persuaded by deception.” (The
Stromata
or Miscellanies,
On Marriage XIV:94, XVII:102-103)
It is thus
certain and an established fact by both the Holy Bible and Apostolic
Tradition that those spouses who do not practice chastity and prayer
for a while before they perform the marital act will much more easily
fall into sexual sins of various sorts since they will be more easily
controlled by the devil and his demons because of their carelessness
and sloth in praying to God and invoking His Holy aid in resisting
sinful inclinations and temptations.
Anne Catherine
Emmerich was also told in her Revelations that Adam and Eve performed
penance for seven years before “Seth, the child of promise, was
there conceived and brought into the world”. Our Lord and God –
whom they had offended – consoled them with this child for their
loss of their first son, Abel, after seven years penance, which shows
us that God requires penance from spouses who behaves badly or
lustfully and that penance should be done without command. “I have
learned many things which took place in ancient times in the Grotto
of the Crib. I remember only that Seth, the child of promise, was
there conceived and brought into the world by Eve, after a
penitence of seven years. It was there that the angel told her
that God had given her this offspring in the place of Abel.” (Anne
Catherine Emmerich, The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ)
Either one makes penance in this life or in the next in Hell or in
purgatory. God always requires penance when people commits evil acts.
That is just a fact.
Our
Lord Jesus Christ Himself indicates in The
Revelations of St. Bridget
that after the fall and sin of Adam and Eve, the devil aroused
sensuality in them, and that their first sexual act or acts after the
fall were heedlessly and thoughtlessly planned. The reason for this
was that they were inspired by the devil to act more in accordance to
their selfish lust than their reason, and that they did not pray to
Our Lord before the marital act in humility, pleading to and asking
Him to guard them from sinning during the act, as Our Lord wants all
spouses to do. The Revelations also shows that Adam and Eve
understood their lustful error after this happened, and that they
thereafter were afraid to perform the marital act, and chose to
completely abstain from the marital act for a while because of their
fear of God’s wrath. They thus learned that Our Lord wanted them to
pray for a while before they performed the marital act, and awaited
Our Lord’s commandment for them to come together in marital union
again, and after a while, God directly told them that they could have
marital relations again.
The
Son of God speaks: “After
the disobedience was enacted, my angel came over them [Adam and Eve]
and they were ashamed over their nakedness, and they immediately
experienced the lust and desire of the flesh and suffered hunger and
thirst. …And for the sensuality the devil had aroused
in them after their disobedience, I gave and created souls in their
seed through my Divinity. And all the evil the devil tempted them
with, I turned to good for them entirely.
“Thereafter,
I showed them how to live and worship me, and I gave them permission
to have relations, because before my permission and the enunciation
of my will they were stricken with fear and were afraid to unite and
have relations. Likewise, when Abel was killed and they were in
mourning for a long time and observing abstinence, I was moved with
compassion and comforted them. And when they understood my will, they
began again to have relations and to procreate children, from which
family I, their Creator, promised to be born.” (St.
Bridget’s Revelations,
Book 1 Chapter 26)
The historical
fact that Cain was Adam and Eve's first child, and Abel their second
child, support this fact and that parents' lust effect and harm their
children, for Cain murdered Abel. Not that Cain was free from sin,
but that through Adam and Eve's more lustful life at that time, they
made it so that their child would be more easily tempted by the
devil, and it ended with one child killing his brother in cold blood
and brutality. Parents do not think about such things in the heat of
their lust, but if only more parents understood this truth, so much
more children would grow up virtuous and good, and society as a whole
would be almost free of crime. It is a small sacrifice to avoid a
short lust in order to help one's child grow up healthy and virtuous,
and by God's grace, we pray that this truth will be taught to and
accepted by every parent on this earth. Amen.
Hence “he who
neglects prayer in the time of temptation is like a general, who,
when surrounded by the enemy, does not ask for reinforcements from
his monarch. Adam fell into sin because when he was tempted he
did not look to God for help. We should say a Hail Mary, or
at least devoutly utter the holy names of Jesus and Mary. "These
holy names," St. John Chrysostom declares, "have an
intrinsic power over the devil, and are a terror to hell." At
the name of Mary the devils tremble with fear; when she is invoked
their power forsakes them as wax melts before the fire.” (Rev.
Francis Spirago, The Catechism Explained, A.D. 1899)
St.
Ephraim, On Prayer Before Intercourse: “O Blessed Fruit conceived
without intercourse, bless our wombs during intercourse. Have pity on
our barrenness, Miraculous Child of virginity.” (Hymns of St.
Ephraim: Hymn 7 On the Nativity)
For those who want to read and learn a lot more on sexual ethics, I can recommend the following interesting and informative article that is absolutely packed with quotes from the popes, saints and fathers of the Church:
Sexual Pleasure, the Various Sexual Acts, and Procreation
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