Once a couple marries, however, they become immediate family to each other. It is in marriage that two become one--begin to share their lives, their hopes and fears, their dreams and disappointments, their finances. They make a home for themselves, and hopefully, for their children, as the fruit of their love. Christian marriage means much more than sex, but the delight and joy of lovemaking is integral to marriage. The marital embrace is the culmination of the total self-giving of husbands and wives. “Those who seek to justify premarital sex find it difficult to explain what marriage means, and what difference it makes to marry.”5Since the creation of mankind, right up to only about one hundred years ago, people of what is know as the college age, would in all likelihood already be married and raising their children. The progression of mankind now demands long years of education and maturing before one is ready to enter into the sacred sacrament of marriage. Teens go through a stage in life called puberty, in which they sexually mature, they ripen for love; they grow more lustful each passing day. This stage takes effect well before marriage, which makes it even harder for one to stay a virgin. The elongation of adolescence puts a tremendous strain on teens, making chastity extremely difficult, and making premarital sex look like a good option.On the other hand, nowadays marriage is sometimes put off too long. Couples wait for everything to be "perfect" before marrying. They sometimes unwisely expose themselves to the dangers of long courtships, waiting, for example, to complete graduate school. When marriage is delayed into some far off indefinite future, it can become extremely difficult to delay sexual intimacy for the honeymoon. As St. Paul advises: "If you cannot restrain your desires, go ahead and marry--it is better to marry than to burn with passion,”1 No one ever said chastity would be easy. But it sure...
