• "A good marriage is a big table, loaded with lots of food and drink. When two people love each other sacramentally that love becomes a place of hospitality, a table where people come to be fed — figuratively and really. Again, love, in a true marriage, feeds not just the two people who are generating it, but, because it is sacramental, it always contains more than enough surplus to feed everyone who is fortunate enough to meet it.

• "A good marriage is a container that holds suffering. An old axiom says: 'Everything can be borne if it can be shared!' That's true. Anyone fortunate enough to have a true moral partner in this life can bear a lot of suffering. That is even more true in a good marriage where the wife and husband, because of their deep moral and emotional affinity, can carry not just their own sufferings but also can help carry the sufferings of many others.

• "Finally, to draw upon a deep Christian image, a good marriage is Christ's body, flesh that is 'food for the life of the world'. Christ left his body to feed the world. A good marriage does precisely that, it feeds everything and everybody around it. Many of us have experienced this in some of the married eople we have met. Having them in our lives is a constant source of [moral, psychological, religious, and humorous] nourishment."