Love without God is tasteless. Moreover, it fades and doesn’t feel the same as it did in the beginning, when you see the eternity together with your chosen one. It fades because it’s without God. If it is with God then it’s always fresh, without slips… The bride that enters as a virgin in Church to the Sacrament of Marriage, remains a virgin all her life – even after she will give birth to children – and the groom as well, of course if they live in Christ. Nothing can be done without God.

My dear ones, pleasure is a consequence, not a purpose. I eat to relieve hunger not because food tastes good. If it tastes good it’s better, but it doesn’t matter because this is not the purpose. Pleasure is just a circumstance that should determine you, more and more to have children, to propagate the species!

(Translated from Părintele Arsenie Papacioc, Despre armonia căsătoriei, ediţie îngrijită de Ieromonah Benedict Stancu, Editura Elena, Constanţa, 2013, pp. 10-11)