I am reading Vanauken’s “Under the Mercy” and am deeply moved and completely agree with his thoughts on marriage (the one-flesh union) which LOVE promises and points to. Marriage vows are NOT vows to each other but the vows are THEIR promise to God as well as each other. The vows are a gift from one to the other; not a protestation of love as those who write their own vows don’t seem to understand. Here and now they are saying, each to the other: “This is my promise, my vow before God. This you can trust. This you can lean on in the bad times for all eternity, whatever I may feel at any given moment, I WILL be faithful. Never fear. You have my word made before God. Pat and I were never out of LOVE with each other. We wanted nothing so much as the good of the other. Our Quiet Love was cherishing, wanting each other’s best good and shall last for all eternity. Yes the one-flesh union endures and grows in Heaven. I clearly saw in Pat’s writings that she believed and felt as I do that our quiet love kept getting stronger and was a foretaste of Heaven. A person alone is incomplete. The mystical union by marriage into one is the true second birth, a fusion of their personalities into the beginning of the eternal Resurrection body that happens after death. When the body dies the soul is taken up into divine Love and illuminated with God’s light to await its other half. – our love keeps right on growing. It belongs to “the conscious circle of spiritual life we Christians call the communion of Saints. It is what I am feeling when I feel Pat’s presence in and near me. Pat I truly love you forever!