““Augustine suggests that in the mutual submission and self-surrender of marriage, and in the openness of the marriage relationship to children, with the demands of self-sacrificial love that the arrival of children bring, there is a discipling process. Our desires are reordered as we live out the marriage relationship (just as they are when we live out a celibate life) so that we are rendered fit for the kingdom—and marriage and celibacy alike are ways of life, thick clusters of practices, that tend to this reordering of our desires when lived seriously. In this sense marriage is properly named an “ascetic” practice.””
