3. Do not allow your choice to depend altogether upon minor considerations, such as physical beauty, finished manners, a charming deportment, wealth, and worldly possessions.
Physical beauty ought not to decide. When I say this I am far from meaning that you ought to marry a deformed or ugly person, or one in regard to whom you feel from the outset a repulsion or aversion. No, certainly not; but undue importance must not be attached to beauty, because it offers no security for a happy marriage.
"A beautiful body," says St. Chrysostom, 41 which is not the dwelling of a virtuous soul can hold a husband captive but for a very short time." And the same holy Doctor of the Church writes in another place: "How many husbands have come to a deplorable end, although their wives were possessed of remarkable beauty; others, on the contrary, have led a very happy life, and attained to a ripe old age, at the side of a wife possessed of but little physical attractiveness.' '
4. Worldly possessions, property, and money ought also to be a minor consideration in regard to the choice of a wife. Money need not be left altogether out of the question; but it is plain that he who looks only to the dowry, marries not the individual, but the money. To such a one may fitly be applied the saying of the holy Doctor whom we have just quoted: "It seems as if the wife were to be bought Such conduct dishonors the gift of God, and treats a holy
