St. Thomas is right. The essential prayer is the prayer of petition.

One of the essential and most valid objections against the act of faith is that it is irrational, inasmuch as it offends against the syllogistic rule that the conclusion of an argument shall contain nothing more than the premises.

Of a truth, there is an inward, formless, inarticulate, almost unconscious, prayer, the very breath of love, whereby the soul is knit fast to the God whom it has tracked, amidst the tangled underwood of human life, to his covert on the eternal hills.

What is superfluous to your poor estate, distribute. This is distributive charity: a virtue so sacred that crimes against it are the forerunner of inevitable doom.

As the wedded pair have given each other power over their bodies, it would be a grave sin for one to refuse either altogether or for a considerable time the fulfilment of the marriage debt.

As you are not yet married, and as marriage is the fundamental state of life as well as the unity of the commonwealth, make up your mind whether you are called to this state. If you make up your mind to marry, do not marry merely a good wife: marry a good mother to your children.