Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes about the period of his life in which one of his sisters died and noted that as much as everyone missed her, none of us, including her own children, felt her absence as much as her husband. He didn’t just miss her. Half of his life was gone. That’s no romantic exaggeration, as everyone who knew them knows. They were married, husband and wife, for 34 years, and everything about them and their relationship suggested that what was between them was rare. Nothing between them garbled life. Their relationship was, for the most part, too ordinary to notice. For years at a stretch, over dirty diapers and dirty dishes, in a house packed with kids, they would meet each other’s eyes, and both would know that they were home: “At last, bone from my bone, flesh from flesh.” What needs to be there for someone to look at another and feel that other as bone from my bone, flesh from my flesh, kindred spirit? In today’s terminology, what makes someone a soulmate? What do you need to experience with another person to overcome that exile of heart? Someone looking at my sister and brother-in-law might, more superficially, have seen some obvious things: deep mutual respect, a gentleness between them, uncompromising fidelity to each other, harmony of thought and feelings on most things that are important, regular prayer together, and maintain a complete trust of each other. Those things are the heart of a marriage. What connected them, made for bone of my bone, for the harmony, respect, fidelity, and gentleness, was something deeper. They had a moral affinity. Long before, and concurrent with, sleeping with each other physically, they slept with each other morally. What’s meant by this curious phrase? Each of us has a place inside where we feel most deeply about the right and wrong of things and where what is most precious to us is cherished and guarded. My sister and brother-in-law found this in each other. They were moral lovers. They found, touched, and protected each others’ souls. Everything that was deepest and most precious in each of them was understood, cherished, and safe when the other was around. It made for a great marriage—one flesh, true consummation, all predicated on a great trust and a great chastity. That is a secret worth knowing.