A sobering vocation

"Matrimony is a Gospel in itself, a Good News for the world today, especially the dechristianized world."

Pope Benedict XVI, Homily for the Mass for the Opening of the Synod of Bishops, 2012.



I tend to live my marriage as routine -- get up and feed children, make coffee for Patrick (or, just as often, drink the coffee he made me; thanks, dear), throw a load in the washer, throw a load in the dishwasher and play with kids. School pick-ups, dinner, readalouds and prayer time, and then in the final and peripheral moments of the day, speak with Patrick about what is on each of our minds (usually stuff related to the kids, funny or interesting things spotted online and super-fun budgeting conversations.). Lather, rinse, repeat.

Rarely do I step back and look at the full picture of what we are living, because I'm up to my eyeballs in the daily maintenance of it. It's hard to think or feel anything is especially "holy" when it looks like humdrum life at the best of times.

So when Patrick read this quote to me last night from Pope Benedict, my lip quivered.

"A Gospel... in itself..."

What a profoundly humbling statement.

If others are encountering the Gospel through what we live, then I'd better grow up big time, and quickly, if I don't want to screw up this awesome and terrifying call.

When this thought flitted through my mind, I was thinking of when I am in the company of other women, and I occasionally feel tempted to kvetch about my husband. Not serious things, just the daily grievances and frustrations I carry around by sharing a life and a home with him.

And yes, by all means, I need to clean up my act in that area.

But this morning, as we were getting our children ready for Mass, and enduring the usual commotion that ensues, I remembered Pope Benedict's words and thought that this Gospel we are striving to live is first being read and noticed by our children.

So while I owe it to Patrick, and to those around me, to speak charitably about him, incomparably more is riding on how our children see and experience our marriage.

I recall hearing Father Joseph Hattie, the lovely priest who said our wedding Mass and baptized our Anna, saying that the seeds of his vocation were planted when he was a young boy and got a paper route. The first morning he got up early to deliver newspapers, he spied his father kneeling in the living room and praying. He realized his father had been doing this all along, and the witness that provided him nudged him towards his priestly vocation.

I can't help but think a small but meaningful gesture our children may observe between me and Patrick could be the seed planted in them to one day have their own families. Perhaps a sincerely said "I'm sorry" after an argument, perhaps it may be in watching one of us caring for the other when gravely ill. I don't know.

But I know they are watching what we do, even the youngest ones.





"Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel."
1 Corinthians 9:16





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