Three brothers, one a diocesan priest, one a Franciscan Friar TOR priest, and the other a married man, walk into a bar… Sounds like the start of Catholic joke, right? However, this might indeed be my life in a few years. You see, both my brothers are in formation to become priests. Now you may think to yourself, or come up to my wife and I and say, “oh my, what a holy family the Waruszewskis are! Two vocations from the three sons! That’s not too bad …” at this point my wife will completely spaz out on you and correct you …3, there are three vocations. We are a vocation too!
Now, I love my brothers dearly and am happy that they are following God’s call in their lives, but as the only brother not studying to be a priest, I can feel a bit inferior. Sometimes I feel as if I have to justify to other people my decision to get married even though I knew that it clearly was God’s will for me. God calls each of us to holiness through our different vocations, not just those studying to be priests. Pope Francis’s July 28 address to the World Youth Day Volunteers says it best,
“God calls you to make definitive choices, and he has a plan for each of you: to discover that plan and to respond to your vocation is to move forward toward personal fulfillment. God calls each of us to be holy, to live his life, but he has a particular path for each one of us. Some are called to holiness through family life in the sacrament of Marriage.“
Funny, I don’t see the pope saying marriage is only for those not holy enough to be priests or religious. This is because to truly live out the vocation of marriage as God intended it to be requires a great deal of sacrifice. As a husband, Christ calls me to lay down my life for my bride, as He did for the Church. I have been given multiple chances to respond to this call so far, such as learning to eat new foods due to my wife’s dietary restrictions, sacrificing my material wants to provide for the family’s financial needs, and helping my wife with the youth group instead of hanging out with my friends.
I would like to say that I have been heroic in these opportunities for sacrifice and not complained, but this is simply not true. There have been many times when I have grumbled and protested against sacrifice, yet occasionally, I do willingly sacrifice for my wife out of love and it is such a beautiful experience. These are the moments in which I become fully alive, because I am no longer living for myself. I begin to allow Christ to serve the world through me.
Through this sacrificial love married couples have a great opportunity to be a witness of God in the world. Our world desperately needs holy men and women who will sacrifice for their spouses instead of simply using them. In a world where many seek marriage only when it is convenient, married Catholics should witness the joy of following Christ in marriage, through good times and in bad.
So the next time you see a married couple living out God’s call for their lives, thank them for their courage to say yes to the vocation of marriage. Just as we need holy priests to serve our Church, we also need holy marriages and families to strengthen our society and reclaim it for Christ.
9 thoughts on “Hey, We Have a Vocation Too!”
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Fewer and fewer people are choosing to marry at all, and the ones that do marry often get divorced. We need to have more people choose the vocation of a holy, Catholic marriage to bring more Catholic children into the world in order to re-claim the culture for Christ! Say “yes” to marriage and “yes” to life! Catholics on average are having I believe 1.8 kids per family, which is not going to help these schools stay open. No Catholic school means a lost opportunity to teach the kids the faith (which they need to know better than their parents, since catechesis has been poor in general over the past few decades) and to create new disciples for Christ.
Thanks for your comment. The following link is a good explanation from a Catholic priest on why his parish school closed, http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/priest-youve-contracepted-our-parochial-school-out-of-existence/.
However, I would note that the primary job of passing down the faith from one generation to the next falls on the parents, not Catholic schools. Catholic schools should support the job that the parents are doing in the home to teach the faith. If children do not learn how to be disciples of Christ in their own families, it is rather doubtful that their school will be able to accomplish this.
I hear you. A friend and I were engaged at roughly the same time (we’re both married now) and we heard over and over about how hard marriage was. My friend told me people today don’t need to hear that marriage is hard; they need to hear that it’s possible. I agree. Actually living that vocation gives people the evidence they need. I wrote something similar here, about “the other vocation crisis” – a shortage of holy marriages: http://catholicstand.com/the-other-vocation-crisis/
I did come across your article as I was preparing for this one and thought it was excellent, as are many of your articles. Thanks for spreading the message about the need for holy marriages.
Thanks – and thank *you* for spreading the message, too. I was at a talk by Cardinal Arinze a few months ago, who pointed out that “the Church” is 99 percent lay people. When people say “the Church” ought to do this or that, they’re usually pointing fingers at priests, but really, we lay people need to step up and live out our mission as part of the body of Christ.
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