Don't Underestimate the Vocation of Marriage

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It’s no secret that religious vocations are in decline. The last few years, there has been an urgent push for Catholics to pray for vocations and encourage young people to consider religious life. Yet, I find it interesting that in the hustle to find more priests, many seem to have forgotten that marriage is a vocation too.

"Having a vocation" includes the vocation to marriage.

I have run into some young, single Catholics who take the discernment for religious vocations so seriously, they feel pressure to think that getting married would be a “more selfish” or a “less saintly” thing to do. Yet God speaks to each one of us, stirring up a holy desire to expand our hearts and make choices to follow his call out of love, not fear. If loving another human being through marriage causes our hearts to expand, then we are serving His call.

I have also run into many married couples who seem to forget their high calling. Framing marriage as a vocation reminds us that marriage goes beyond meeting the needs of our spouse.

Similarly to how priest stands in for Jesus when reconciling people to God, we stand in for Jesus to love our spouses. It is not only an honor to love someone more intimately than anyone else, it is a holy experience. When a spouse says, “I see you, I hear you, I love you, no matter what,” he or she is delivering the same message that God intends for you.

More than people with religious vocations, married people have huge missions to be counter-cultural.

Married couples face additional pressure for their relationship to fit in to contemporary assumptions and attitudes. Pope Francis addressed the need for the vocation of marriage in his address to World Youth Day in 2013:

“Two Christians who marry each other have recognized in their love story the Lord's call, the vocation to form one flesh, one life from the two, male and female. It takes courage to start a family.”

All people are called to love, and the call to love one another through sacramental marriage is as righteous and holy as a call to priesthood.

The Second Vatican Council teaches that all Christians are called to, “the fullness of Christian life and to perfection of charity.” Saint John Paul II taught,

“There are two specific ways of realizing the vocation of the human person, in its entirety, to love: marriage and virginity or celibacy.”

If we seek God with our whole heart and He leads us to the vows of sacramental marriage, we must treat that call with reverence.

We also have to pray for those called to the vocation of marriage.

In addition to praying for more religious vocations, let’s also pray for those called to the vocation of marriage. We need more couples who make the lifelong commitment to love and cherish one another.

“God our Father, we thank you for calling men and women to serve in our Son’s Kingdom as married spouses. Send your Holy Spirit to help others to respond generously and courageously to your call. May our community of faith support vocations of sacrificial love in our young adults seeking marriage. Through Jesus Christ. Amen.” - adapted from the Prayer for Vocations by the Secretariat on Clergy, Consecrated Life, and Vocations

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