What I’ve Learnt in Fifteen Years of Catholic Marriage
My dear, long suffering wife and I recently celebrated our fifteenth anniversary, and God bless her, I don’t know how she’s done it. In order to survive living with myself, even I’ve taken to desperate measures, so the patience, grace and virtue she’s exhibited has been nothing short of miraculous, from my perspective. It does of course, beg the question: What have I actually learnt in all these years of Catholic marriage and family life? First, I’ll justify the qualification. I say Catholic family life, because I inherently believe it to be such a different species to secular family life, as requiring demarcation.
Some context. We have nine children, so yes, we are clearly open to life and all of its joyous gifts and challenges. I am an OCDS, so my life is marked by prayer, in the Divine Office and the practice of silent prayer and the pursuit of contemplation. The liturgy is the lynchpin of our lives, in both Sunday mass and weekday masses when we can get to it. Our children are formed in the faith, and together, our daily rosary draws us closer to God, and I pray, closer to each other in a way that we may never understand. Two years ago we picked up our lives and moved 333km to a rural town to be part of a thriving community of devout families nourished by a thriving parish lead by outstanding, orthodox priests, and a school that is unapologetically faithful to the teachings of the Church. Our lives are steeped in a love and devotion to Holy Mother Church in a manner that seeks to uphold the truths of the faith in word and deed, as well, and as imperfectly as our fallen natures can manage.
Context aside, what have I learnt in fifteen years of marriage? To be blunt: Nothing. Or perhaps, to be fair, very little. I am largely the same self-centred, easily distracted and single-minded, if genial, retrograde that I was fifteen years ago (I use the term retrograde in the Gordon sense, rather than the pejorative misnomer). I say that I’ve learnt nothing, or very little, to accept what I feel that I have definitely learnt: A man of my nature, and my flaws, needs the sacrament of marriage to escape the flaws and failings of his own particular disposition.
Jordan Peterson articulates the point quite eloquently, when he advises young men to pursue responsibility and dignity in a life of poignant struggle, imbued with great meaning, rather than a life of convenience. Did I mention my nine children? By accepting the responsibility of marriage and fatherhood, we force ourselves to outgrow the limiting obsessions and idiosyncrasies that make us egotistical, boorish and focused on little more than our own needs and desires. In responding to the needs of my wife and children, I need to set aside the particular muses and musings that might otherwise have me hunched over a keyboard, a whiskey beside me and Art Blakey pounding through my headphones. It’s not that it never happens, but it comes second. Or third. Or fiftieth in the list of priorities - hence the somewhat (cough) infrequent nature of these posts on Wristwatches and Radios, as much as I love working on it. I recently wrote about Fatherhood and the Way of the Little Flower, exploring this very notion of how our roles as fathers and husbands can be a path to spiritual growth, tending evermore to Christ, rather than our own desires.
The sacrament of marriage demands, really, all that you have. It doesn’t mean that you’re to leave everything else behind. There are some things that you should, or you must leave behind if your marriage is to truly flourish. The fidelity of the sacrament demands an orientation towards your spouse that speaks of a true fidelity - one that isn’t compromised or diluted by the kind of flirtation that might be more prevalent in a secular appreciation of the relationship as contractual, rather than covenantal. Hence, you need to be a better man than the one you were - but once again, this is a blessing rather than a burden, drawing you closer to the vision of life and love laid out by our Lord when He extolled: For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh. Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.
Furthermore, I can assert that I’ve learnt near to nothing, because I rely on my children to constantly correct, guide and lead me to living out my vocation as best I can. Usually, this is in the form of pertinent questions, that can include: Have you done your morning prayer yet? Can we go to mass before school? Is it a sin to do X, or how about Y? Why are you allowed to watch that if we can’t? Why is there an empty chocolate wrapper in the glove box? Where are you going and why? Rather than having an image of my guardian angel upon my right shoulder, and a tempting devil on my left, try to imagine my nine children perched on both shoulders, on my lap, atop my head and latched on to both arms and legs. This isn’t a literal description of course, but a figurative one that makes the point earnestly.
Our wives and our children challenge and refine us I’m ways that nobody else can. Our intimacy, shared history, common identity and the blood that binds us by means beyond words and intentions, sanctified by God’s grace, gives us every opportunity to grow closer to one another, and closer to Christ in our the ground of our being. The duty, responsibility and honour of tending to my wife and children, albeit imperfectly drives me ever daily, closer to the man I seek to be - when I purposely tend my vocation. What I’ve learnt may be little, but I know without a shadow of a doubt, that I need the sacrament of marriage to inspire me to a greatness of sorts, that can only be known to husbands and fathers, and I’m learning to thank God for the opportunity every day - as we all should.
By Gaetano Carcarello