The alarm goes off so I jump out of bed and start my morning routine. Lunches, walk the dog, try to cram in breakfast. I am out the door before I even get a chance to do any of the other things my wife is them left to take care of. And she is on her own schedule. Fight the traffic to get to work on time. Throw together some last minute lesson ideas for classes. Run from bell to bell. Cover the extra classes for those who are not in to day. The final class bell rings, take care of the after school activities. Make the long ride home where dinner is already waiting even though my wife had a similar day. Eat, mark papers that need to be marked or just collapse on the sofa. Suddenly it is bedtime. And I haven't even acknowledged the true love of God in my life.
Oh I managed to get in a little prayer, but the true love of God is what completes my life. The true love of God is what originally brought me to the ministry of deacon. The true love of God is the reflection of his love in the sacrament of marriage and too often I fail to remember that. And I bet there are others who do too.
The other day there was a discussion online about removing the celibacy rule from the priesthood and I started to try to find out how that worked out in other religions. As I researched I came upon several site written by wives of ministers about their life as the minister's wife. Instead of reading these sites and trying to see how they relate to a married priest idea, I should have been paying attention to haw they related to a deacons wife.
My wife, Mary, is the reason. A a deacon. When we first met, she was a church goer. She played in the folk group. I had turned away from Sunday mass, like most teens do. But I went to the masses that she was playing at. When we got married and were having our first daughter, it was Mary who suggested we start attending mass again as a preparation for bringing our child up in our faith. It was Mary who got involved in the music ministry again, as I sat with the children as a pew person. As the children got older, it was her involvement that led to the leader of this group asking me to get involved as well and when I first heard the word deacon, it was Mary who knew more about what a deacon was than me.
As we went through our training to become ordained, our wives had to be single parents, if we had children. We were asked to do a great deal of studying and retreating and reflecting and our wives held down the fort at home for five years. And at the end of each year, each wife was requested to write a letter to the Bishop, allowing the deacon candidate to move forward. If my wife was not behind what I was doing, the church did not want me. And Mary wrote those letters faithfully every year.
Now that I am ordained, my job, my ministry and many other things (other family members, etc) fight for my time and too often I lose sight of my first ministry. The ministry to my first love. The ministry of my marriage.
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