Vocations Week: Satan Hates Marriage

You might have noticed this week is National Vocations Week here in the United States. My priest talked about it this past weekend and my social media has been full of discussions about it.

One thing I couldn’t help but notice, though, was that Vocations Week only focuses on the priesthood and religious life. There hasn’t been any talk, that I’ve seen, about the vocation to marriage. 

It’s the common vocation, of course. I believe that would be the main argument for why we remain quiet about marriage when we discuss vocations. The majority of people will get married, so there’s no need to talk about it.

But I believe this has consequences for our Church. I think we need to talk about marriage as a vocation much more often than we do. We celebrate with couples on their wedding day, but beyond that, how many of us can say we really take time to think about our married friends and pray for and support their marriage? As a Church, in practice, we don’t treat marriage like it is a vocation that should be taken as seriously as the priesthood or religious life.

The thing is, if marriage — a lifelong, committed relationship between one man and one woman, which will ideally lead to children — was really the easier option, why did God wait until the Incarnation to do away with divorce? Why did our Jewish ancestors in the Old Testament take multiple wives? Why did God have to ease us into the expectations of marriage after the Fall if it was so much more natural, so much more common, so much easier?

If marriage is easier, why do we have such a hard time finding couples who stay together for the rest of their lives within our own society? Why do we struggle to find couples who remain faithful to the Church’s teachings on things like contraception? Why do we see so many families whose children (the few that they do have) fall away from the faith?

Marriage is not an easier vocation than the priesthood or religious life. In the Garden, Satan not only disrupted our relationship with God, but he also targeted the relationship between husband and wife. For the first time, husband and wife felt animosity toward each other and they experienced lust. 

My priest made a beautiful recommendation this past weekend to look at the pictures of the seminarians we have listed in our diocese and to pray for them every day — by name, if possible.

I can’t help but wonder what impact that might have on our families if we prayed for couples as they were entering marriage and experiencing it for the first time. What if we posted the pictures of couples getting married in our diocese and prayed for them? Can you imagine what that might do for the Church?

Satan attacked my relationship hard throughout the engagement process and has continued to attack us in our first year of marriage. The Monday after we got back from our honeymoon, my husband narrowly avoided death in a car accident. A few weeks later, I received a devastating medical diagnosis that continues to threaten to strain our relationship. As the year has gone on, life has kept coming for us in a way that it didn’t before we said our vows. 

And what we learned from this is that we aren’t alone. We’ve reached out to some of our faithful Catholic couples and they shared similar experiences.

Satan hates marriage.

Satan hates marriage so much that we’ve all but forgotten about it as a vocation, even during Vocations Week. Satan is attacking marriage just as much as he attacks our priests. Satan wants to keep us away from marriage as it was designed because marriage is a reflection of Christ’s love for the Church and of the self-giving love of the Trinity. 

If we truly want to increase our vocations to priesthood and religious life, we need to support our married and engaged couples. Our lives aren’t Disney movies, and our vows aren’t our Happily Ever After. When we get married, our new lives are just beginning, and Satan wants them to be horrible. 

The best way to solve the priesthood shortage is to show our children the beauty of the Church. And what better way to do that than to create a faithful, happy family that is on fire for the Church and follows Her teachings? If we can make that the norm in our pews, then we will find ourselves with more priests and religious because of their wonderful upbringing, not in spite of their broken family.

Please, pray for the married couples in your life. And if you’re married, ask people to pray for you! 

Have a wonderful Vocations Week, everyone!