Marriage and Self-Sacrifice

I think my relationship with my wife is the best chance I will ever have to love my neighbor as myself. My success or failure as a lover will show most clearly with her. She is my best occasion for self-sacrifice, the bloodless martyrdom of daily life. My children also demand self-sacrifice, and on a greater scale, but there is a mandatory element to my fatherly efforts. They are my children; their dependence on me is nearly total. To neglect them would be an obvious moral failure. Even when they are at their worst, I do not wish they would raise themselves. Deirdre is another story. She is far more autonomous; she took care of herself before we married. I sometimes wish that she would do for herself some of the things she asks of me. I like to sit and read and be left alone. Overcoming that wish to the point of granting her requests cheerfully, or even anticipating them, is a small but constant opportunity for charity.

She is my best lesson in the pain of sin. The relative innocence of children may make them ideal candidates as earthly stand-ins for God. When you sin against them, the injustice of it shines forth -- they're just kids. But Deirdre loves me as on other, and I her. When I sin against her -- when I break a promise, speak a cutting word, or fail in my duty -- I see the pain in her face, and the ingratitude of it hits home. How can I wound one who loves me so well? I see the wild incongruity of it: I love her so much in my better moments, the good she does is the source of so much of my happiness; how can I forget this?

Swimming with Scapulars by Matthew Lickona

Anyone who has been married for any length of time knows this one, kids or no kids. But Matthew Lickona puts it so clearly and so well that it was a really good reminder for me of the fact that we are living our faith every day, all the time, with the people who are closest to us.

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity