Vows.
We speak them.
We break them.
We mean them.
We don't.
What kind of man are you?
What kind of man are you going to be?
When we say "For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part..."
What do mean?
What happens to a man's head and heart that enables him to leave his wife and children?
I am guessing when he said "for better or for worse." he must not have really meant 'worse',
he must have meant "for better and for a little less than perfect."
Too bad he wasn't more honest with himself and his future wife.
You men and you boys who hope to be men one day,
MEAN the vows you take.
MEAN the promises you make.
Does anyone, priest or husband, really know what we are undertaking when we speak
our wedding or ordination vows? No.
We have some idea of what we are getting into but no idea of how it will change us or if it will be mostly joy or mostly sorrow.
So... do we excuse ourselves from our commitments? No.
I have always remembered one of the reading at my sister's wedding. It struck me as odd, but that was me in my early twenties. In Deuteronomy Chapter 30, God was saying: Today I set before you fire and water; death and life - choose life." (paraphrased)
My sister and her husband spoke their vows with a greater understanding than most regarding what they were getting themselves into. And they are still together.
When (not if) the trials of marriage or priesthood set in - our vows are the lathe that holds us in place while we are fashioned into something new.
When we give up and leave those vows we are left half-fashioned and until we find some way to reconcile or make peace with ourselves, God, those we have harmed - we remain deformed.
Either way you experience 'better or worse'.
My opinion?
It is better to remain faithful and endure the worse while honoring the vows we took.
Like I told the man named Dave who I met in the Home Depot Parking lot last week. With his eyes welling up he told of how his wife began using drugs and lying to him and now they were apart. He offered to help her but she refused him.
I told Dave, "You are standing beneath the cross. Learn from Mary who stands beside you there. She remained faithful as the world hated and killed her life's dream, her life's work, her life's joy.
Remain faithful in your grieving. Do not speak ill of your wife. Do not let your two sons hear a single negative word about her. Remind them that their mother is a fantastic person and the drugs are what changed her heart and divided your family.
God did not do this to you. Tell them to pray for their mother. As you remain faithful to your vows in your sorrow you will be growing rapidly; an accelerated course in holiness that might never have happened if family life had gone on as usual.
God does not will the evil - but he DOES want to bring good out of the evil. He is able and he is willing as you remain faithful. Don't use this rejection as an excuse to go looking for porn on the internet and being impure. Walk in the direction of purity and when you begin to live it - then remain pure. You will teach your sons a great deal about what it means to be a man, a husband, a provider, a father, by the way you decide to let your heart change in the midst of this tragedy.
Pray for Dave. And pray for the other family who just lost their husband and father because he decided he would no longer live out the lifetime vows he took.
Can you guess the faith of both families?
Catholic.
At least it looked that way to those who sat beside them the last time they went to mass together.
