Marriage: Not the "Highest Calling?"

Good afternoon. I am so glad to be back, blogging again. I took quite a long break from this while I was going non-stop in Winter Quarter. Now Spring Break is upon me, and I am back to typing and I am happy. I am hoping to keep up with it better during Spring Quarter. I missed this.

You may think my title a strange one. I suppose it is, but it's something I've been turning over in my mind and heart this past week. This Lent, I've been attending the "Catholicism" series at our parish, and it's a DVD by Fr. Robert Barron. I do highly recommend this. It's excellent. But I digress. Something caught my attention, and I have a feeling that it was the Holy Spirit. I noticed what Mary's vocation was.

Now, I have often heard it said that religious life is the "highest calling." Vocation-wise, I suppose it is. Theologically speaking, I'm sure I learned this in my Seton religion courses. But if the mother of God (and notice in her title, yes, she is a mother), was a wife, then she was called to the vocation of marriage, and bore Jesus to the world.

In her gift to humanity through the work of the Holy Spirit, Mary was living out her calling in life. She wasn't a nun, and she wasn't a single woman. She was a wife and a mother.

I have gone back and forth as far as what I think my vocation is. However, I keep coming back to the same thing: marriage. I've never been married, but I would love to be someday. I would also consider it the highest honor to bring children into the world with my husband and bring all of them with me to Heaven. Just thinking about this makes me feel so unworthy and yet so...called.

We need nuns. We need holy single persons. We also need dedicated wives and mothers, modeled after the mother of all, Mary.

Blessings and peace.