"that I may become as holy as I should"

That others become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should:

Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

- Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val (HT to Heather King)

As holy as I should. Aye, there's the rub. I want the sacraments, and prayer, and the companionship of people who don't talk as if Christianity is either the social obligation imposed on them by their parents or wives, or else the troubling, retrograde remnant of the slow death of ignorance and superstition. I want to join hands with men who are trying to be saints. I want to know what they know, see what they see. I want to feel, or at least allow myself to live as if I feel, the presence of Jesus. I want to be better. I want to say grace before I eat. I want my children to hear me thank God for them.

I want. I want. And it's easy to find voices that tell me that this is what God wants, too.

But because my wife's voice isn't among them, there is a cost... to what I want.

If it was just a matter of me paying it-- setting myself to patiently endure insult, silent treatments, the cold shoulder, constant badgering about how can I be so wrong-- I believe I could take it. But there's more cost to be borne, and others would have to bear it.

Because that's not the person my wife wants to be. She doesn't want to be argumentative and shrewish. It's not really her nature. But it is her nature to stand up for the downtrodden. And when I become one of the treaders-down-- of gays who want legitimization of their lifestyle, of women who want free access to birth control or abortion-- well, woe be unto me. Or if not woe-- and we're almost past that stage, we've had this argument so many times-- then indifference. Coldness. The slow death of love. She learns not to care what the Neanderthal on the other side of the bed thinks; I learn not to tell her.

So she pays that price: You thought your were making a life with someone who was on your side? Who basically agreed with your worldview? Sorry, that's not going to work out exactly-- I've changed. I've found Jesus and he is my priority.


And then maybe we live together as strangers for the sake of the children. Or maybe we part ways. Either way, do the children benefit? If our home turns into a cold and bitter place because sometime in middle age I finally decided to stand up for my "principles"-- is that really better for them than if I had somehow convinced myself that I really didn't believe all that old dogma, and gave their mother (and thus them) as joyful a temporal life as I possibly could? Do my kids have to be the children of divorce, or something worse, for me to get what I want "spiritually"? Surely that would be the worst sort of Pharisaism?

Really-- all I have to do is continue to convincingly state that the liberal side of the culture war is the right side, and that Christians should be polite and shut up about their religion.

It ought to be easy. I could just be humble. I could be content to silently watch and pray for the Church and for my family. I could wait and see.

I think I have to. In spite of what I want.