The diaconate is a family vocation. The reflections below are drawn from conversations with wives of permanent deacons, gathered into one voice — the things they say to each other, and wish someone had said to them at the beginning.
When my husband first told me he thought God might be calling him to the diaconate, I said what I imagine most wives say: “That’s wonderful.” And I meant it. What I did not understand was that he was not the only one being called into something. I was too. Nobody ordains the wife — but nobody ordains a married man without her, either. My consent was not a formality. It was the Church asking me, solemnly, whether I would give my husband away to her, a few evenings at a time, for the rest of our lives.
What the Sacrifices Actually Look Like
I wish someone had told me the sacrifices would be small and constant rather than large and dramatic. It is not martyrdom; it is Tuesday. It is formation classes on the nights we used to watch television together. It is the phone ringing during dinner because someone’s father is dying and they want a deacon at the bedside. It is watching him leave early for the parish on Christmas morning while the children wait to open presents — and learning to make that leaving a gift we give together, rather than a debt he owes me.
What the Graces Actually Look Like
I also wish someone had told me about the graces, because they are just as concrete. My husband prays more than he used to, and it has changed him — made him gentler, slower to anger, quicker to apologize. We pray Evening Prayer together now, most nights, and after decades of marriage we have a shared language for God that we never had before. I have watched him baptize our grandchildren. I have heard him preach on the Gospel and known, in ways the congregation could not, exactly how hard-won his words were. There is an intimacy in that which I would not trade.
What I Would Tell a Wife at the Beginning
Go to the formation sessions for wives, even when you are tired — the friendships you make there will carry you. Ask every question, especially the ones that feel disloyal; better now than after ordination. Guard your marriage’s time as fiercely as he guards his ministry’s, and expect him to do the same. And know this: you are allowed to say no, and you are allowed to say yes slowly. A vocation that is real will survive your honesty. In fact, it depends on it.
The diaconate did not take my husband from me. But that is because we learned — slowly, imperfectly, with the Church’s help — to treat his ordination as something that happened to us. The couples who struggle, I have noticed, are usually the ones who thought it happened only to him.