Mike Smith:
Dr. Veith, let’s talk about a few specific vocations that probably apply to our listeners. Can you explain how marriage is a vocation?

Dr. Gene Edward Veith:
Well, marriage is the only vocation where we only have one neighbor that we’re to love and serve! For a husband, in marriage, his calling is to love and serve his wife. And her calling in marriage is to love and serve her husband.

And Scripture talks about this in so many ways! In Ephesians 5, it talks about, for one thing, how Christ is present in marriage. And, again, in all vocations, God is active in all of these callings. In Ephesians 5, wives are told to love their husbands, to submit to their husbands, as the Church does to Christ. That’s how they’re loving and serving their husbands.

Husbands are told to love and serve their wives by, as it says in Ephesians, “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her.”

So in that pattern, in the different ways, in the different roles, it’s a pattern of loving and serving the person you’re married to. And, in a way, that sums up everything about marriage. And also Christ is in marriage, as another vocation, and the more we live out our calling, I think the more we’ll see that Christ is at work in marriage.

Mike:
Thank you, Dr. Veith—that concept of mutual love and service could really make a difference in how husbands and wives fulfill their callings within marriage. And until next time, I’m Mike Smith.