My impatience I suppose it was is bothering me. I just can’t fathom living the next 30 years without her converting. She will not convert until her grandma and mother die. That’s the sad fact. They influence her more than I ever could. If she converted our marriage would be so much more blessed and would be scaramental. My wife was never baptised. She isn’t even a protestant. She’s Christian Scientist which is not Christian and not Science. It’s, in my opinon, satanic.
I at least want her to get baptised!
Oh, heavens, nobody can be in any kind of marriage for 30 years. 30 years of a honeymoon, even…it would kill you.
Nope, you have to take it one day at a time. You can do many things for a day that you could never manage for a lifetime.
This is not a choice. It is a tempation. Satan is attacking your wife, Satan is attacking you, and Satan is attacking your marriage, using Satan’s favorite weapon: Lies. You are being tempted to believe that your wife will never convert, that you cannot endure this trial, that you may as well throw in the towel, because with the mother and grandmother in the picture, you just can’t win.
You are being told that she belongs to Satan, and that you should just give in to that, because you can’t win, and what God can do doesn’t count. What is satanic is the Evil One telling you that you should give up because
God can’t win your wife.
The Evil One hates fidelity, hates sacrificial love, hates the call of God within the Church and is furious when that call extends past the boundaries of the Church. The Evil One wants to enslave us to following our own preferences, by confusing us on the difference between preference and need. We need God. We can choose to prefer what God prefers. Our own passions don’t have to own us.
Listen to St. Paul:
“As for the other matters, although I know of nothing the Lord has said, I say: If any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever but is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her…the unbelieving wife is consecrated by her believing husband…Wife how do you know that you will not save your husband; or you, husband, that you will not save your wife?” from 1 Cor. 7: 12-16. How specific can Holy Scriptures possibly get?
This is what the Catechism says about disparity of cult:
1637 In marriages with disparity of cult the Catholic spouse has a particular task: “For the unbelieving husband is consecrated through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is consecrated through her husband.” (1 Cor 7:14) It is a great joy for the Christian spouse and for the Church if this “consecration” should lead to the free conversion of the other spouse to the Christian faith.(Cf. 1 Cor 7:16) Sincere married love, the humble and patient practice of the family virtues, and perseverance in prayer can prepare the non-believing spouse to accept the grace of conversion.
You’ll notice the Church does not teach that verbal preaching is the primary means by which non-Catholic spouses are converted. Life is what is important. My experience is that the best preaching is to be joyful in your own faith…think how Elisabeth Leseur impressed her husband, not by her apologetics, which she had to abandon as futile, but by how she lived, no matter what suffering she had to endure. God used her ongoing conversion to win the husband over in the end. The husband hated God, but he could not but love his wife, because of how she loved him. He had to stop assaulting God, because of how she loved God. After she died, the desire of her heart was granted. Our own conversion is what God put in our hands, within the reach of our cooperation. We must start there…and He can use that.
And if your wife dies first? The Church teaches that we may despair of no soul, as God may have ways unknown to us of saving anyone. We must not despair even of those who seemed to have died in hatred of God. We never know, not in any particular case.
Jesus Christ thirsts for your wife, far more than you do. Join your thirst with His thirst, and learn about how much He loves you. Cherish and nourish that marriage of yours as if your life depends on it.
