This story from Aleteia has the scoop:
A married man who answers the call to become a permanent deacon now has a dual vocation – to serve his family and to serve the Church. His wife, of course, is not ordained, but is sacramentally connected to her husband.
When asked if her husband’s vocation was somehow hers as well, Joni Seith gave an enthusiastic, “Yes, absolutely!”
“As a married couple is ‘one,'” she explained, “so too is their service to the Body of Christ.”
Lynn Welte agreed, saying that while she isn’t ordained, she shares her husband’s call in many ways.
She recalled, “I remember at my husband’s ordination one of the older wives either gave me a few dixie cups or told me to bring them to the ordination for my kids. She said it was a great visual for them to ‘catch the graces’ that would be overflowing from my husband to the family. It was a sweet reminder to me.”
But with the graces also comes the cross.
One daughter of a deacon shared that her mother has to sign a document each year expressing that she continues to support her husband in his diaconate ministry.
She admitted, however, that her mother does so reluctantly, because, “She loves that he dedicated his life to the Church and helping people but she hates that he is gone so much from the house — she is disabled and cannot leave the house without his help — helping people.”
One thing is clear: A wife is deeply tied to her husband’s diaconate, in the good and the difficult…
… Lynn says that as a deacon’s wife, she’s often “in the middle of things.” Perhaps parishioners will ask her questions because she is accessible, and her husband sometimes asks her to review his homilies. The kids get involved as well – her teenage daughters serve alongside her as sacristans when her husband assists at daily Mass.
She gets real when she says that “there are also times when it can be a great sacrifice, such as with all the time and energy my husband puts in training altar servers and preparing for Easter and Christmas liturgies.” Balancing that with adult children home for the holidays is something they have to be very intentional about.
“We want our family to have a positive view of the diaconate,” Lynn explains, “however, I will admit there are times when my kids have said, ‘Why did dad have to be a deacon?’ Mostly though it has been a wonderful grace-filled experience.”
