Marriage Vocation: Answering the call to lifelong companionship and fatherhood

By NADIA POZO
CS&T Staff Writer

It was the feast of St. Joseph when William J. Guy Jr. first called Caroline Parker to ask her out. What Bill didn’t know was that she had recently prayed a novena to St. Jude asking that her future husband enter her life.
Thirteen years and five children later, Bill can’t imagine being anything other than a husband and father. But really, his was a slow discernment process.
In his senior year in high school and throughout his freshmen year at Catholic University, Bill began to feel attracted to the priesthood.
“I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a priest, but I was sure I wanted to explore that path,” Bill said of his decision to transfer to St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, from which he graduated cum laude in 1987 with a bachelor of arts degree in Philosophy.
By the time Bill graduated, though, he knew that his true vocation was to marriage.
Inspired by the marriage of his own parents — who will be celebrating their 42nd anniversary this year — Bill longed for a companion with whom to share and raise a family as he had seen them raise their four sons. His parents’ witness to their faith played a crucial role in his desire to be in a loving Catholic marriage, he said.
While working, Bill discovered the Neumann House on 5th Street and Girard Avenue, where young adults gathered to grow in their faith. It was at a Christmas caroling event there that he met Caroline. After his call on the feast of St. Joseph, they dated for a year.
“We broke up, and six months later we got back together,” Bill recalled.
“I did a lot of praying when we got back together, and through prayer I came to the conclusion that God meant for me to be with Caroline. That certainty has never left me,” he said.
The couple married April 27, 1991.Today he can’t imagine his life without her.
“Marriage is a calling from God. God brings you together and that means including God in the marriage. I don’t know how we would have done it without God, our faith and Natural Family Planning [NFP],” he said.
After marriage, Bill and Caroline taught NFP to other couples because they saw how it enriched their marriage.
“It increases communication,” Bill said. “We’ve had some ups and downs but NFP has been a source of adhesiveness for our relationship.”
For Bill, nothing has been more important than his call to fatherhood.
The birth of each of his five children were highlights of his life, along with the other milestones in their lives as they grow up, he said.
“I take personal pride in teaching them how to ride a bike, although I’m getting slower running alongside them,” he said with a wry smile.
“As parents our main goal is to instill in our children our Catholic faith.”
Four of the five children — Billy, 12, Megan 10, Kevin, 8, and Brendan, 6 — go to St. William’s Parish School in North Philadelphia where Bill also cantors, plays the organ and is very involved in the music ministry.
He and Caroline take all five children, including the youngest — two-and-a-half-year-old Matthew — to weekly Mass; they have family prayers, and they try to instill the values of love and respect. The couple hopes their children will be positively influenced, as the Guys were by their own parents’ example.
“My own father has been a role model,” he said.
Increasingly, too, Bill sees God the Father as an inspiration in his own experience as a parent.That’s because he’s more aware of his own pain when his children rebel and disobey him, he said. As a father, he can imagine the pain God experiences, yet Bill knows that God responds with infinite love, which is a strong example for him.
Inspired by his wife’s strength, wisdom and faith, Bill said he makes sure he emphasizes to his children, “Above all else — remember your mother is always right.”
Bill knows his own faith has been enriched by his wife’s example and support, while Caroline knows his love helped her through a very dark personal period.
“Bill has endured the experience of my own mental illness of depression throughout a large part of our marriage,” Caroline said. “Through his love for me I have come to a greater awareness of Christ’s infinite love for me, enough to eradicate this illness completely from my life. The sacredness of our union, and indeed that of all married couples, has the capacity to reveal to the world God’s great love for all.”
Bill recalls what he told his cousin:
“You spend so much time preparing for the wedding day. But keep in perspective that it’s just one day, but marriage is for the rest of your life. You have to start preparing for that.”
Bill knows there is still so much more to experience in his lifelong journey of love and commitment, and he said he looks forward to the adventure.
“I’ve never had any doubt that marriage was God’s intention for me. I continually love my wife and my children more and more.”

Nadia Pozo can be reached at npozo@adphila.org or (215) 965-4614