When I ask people if they’ve ever thought about religious
life, I get a lot of questions. Some of them are more explicit than others. Probably the most common one is, “Why me?” This is usually meant in
two senses: 1) “Why would God call me to
religious life? 2) “WHY GOD?! WHY DID YOU SIC JOE ON ME?!”
I hope to answer these questions in the course of this blog
post.
First, “Why you?” If you want to get to the root of that
problem, take it up with God. But why would I suggest it to you? For a long time, I couldn’t
put my finger on exactly what it was. I thought maybe just as Padre Pio gave off the odor of sanctity, maybe people with vocations gave off an odor too. I also wondered if maybe it was just a sixth spiritual sense that starting tingling in the presence of someone who was priest or nun material. (To my credit, I was usually fairly accurate.) But after years of taking my bets on the
future seminarians of America, I think I’ve identified what it is and it's very simple: I sense that there’s a deeper than ordinary love of God stirring in
your heart.
Now, the second question you’re probably wondering is, “Why
is this vocational stalker writing to me?” Well, a few reasons. First, I know
that more often than not, there’s more stirring in your heart than you’re
willing to publicly admit. Congratulations, you don’t have to admit anything to
anybody in the course of reading this blog post. No vocations director is going
to pop out of your computer screen, a screen shot will not be published in your
school newspaper for your girlfriend to see, nor will strange men dressed in
pantaloons and armed with halberds be appearing at your door any time soon to
escort you to the seminary. (If you’re thinking about becoming a nun, transpose
that last sentence to match your gender.) Rest easy, the social pressures of
discerning a vocation do not apply here.
Second, if you are thinking
about the priesthood or religious life, I know it’s not an easy process. I know
it can be confusing, isolating, intimidating, and also exciting, joy-filled and
mysterious. I’ve been there for ten years (not all by choice either.)
So why am I writing? If you’re not discerning a vocation, I hope it will help shed some light on
how ordinary people turn into priests and nuns. If you are discerning a vocation, I hope to let you know that you’re not
crazy, you’re not alone, and that you’re embarking on a greater adventure than
you’ve ever known, filled with joy the likes of which you can only imagine.
So if I’ve nagged you about a vocation (even if I haven’t,
I’m praying for a lot more of you than I’ve nagged) and it’s crossed your mind
at least once, here are some thoughts that I hope will help you discern.
Thought One:
It’s A Lot Simpler than You Think
When people say they’re discerning a
religious vocation, it’s interesting to see what they mean by it. For a lot of
people, discerning a vocation is like doing astrology. They think their destiny
is written in the stars. If they carefully chart the alignment of patterns,
events, and strange coincidences in their life, they will be able to unlock
God’s great master plan for their life. If they're lucky, a voice will eventually boom down from Heaven and give them specific instructions, but if they do their job right now, they should be able to track the invisible hand of God well before then. Thus when the planets are clearly aligned, they will know for certain whether they are being called to
the chaste single life, married life, or religious life. How do I know this goes on? I was one of them.
One thing I had right was that this
call to religious life didn’t come from me. It wasn’t like any ordinary career
where my choice to become say a lawyer was based purely on my likes and
dislikes. (And a lawyer would be to my tastes: I'm naturally stubborn, inclined to argument, I like money, I like splitting hairs, etc.) But in discerning a vocation, God was drawing me towards
things that instinctively I shrunk away from. It’s not natural for humans to desire poverty and it certainly wasn’t natural for me to want to submit my will to a religious superior. But that’s exactly
what was happening. This was all clearly supernatural, none of it was coming from me, which meant that God was up to something. I figured that if God was at the wheel, all I had to do was unlock that great master plan of His and follow the instructions from there.
Ten years of discerning a vocation
have made me think there’s a little more nuance to it than that. What I’ve come
to realize is that the call for everyone (single, married or religious) is the
same: they are all called to love God. No matter how your vocational planets
align, the fundamental call doesn’t change. That call is lived out within the
context of each vocation. A married couple, for instance, lives out the call to
love God by working hard for their families, being examples of Christian virtue
for their children, passing the joys of the faith onto their kids, and loving
their spouse the way Christ loves His Church. A single person likewise lives
out their vocation to love God by being Christ to the people they work with,
giving of their time to volunteering, being examples of faith to their nieces
and nephews, etc.
What distinguishes a religious
vocation from single or married life is the way in which the
religious falls in love with God. A person who desires religious life has
fallen in love with God so deeply that it’s become all consuming. If they are
to adequately the love which they have for God, it means giving everything. I’ll
give you some examples from my own life. Every Catholic should have a deep love
of the Eucharist; after all, the Eucharist is Christ Himself. What I discovered
as a freshman in high school was that love of the Eucharist had so consumed me
that if I was honest with myself (and I wasn’t always) I wanted nothing else. I
felt Christ’s love and joy burning in my heart when I came into His presence. I
wanted to return love for love but the only way I could do that was to give my
life for Him present there, standing at the altar, bringing others to same love
and joy that I had known.
Every Catholic is called to be
generous, but Christ’s love had so taken me over that I wanted to be free to
give everything. I wanted to be poor so that I could say I had given
everything: nothing was my own, all was given out of love.
Every Catholic is called to spread the
faith, but this joy I had come to know in Christ was so strong that passing the
faith onto my immediate family wasn’t enough: I wanted to be free to go the far
corners of the world to tell others about the joy I had found.
I realized this when I was a senior in high school. I had been discerning a vocation for three or four years at that point, depending on how you count it. I’d only had the nickname “Pope Joe” for two. Like a normal high school kid, I met a girl and fell head over heels for her. I was so happy being around her and I started to wonder if I couldn’t have my cake and eat it too. Sure, Christ meant a lot to me, but wasn’t that the call of every Christian? Couldn’t I live out my faith as a married man too? I decided to pursue the relationship and I quickly discovered something: my heart was divided. My every thought was about Christ, my free time was spent before the Blessed Sacrament, and when I tried to give my heart in a special way to this girl, I realized it was claimed. I couldn’t do it. Set aside the mystical calculus (we can talk about the spiritual events that went with this later), I had fallen in love with God enough that I wanted nothing more than to respond to that love by leaving everything and having only Him.
For those you who were wondering why, "I'm in a relationship" didn't convince me you weren't discerning, that's why.
For those you who were wondering why, "I'm in a relationship" didn't convince me you weren't discerning, that's why.
A religious vocation is about falling
in love with God in a singular way. That means a vocation is not static, your
destiny is not written in the stars, your freely chosen actions are always a factor. God is stirring in your heart and it is
your choice how to respond to it. If you choose to allow yourself to fall more
deeply in love with Him, you may find yourself desiring to return that love in
a deeper way, desiring to abandon everything and follow Him. You can choose not
to of course and God will still work with you, but you would have missed a very
beautiful way of life.
This means discerning a vocation is a
lot simpler than the Catholic astrology I know many of you were attempting to
do. You know what God’s call is for you right here and right now: to love Him
with your whole heart. Live that out now. Find ways to respond to His
love, to live out your faith. Pray more, dig in and learn about your faith, do service even when it stretches you, learn to love the people in your life with a more Christ-like love. Return love for love now and in time you just might find that the only
adequate expression of that love is in giving all to Him: to be poor, chaste
and obedient for Him.
Does this mean you don’t have to discern? Not at all. But the question you have to discern is much simpler: 1) Will I allow myself to fall in love with God and respond to that love without holding back? 2) Is my desire for religious life truly grounded in love of God? Ideally the answer to both questions would be yes. If it's not, that doesn't mean that you don't have a vocation, just that you may not be going into it for the right reasons. Take a step back, do some internal housekeeping, and then you can see. But if your answer to both questions is yes, let nothing hold you back. God is waiting for you and all you have to do is run to Him.
Thus concludes part one of my letter. Stay tuned. The real adventure begins with the next post.
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