D
DL82
Guest
I was thinking about this yesterday, and it occurred to me that our vocation is a much more individual thing than I had previously thought.
A vocation to the priesthood or to marriage is not something that happens at one moment or another, though some people may feel very sure of it from one particular moment, that’s why the Church teaches that nobody has a vocation until the Church confirms it with a vow. Also, that vow is not primarily an end but a beginning. It is a strengthening - God gives us a particular grace to live out: for a married person, the grace of growing in love together with their wife, strengthening eachother in Christian life, and raising children; for a deacon, the grace of proclaiming the word and serving the community; for a priest, the grace of being God’s channel for the sacraments; and for a bishop the grace of governing the Church in wisdom. It is a sacrifice in as far as it is the gift of the whole person. While that gift of grace comes with a limitation, a married man cannot become a priest and cannot marry anyone else, a priest cannot marry or have a secular job, etc. the limitation is just to help us to live out that strength we have been given by God.
A vow is a beginning, not an end. While someone may joke that their life is at an end now they have married, we would be worried if they really saw things that way! Until now, I was looking at the priesthood in exactly that way.
The religious life is different, it seems to me, which is why it is not a sacrament. In the sacraments of marriage and orders, God takes the initiative, in religious vows, it is the religious who is offering to God, in thanksgiving, his whole life, to live more closely the values of the gospel. In a sense, the religious life is the ‘end’ of someone’s life for self, as they can say with St Paul “no longer I who live, but Christ in me”. The sacrifice is the first thing, though it is still always accompanied by a strengthening, because God always desires to be more generous. Perhaps that is one reason the Church no longer consecrates ‘lay brothers’ in the way they existed before Vatican II, i.e. religious brothers whose only job is to do manual labour in the service of the priest brothers - every individual deserves a vocation in his or her own right. All the same, at their profession, a religious is not at the ‘end’ of their life, after which they are just a drone, but at the beginning of a specific, individual mission from God.
In this sense, a single man who is developing his career prospects and becoming a gentleman of faith is living out his vocation just as much as he will after he is married. A young woman who is deeply involved in the life of her parish is living out her vocation just as much as she will after she has found a religious community and made solemn vows. Neither can say that they ‘have’ their vocation already, nor can they say that they haven’t found their vocation yet.
In the same way, Our Lord himself came into the world to die for our sins, but lived out His vocation just as certainly while working as a carpenter, when travelling and preaching, and on the Cross. Only in the hours of His passion and death was His vocation as redeemer consummated, as the married/priestly/religious vocations are in a vow, but in that consummation He became the fountain of these sacramental gifts for us. In the same way, the parable of the builders of a tower is a good analogy for vocation. We may have an idea for a tower, but not the resources yet. We can try to accumulate those resources with a life lived in holiness in our current state of life, but at some stage it may become clear that the tower will have to be different from the one we imagined. In the current economic climate, there are a lot of real-life towers which are waiting for the appropriate resources, and the smart builders are the ones who are waiting until they have all the capital secure, because they will build at the right time, and not the ones who start building, because the whole building may be ruined if they have to stop for years before the roof has been finished and the outer walls secured against theft and weather damage. In the same way, when Jesus didn’t go up to the festival in the first year of His ministry, He lived out His vocation, when the Holy Family fled from the slaughter of Herod, they lived out their vocations, only in the garden at Gethsemani was Our Lord able to reckon up the resources to face His final end and purpose.
The vow (sacramental or otherwise) is a powerful, decisive moment, the confirmation by God, in a way that will carry us our whole life through, that we are on the right path to serve Him, but is neither the beginning nor the end of discerning and living out our vocation, and it’s not cowardice to say ‘I don’t yet know how this will end, but I want it to go the way God wants.’
What do you think of this account of things? Have I misunderstood.
A vocation to the priesthood or to marriage is not something that happens at one moment or another, though some people may feel very sure of it from one particular moment, that’s why the Church teaches that nobody has a vocation until the Church confirms it with a vow. Also, that vow is not primarily an end but a beginning. It is a strengthening - God gives us a particular grace to live out: for a married person, the grace of growing in love together with their wife, strengthening eachother in Christian life, and raising children; for a deacon, the grace of proclaiming the word and serving the community; for a priest, the grace of being God’s channel for the sacraments; and for a bishop the grace of governing the Church in wisdom. It is a sacrifice in as far as it is the gift of the whole person. While that gift of grace comes with a limitation, a married man cannot become a priest and cannot marry anyone else, a priest cannot marry or have a secular job, etc. the limitation is just to help us to live out that strength we have been given by God.
A vow is a beginning, not an end. While someone may joke that their life is at an end now they have married, we would be worried if they really saw things that way! Until now, I was looking at the priesthood in exactly that way.
The religious life is different, it seems to me, which is why it is not a sacrament. In the sacraments of marriage and orders, God takes the initiative, in religious vows, it is the religious who is offering to God, in thanksgiving, his whole life, to live more closely the values of the gospel. In a sense, the religious life is the ‘end’ of someone’s life for self, as they can say with St Paul “no longer I who live, but Christ in me”. The sacrifice is the first thing, though it is still always accompanied by a strengthening, because God always desires to be more generous. Perhaps that is one reason the Church no longer consecrates ‘lay brothers’ in the way they existed before Vatican II, i.e. religious brothers whose only job is to do manual labour in the service of the priest brothers - every individual deserves a vocation in his or her own right. All the same, at their profession, a religious is not at the ‘end’ of their life, after which they are just a drone, but at the beginning of a specific, individual mission from God.
In this sense, a single man who is developing his career prospects and becoming a gentleman of faith is living out his vocation just as much as he will after he is married. A young woman who is deeply involved in the life of her parish is living out her vocation just as much as she will after she has found a religious community and made solemn vows. Neither can say that they ‘have’ their vocation already, nor can they say that they haven’t found their vocation yet.
In the same way, Our Lord himself came into the world to die for our sins, but lived out His vocation just as certainly while working as a carpenter, when travelling and preaching, and on the Cross. Only in the hours of His passion and death was His vocation as redeemer consummated, as the married/priestly/religious vocations are in a vow, but in that consummation He became the fountain of these sacramental gifts for us. In the same way, the parable of the builders of a tower is a good analogy for vocation. We may have an idea for a tower, but not the resources yet. We can try to accumulate those resources with a life lived in holiness in our current state of life, but at some stage it may become clear that the tower will have to be different from the one we imagined. In the current economic climate, there are a lot of real-life towers which are waiting for the appropriate resources, and the smart builders are the ones who are waiting until they have all the capital secure, because they will build at the right time, and not the ones who start building, because the whole building may be ruined if they have to stop for years before the roof has been finished and the outer walls secured against theft and weather damage. In the same way, when Jesus didn’t go up to the festival in the first year of His ministry, He lived out His vocation, when the Holy Family fled from the slaughter of Herod, they lived out their vocations, only in the garden at Gethsemani was Our Lord able to reckon up the resources to face His final end and purpose.
The vow (sacramental or otherwise) is a powerful, decisive moment, the confirmation by God, in a way that will carry us our whole life through, that we are on the right path to serve Him, but is neither the beginning nor the end of discerning and living out our vocation, and it’s not cowardice to say ‘I don’t yet know how this will end, but I want it to go the way God wants.’
What do you think of this account of things? Have I misunderstood.