No, it can be. Right now I see my singleness as a temporary vocation (because I am not dating, but would if I met the right person). It is temporary because it could change when I meet the right person, or it may not change.
Singleness can always change (if the person hasn’t entered the religious life), but being realistic here – when you’re way past a certain age, have never been married, and don’t look particularly good, how likely is it change? There are ten worlds of difference between being single, 25, and cute, and single, old, and not-cute. The young single person is far more likely to marry than the old single person.
I think we should live our lives everyday as it has been given to us, playing with the hand we are dealt. My attitude is (and I am still young, but discerning alot of possibilities) is to let my life play out and see what happens. Right now there are no real good possibilites for dating in my life, but if I meet the right person I will know it. Maybe God will call me to the religious life, or maybe marriage will happen after I finish school and am in a position to support a family. God knows.Singleness can always change (if the person hasn’t entered the religious life), but being realistic here – when you’re way past a certain age, have never been married, and don’t look particularly good, how likely is it change? There are ten worlds of difference between being single, 25, and cute, and single, old, and not-cute. The young single person is far more likely to marry than the old single person.
We can remain open to marriage until the day we die, but the fact is, it isn’t going to happen for all of us, and how long do you keep trying to put your life on hold or trying to insert yourself (ridiculously) into the “dating game”? Eventually, it becomes more productive to simply live the life you have been (apparently) given. Being open to something doesn’t mean it will ever happen.
In reading this entire topic, I almost have to chuckle at the 20 and 30 year olds who are throwing in the towel already. You’re all so young! You’ve got a chance yet. Just wait til you hit 50–then you’ll really have reason to give it up! (I suppose all you 80-year-old singles are chuckling at me now!)
You hit the nail right on the head. When the odds are so poor, maybe it’s just better to accept “single” as your vocation. We’re not officially “off the market”, but it becomes rather silly to make a full-time job of putting yourself “on the market”. Am I supposed to spend my very limited free time at singles dances, hoping against all odds that the men there will pass up all the cute young things to look at me? (keeping in mind that “physical chemistry” is code talk for “she has to look good”). Sorry, but I’m just not interested in frittering my life away playing those games anymore. My mom was widowed a year and a half ago and has no desire to remarry. She feels that singleness is her place in life now. I think there is nothing wrong with how you feel. There is nothing wrong with being single!
Another very good point! And of the “older” men I know who have never married, or who have annulments, and who otherwise might be very “eligible”, they have a funny way of ending up in the seminary.
And I certainly wouldn’t want to interfere with that vocation. This makes me really wonder what the true nature of humanity (human sexuality) as God intended really is. God created man and woman to become one flesh… and yet, eschatologically, we are to be as the angels in heaven? Why this two-step process… these two ways of being?
At first, that is a depressing thought…
Put another 15-20 years on you, and you’d be perfect! (as long as you’re not looking to have biological kids
)He may have been wise, but he was wrong. There is such a thing as the call to the single life. Singlehood is just as valid a calling as Holy Orders, religious life, marriage. It isn’t just ‘you aren’t good for anything else, therefore, you stay unmarried!’
as a way of ensuring that I DID follow His Call and Will for me.I couldn’t agree you more.
Very true!
My impression, correct me if mistaken, is that most spiritual directors have discerned vocations to the single state.
Was he wrong? Or maybe more discerning than others?
Dear Michael…The Church recognizes the single state clearly as a vocation and call from God and a valid state in life spritually and hence theologically. The priest in question while not questioning at all his holiness and wisdom over time…is transcended by the holiness and wisdom of The Church.
Dear Michael, of course the married state is no impediment to doing good and much good. The single vocation is experienced as a call from God - to remain single. In my particular case for example my health precludes me from the religious state and I feel no call nor desire to marry, rather under private vows to devote myself to the single state and a particular way of life I could not (in all probability) live out if I was married or in religious life. Other than this, the fact remains that I feel no call to either the married state or the religious state as currently defined, rather to remain single and committed to my current lifestyle.