Desire to become priest but

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Hi Everyone, I have felt drawn to the religious life for about two years now. I am going to be a sophomore in high school this year. I have found a spiritual director who is a great guy and family friend, a Benedictine monk. I know he will give me guidance once we start to have regular spiritual discussions.

However, I feel like I may be a little unworthy to become a priest. Obviously, we are all unworthy since we have sinned against God, but his great love and mercy allows us to serve Him while we are on earth. So anyways, one of the main reasons why I feel unworthy is because of my prayer life. I try to pray throughout the day, and say little lines likes “Praise Jesus” and keep Him in the back of my head always, but I feel like I leave out somethings in my days like the Rosary, Divine Office… I think I could do better. Is this something I should talk to with my spiritual director once we start to meet? Thank you for reading this! God bless!
 
of course talk to your spiritual director, but we all have problems every now and then, the key is to stay on the Journey

we are in a shortage of priests, if you are able to take on the task and have a calling, by all means I encourage you and support you - we all have our struggles but we keep on going and do more - its all part of the Journey

Deus Tecum
 
I would bring it up, along with any other questions or concerns you have. It’s great you are so young and even considering it! If Christ is not calling you to the Priesthood or religious life you will discern out. Just have faith. If Christ is calling you and you are open to His call, it’ll happen. And as for feeling unworthy that’s a good sign because it shows humility. Christ always takes the least among His sheep. He made Peter, least of the Apostles, and made Him first among the Apostles building His entire earthly authority and physical Church on him. And don’t worry about not having a solid prayer life yet. You can work on that with your director. It will come in time. I will pray for your discernment as I too am discerning the Priesthood right now. God Bless! 👍
 
I don’t think you have anything to worry about at this point. We all have room for improvement in our daily prayer life. Mine was utterly empty until a couple of years ago. All the priests at my parish make a very strong point of preaching about how important it is to have a daily prayer life. Very few priests do this, and I appreciate it greatly. The message finally sank in for me and I purchased a copy of Christian Prayer. I make an effort to pray at least once per day, I resolved to pray twice a day but it is so hard for me still to meet that goal. I am learning that participating in the Mass once a week is not enough! Every day must have some time set aside for our personal, intimate relationship with God.

I am glad you recognize this in yourself and I am glad you are resolved to improve it. I am also glad you have already selected a spiritual director! I think you will make a fine priest and I greatly encourage you in your vocation. Do me a favor, and also consider if you will join the Knights of Columbus when you come of age. I guarantee that it will make you a better Catholic, it will help in your discernment and formation, and will support you firmly after your ordination.
 
Yes, you should discuss this once you get into formal spiritual direction and discernment.

In the meantime, it might help you to structure your day so that you have blocked out time for prayer. You’re writing this from a computer, obviously, that probably has a calendar and alarm function.

Prayer is, after all, a form of communication with God. It’s like any other relationship. In order to maintain any sort of relationship, we have to communicate. If we value a relationship, we make the time and we take the effort to communicate. Remember, as a young person and as a lay person at this time, you’re not bound to do any specific prayer at any specific frequency. It’s a great idea to pray daily, for the same reason as it’s a great idea to eat daily. In other words, it’s for our spiritual health. So take it easy and don’t overwhelm yourself with a tremendous number of devotions that you can’t maintain over the long haul. Select a couple, and stick with them. It’s consistency rather than quantity when you’re starting out in your spiritual life. You can always add on later as the spirit moves you.

Use your technology to schedule specific devotional times that work with your schedule. If you have a smart phone, you can sync the phone with the computer and set an alarm for whatever times you’ve determined that you can pray for even ten or fifteen minutes.

There is an app for smart phones called iBreviary. It’s free… It has the daily Mass readings as well as the Liturgy of the Hours. It works on Mac systems, Blackberry, and Android. My own spiritual director, a seventy year old Jesuit priest who is something of a “techie,” saw it and liked it a lot. The only complaint about it is it consumes a lot of data, so I wouldn’t use it unless you have a huge data plan. The other thing about it is it WILL kill your battery if you don’t remember to close out completely after each use. I can even think of something spiritually oriented with that issue, though: Isn’t it amazing that we have such a rich prayer tradition that it will drain a phone battery? Silly, maybe. But thought-provoking.
 
Thank you very much for all the responses. I will talk to my spiritual director about it!
 
Sometimes I wish I had more humility though… I feel like at one time, I had a lot of it. Now, I am not so sure.
 
pgnat1 said:
Hi Everyone, I have felt drawn to the religious life for about two years now. I am going to be a sophomore in high school this year. I have found a spiritual director who is a great guy and family friend, a Benedictine monk. I know he will give me guidance once we start to have regular spiritual discussions.

However, I feel like I may be a little unworthy to become a priest. Obviously, we are all unworthy since we have sinned against God, but his great love and mercy allows us to serve Him while we are on earth. So anyways, one of the main reasons why I feel unworthy is because of my prayer life. I try to pray throughout the day, and say little lines likes “Praise Jesus” and keep Him in the back of my head always, but I feel like I leave out somethings in my days like the Rosary, Divine Office… I think I could do better. Is this something I should talk to with my spiritual director once we start to meet? Thank you for reading this! God bless!
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Pray when you feel led to pray. There is no set formula for how often to pray or what to pray. I don’t like the Hail Mary Prayer and use the St. Michael Prayer. As you grow older you will be more comfortable with what to pray and when to pray. Just take your religious life one day at a time. Good Luck with whatever you decide. And don’t worry too much.
 
What an inspiration you are to me, worrying about your prayer life at your age. The responses you received are also so kind and encouraging. I urge you to follow the advice you received fom these responses, to always stay patient and wait on God’s plan for you to unfold.
 
pgnat1 said:
Hi Everyone, I have felt drawn to the religious life for about two years now. I am going to be a sophomore in high school this year. I have found a spiritual director who is a great guy and family friend, a Benedictine monk. I know he will give me guidance once we start to have regular spiritual discussions.

However, I feel like I may be a little unworthy to become a priest. Obviously, we are all unworthy since we have sinned against God, but his great love and mercy allows us to serve Him while we are on earth. So anyways, one of the main reasons why I feel unworthy is because of my prayer life. I try to pray throughout the day, and say little lines likes “Praise Jesus” and keep Him in the back of my head always, but I feel like I leave out somethings in my days like the Rosary, Divine Office… I think I could do better. Is this something I should talk to with my spiritual director once we start to meet? Thank you for reading this! God bless!
Click to expand...
Isn’t it amazing? That no matter how badly we offend God… He still calls us to follow Him?

I’m the exact same way. How do I deserve to feel such a great call to be a religious sister when I’ve messed up so many times? I don’t understand it… but I love it.

I’ll just leave you with a quote to maybe put a few things in perspective:

“God has not called me to be successful.
He’s called me to be faithful.” - Mother Teresa

I’ll definitely be praying for you during this time =]
 
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