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DL82
Guest
When I am most aware of God’s calling in my life, I get this tremendous sense of ambition, but not towards God’s call. It feels, suddenly, like I could do anything with my life. Like I could still go into politics and make a huge difference, like I could go off travelling and have a life of adventure helping people wherever the need was greatest, like I could make a massive contribution to academic knowledge, like I could still be a wonderful husband and father…
I know when I was engaged, I felt this way and it drove my fiancee mad, it was like I wanted to do everything, everything except just be there for her, which eventually drove her away.
The same is true now, now that I’m starting to explore again whether I might be called to religious life. My abilities and talents seem so much more real, and I feel really thankful for them. I start to feel like it would be a waste of all these talents just to go and cook and clean for a group of hermit priests (considering vocation with Carthusian lay brothers). It feels like I could do anything, and all of these things would be so commendable. Yet I still know, deep down, that I’m being called to offer them all up.
All the same, I could offer up my mind by using it to study for God’s greater glory, or I could offer it up by employing myself in manual labour instead. I could offer up my desire for marriage by marrying, or I could offer it up by choosing to serve those who are married to God’s holy Church. Is there such a thing as a sacrifice too far? What’s the difference between enclosed religious life and the man who hid his talent in the ground?
Maybe this is why so many of the people I know who pursued religious vocations and left (my faculty is full of them for some reason!) seem to have lived such active and passionate and creatively apostolic lives after they left seminary/novitiate.
Anyway, is this renewed sense of optimism and ambition a temptation to be resisted, or should I allow it to influence my thinking?
I know when I was engaged, I felt this way and it drove my fiancee mad, it was like I wanted to do everything, everything except just be there for her, which eventually drove her away.
The same is true now, now that I’m starting to explore again whether I might be called to religious life. My abilities and talents seem so much more real, and I feel really thankful for them. I start to feel like it would be a waste of all these talents just to go and cook and clean for a group of hermit priests (considering vocation with Carthusian lay brothers). It feels like I could do anything, and all of these things would be so commendable. Yet I still know, deep down, that I’m being called to offer them all up.
All the same, I could offer up my mind by using it to study for God’s greater glory, or I could offer it up by employing myself in manual labour instead. I could offer up my desire for marriage by marrying, or I could offer it up by choosing to serve those who are married to God’s holy Church. Is there such a thing as a sacrifice too far? What’s the difference between enclosed religious life and the man who hid his talent in the ground?
Maybe this is why so many of the people I know who pursued religious vocations and left (my faculty is full of them for some reason!) seem to have lived such active and passionate and creatively apostolic lives after they left seminary/novitiate.
Anyway, is this renewed sense of optimism and ambition a temptation to be resisted, or should I allow it to influence my thinking?
