Feeling Nothing but Dryness

[DL82]

I’m meant to be going to the Salesians for 3 months in about 2 weeks time. I should be happy, they are a great group of guys, are involved in education (I’m writing my PhD in education policy at the moment), are a holy congregation doing obvious social good in London where I’ll be living.

At the same time, all I can feel about it is spiritual dryness. I feel a really strong desire just to be a dad, not for spiritual fatherhood you understand, but to have a wife and kids. I just feel like I have these talents that I’ve denied for so long, or tried to destroy for some unknown reason. I just feel like my talents point me toward being a good leader of the domestic church, a dad who could raise my kids in the way of wisdom, and in need for the constant accountability that comes with a wife. Religious life for me will require a lot of what the Benedictines call the breaking of the will - going hard against the grain of my natural dispositions and talents, but I guess it wouldn’t be a sign of God’s power if it wasn’t done in His strength alone, not according to nature. I know I destroyed my relationship with my fiancee 2 years ago because of unconscious worries that maybe I was being called to priesthood or religious life. At the same time, I just can’t imagine myself as an old man with grandkids, but nor can I imagine myself as an old man living in a retirement home for priests or a religious house, except the Carthusians, and even then I can only imagine myself going out of my mind with grief in the solitude of a Carthusian house.

Honestly, I feel called to the diaconate, but can’t cope with the thought of waiting until I’m an older married man to enter the permanent diaconate program, I want to be the best deacon I can be, and feel that that would best be achieved in religious life. If, after that, my religious superiors think I ought to become a priest, I’ll take their advice on obedience, but I’ve never felt a call to the priesthood.

The doubts are getting so bad that I’m even talking to girls, and thinking of asking them out on dates, even though that would split my discernment and completely shipwreck any objectivity toward the Salesian vocation. I know I ought to give myself to this 100%, but everything in me says that I’m just running away from the joy of married life. It’s a joy I’m willing to sacrifice, but I’ve only just begun to realise that it was even an option in the first place. I almost wish God had just kept me in ignorance of the possibility of a loving and joyful marriage so that I would go to the Salesians happy to have company instead of mourning for what I could have had (but in reality probably never would have). Then again, I guess it’s no sacrifice if you want it.

What I don’t understand is how priests and religious stay so happy. You would almost get the impression that most of them wanted to be priests and religious instead of seeing it as a sacrifice.

I guess I don’t have the advantage of a faithful Catholic upbringing - I wasn’t raised to find joy in sacrifice but in achievement and comfort. Maybe I’m just not ready for any kind of vocation yet.

Does anyone else even know what I’m talking about? I’d really appreciate your advice. How do you get through when there’s nothing but dryness and sadness in your vocation?

 

[the_phoenix]

Father David Reddy grew up in Buffalo, New York surrounded by friends and family, and decided he’d become a diocesan priest … so that he could live out his vocation surrounded by friends and family. You have to understand that Father David loved people, loved to laugh, loved to entertain people with card tricks … Simply put, he was the life of the party.

Now God had other plans for Father David. Under obedience, he was ordered to serve as a missionary priest on Easter Island … which is located smack dab out in the middle of nowhere. Which roughly translates to way, way out in the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles off the coast of Chile. Which meant not only saying good-bye to friends and family, but learning Spanish and going off to live pretty much as an exile … He would for many years find himself the ONLY priest on Easter Island.

Easter Island is so remote that once upon a time Father David witnessed a hero’s welcome being given to a losing soccer team that had gone to the mainland to play a game there. Stunned, the priest asked what all the happy cheering was about since the Easter Island team had lost. The answer came, “This is the first time anyone has left the island … and then returned!”

Father David continued performing card tricks, now in Spanish, as part of his way of introducing himself to islanders and preaching the gospel. He also knew Morse Code and set up a ham radio station to keep in touch with the outside world as well as to help relay emergency messages … (remember, this is well before the internet was invented).

Father David was a long-time friend of my father’s side of the family. Once every several years he was allowed to return to the States to visit. He always seemed like one of the most peaceful, cheerful priests I knew, and with a certain strength besides. Nothing melancholy about Father David that I could ever see.

I would simply suggest being open to the Holy Spirit and seeing where He leads you. "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear: but of power, and of love, and of sobriety. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but labour with the gospel, according to the power of God, 9 Who hath delivered us and called us by his holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the times of the world. " – 2 Timothy 1:9

Another point to keep in mind: Thomas Aquinas would say that grace builds on nature.

So go, enjoy your time of discernment with the Salesians.

And if you find being a Salesian is not your calling, that’s okay too. You are already saying that you feel no call to the priesthood. Maybe your time of discernment will confirm your lack of vocation to the priesthood. In which case, the world can sure use good practicing Catholic dads!

~~ the phoenix

 

[anode]

Although you’re having serious doubts, I think that it would be a good idea for you to *go *and lay this question to rest once and for all. You are going to a very sociable community in which you’ll have a lot of interaction, which you appear to desire. You may simply be having cold feet, but it appears that your doubts may be more serious than that. I think that you should confront them head on, and also feel free to talk about them with the councilors in the community. You don’t want to regret a decision to marry years down the line, nor do you want to regret entering religious life or becoming a priest, and then leaving and trying to pick up your life much later. Most of the posters on the forums appear to be happy to be entering religious life/priesthood. They feel that the rewards outweigh the sacrifice.

A happy life involves sacrifice. You sacrifice for love of your family, regardless of what that family is. Marriage and child-rearing involves enormous sacrifice, for many people much more than religious life would I have been happily married for many years, have wonderful children, a great job and, believe me, it’s the hardest thing I have ever done. Both of you have to give 90% every day of your marriage to make it work. Like religious life, it has to be something that you really want and are willing to sacrifice for.

…as an aside, when will you be able to enter religious life? I note “Tiber Swim Team '08”–you’re a recent convert, right? I thought that a minimum of two years’ wait is required.

 

[Cloisters]

Actually, it’s three years wait now. Used to be two.

What you’re experiencing is one of the reasons why recent converts are asked to wait so long. This is why you need a spiritual director. You sound as if you’re going through the dark night of the soul, and the director would help you keep your focus.

The Holy Ghost works on attraction, but the only way you’re going to know whether or not religious life is for you is to simply try it out. Whatever regrets you have, put them aside. If you can’t, seek counseling to let go of the baggage. You’re a new person now, so follow Christ.

If you are called to marriage, you will know when you meet her. If you have the reaction of, “I gotta have that woman!” you’ve more than likely met her. No matter what happens, no matter how long it takes, if something separates you for 20 or so years, your feelings for her won’t change, and you’d be willing to put up with horrific lonliness to await the day to be with her.

HTH.

Blessings,
Cloisters

 

[DL82]

Actually, it’s three years wait now. Used to be two.

What you’re experiencing is one of the reasons why recent converts are asked to wait so long. This is why you need a spiritual director. You sound as if you’re going through the dark night of the soul, and the director would help you keep your focus.

The Holy Ghost works on attraction, but the only way you’re going to know whether or not religious life is for you is to simply try it out. Whatever regrets you have, put them aside. If you can’t, seek counseling to let go of the baggage. You’re a new person now, so follow Christ.

If you are called to marriage, you will know when you meet her. If you have the reaction of, “I gotta have that woman!” you’ve more than likely met her. No matter what happens, no matter how long it takes, if something separates you for 20 or so years, your feelings for her won’t change, and you’d be willing to put up with horrific lonliness to await the day to be with her.

HTH.

Blessings,
Cloisters

Thanks all,

I think it’s 3 years before you can make vows, postulancy and novitiate can begin earlier. I still have 18 months to run on my PhD anyway, so will be another year after my long visit with the Salesians before I can commit to anything. (That also discourages me from marriage, I’d be nearly 30 before I could even get engaged, that’s late for a marriage in my book.) I have also written to the Carthusians who want me to wait 3 years before I even come to visit, and said that I’d need to be settled on religious life before I even embarked on a visit.

I feel a calling to both marriage and religious life (though not really to the priesthood) equally. I can see how as a faithful religious I could witness in a way that would help married people, and also how as a married man I could raise children for potential vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Objectively, there doesn’t seem to be a way to settle the issue, except attraction and sacrifice - attraction pulls me one way (marriage), but the desire to make my life the most perfect sacrifice it can be to God pulls me the other.

If anything, I feel called to the diaconate more than the priesthood, and that really doesn’t help discernment any, because it’s something I could do either as a married man or as a religious. The difference is, as a religious, the diaconate would be my primary vocation, whereas as a married man, it would be a ‘second’ vocation.

If I’m honest, my only sense of a ‘call’ in my own life is the call of conformity - that when you’re a single Catholic man in your 20’s who goes to daily Mass and daily Rosary, it’s something you ought to consider, and the call of desperation - that the Church is in a vocations crisis and is in need of people to give their lives as priests and religious, and nobody else seems to be responding to that need.

Another side to this is that, when I talk to women I am attracted to, I immediately think they deserve better, and try to talk them into religious life! I went on a first date with a girl a year ago, who was leaving to start a year’s internship, at the end of which she decided to go into religious life, another close female friend, who I see a lot in church, is discerning religious life, and I met another girl recently who I’m really attracted to, she told me she’d thought about religious life when she was younger but couldn’t leave her family, so I suggested she think about diocesan consecrated life, and she said she’d seriously look into it. I feel proud (not in a sinful sense) when I talk this way to women, and when my discernment inspires others, and maybe this sense of pride is stronger than my desire to marry, but maybe I just like talking about it and don’t actually want to do anything about it. I worry now that I’ve told so many people that I’ll disappoint people or just look like a boastful fraud if I ‘come clean’ about not really wanting this vocation.

Also, I’m an academic, with a direct interest in the Church (researching religious education and society) and can’t imagine just being a silent member of the laity. I need obedience to temper my opinions, but a layman has never been a doctor of the Church, and Christifideles Laici doesn’t suggest academic study of spiritual matters as an appropriate part of the lay apostolate. Traditionally, academia was a clerical occupation, and I would rather give up on marriage than give up using my academic skills to make a difference to the Church in the world.

I have a kind of daydream where I’m about 50, married to a beautiful woman, having a great life in a little house in my home town, and someone comes to my door and asks what happened to the religious life, and I just break down in tears.

 

[Cloisters]

Thanks all,

I think it’s 3 years before you can make vows, postulancy and novitiate can begin earlier. I still have 18 months to run on my PhD anyway, so will be another year after my long visit with the Salesians before I can commit to anything. (That also discourages me from marriage, I’d be nearly 30 before I could even get engaged, that’s late for a marriage in my book.) I have also written to the Carthusians who want me to wait 3 years before I even come to visit, and said that I’d need to be settled on religious life before I even embarked on a visit.

I feel a calling to both marriage and religious life (though not really to the priesthood) equally. I can see how as a faithful religious I could witness in a way that would help married people, and also how as a married man I could raise children for potential vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Objectively, there doesn’t seem to be a way to settle the issue, except attraction and sacrifice - attraction pulls me one way (marriage), but the desire to make my life the most perfect sacrifice it can be to God pulls me the other.

If anything, I feel called to the diaconate more than the priesthood, and that really doesn’t help discernment any, because it’s something I could do either as a married man or as a religious. The difference is, as a religious, the diaconate would be my primary vocation, whereas as a married man, it would be a ‘second’ vocation.

If I’m honest, my only sense of a ‘call’ in my own life is the call of conformity - that when you’re a single Catholic man in your 20’s who goes to daily Mass and daily Rosary, it’s something you ought to consider, and the call of desperation - that the Church is in a vocations crisis and is in need of people to give their lives as priests and religious, and nobody else seems to be responding to that need.

Another side to this is that, when I talk to women I am attracted to, I immediately think they deserve better, and try to talk them into religious life! I went on a first date with a girl a year ago, who was leaving to start a year’s internship, at the end of which she decided to go into religious life, another close female friend, who I see a lot in church, is discerning religious life, and I met another girl recently who I’m really attracted to, she told me she’d thought about religious life when she was younger but couldn’t leave her family, so I suggested she think about diocesan consecrated life, and she said she’d seriously look into it. I feel proud (not in a sinful sense) when I talk this way to women, and when my discernment inspires others, and maybe this sense of pride is stronger than my desire to marry, but maybe I just like talking about it and don’t actually want to do anything about it. I worry now that I’ve told so many people that I’ll disappoint people or just look like a boastful fraud if I ‘come clean’ about not really wanting this vocation.

Also, I’m an academic, with a direct interest in the Church (researching religious education and society) and can’t imagine just being a silent member of the laity. I need obedience to temper my opinions, but a layman has never been a doctor of the Church, and Christifideles Laici doesn’t suggest academic study of spiritual matters as an appropriate part of the lay apostolate. Traditionally, academia was a clerical occupation, and I would rather give up on marriage than give up using my academic skills to make a difference to the Church in the world.

I have a kind of daydream where I’m about 50, married to a beautiful woman, having a great life in a little house in my home town, and someone comes to my door and asks what happened to the religious life, and I just break down in tears.

If it were me, I’d concentrate on the academics for the time being, and make sure I got the PhD stuff done right. The ability to keep your focus will say a lot to any future community you may be called to.

If the Holy Ghost works on attraction, and you’re being attracted to marriage, I would suggest the prayer of, “Give me my vocation or give me peace!” God is a gentleman, and never forces Himself on you.

Sure you don’t belong to our Lay Cloisterites? That’s what you sound like you’re doing. The attraction to the young ladies is probably the Holy Ghost working through you to let these girls know about vocations. Here is our SROLC site: cloisters.tripod.com/lay_cloisterites/

HTH.

Blessings,
Cloisters

 

[DL82]

If it were me, I’d concentrate on the academics for the time being, and make sure I got the PhD stuff done right. The ability to keep your focus will say a lot to any future community you may be called to.

If the Holy Ghost works on attraction, and you’re being attracted to marriage, I would suggest the prayer of, “Give me my vocation or give me peace!” God is a gentleman, and never forces Himself on you.

Sure you don’t belong to our Lay Cloisterites? That’s what you sound like you’re doing. The attraction to the young ladies is probably the Holy Ghost working through you to let these girls know about vocations. Here is our SROLC site: cloisters.tripod.com/lay_cloisterites/

HTH.

Blessings,
Cloisters

Thanks again, your posts on vocations are always inspired.

I have finally started praying to be happy in my vocation. I resisted praying for a vocation for a long time, as I didn’t really want God to answer me.

Another friend said he was given some great advice by a priest who said, when you’re really ready for your vocation, pray “Holy Spirit, command me to do Your will”, but be ready for a rollercoaster afterward.

In a way, I think I want this dryness to continue, as I want an excuse not to enter religious life. It’s silly, I know.

 

[baltobetsy]

A very wise spiritual director in Opus Dei (something you should look into for the theology of the laity, BTW) once said that your vocation should give you wings. It should give you a means to accomplish the desires of your heart.

It’s not something you do solely because it’s a sacrifice, as you imply by saying:

What I don’t understand is how priests and religious stay so happy. You would almost get the impression that most of them wanted to be priests and religious instead of seeing it as a sacrifice.

You answer your call from God because He gives you that call knowing what will make you most deeply happy both in this life and in heaven with Him. Until you understand this thoroughly, you should not make any big vocational decisions. Good thing you’re a neophyte, eh?

And really, you should look into Opus Dei. It’s a way of sanctification in daily work that applies equally to people both celibate and married. This may be your way … who knows?

God bless you in your discernment. You are meant for joy!

Betsy

 

[Hidden_One]

Most of my vocational discernment time has (instead) been spent trying to see if God will let me out of the vocation that (I know that) he has called me to.

The rest of that time has been much better spent and much more enjoyed.

I have only prayers for you right now, DL82.

 

[curtisbratcher]

Try to get hold of the Book,“Dark Night of the Soul” by St John of the Cross.
You will discover what spiritual dryness is all about. It can actually be a good thing in your spiritual growth.

 

[Hidden_One]

Try to get hold of the Book,“Dark Night of the Soul” by St John of the Cross.
You will discover what spiritual dryness is all about. It can actually be a good thing in your spiritual growth.

I would strongly advise that no one read the Dark Night until said person has read Ascent of Mount Carmel, by the same author. Dark Night is actually a sequel portion of the Ascent - the two plus stuff that was not written were intended to be one work. Dark Night is one of the most normally misunderstood books on the face of the planet, enough that I would not recommend reading even Ascent lightly… and St. John of the Cross was my Confirmation Saint when I was received into the Church, so it’s not because I don’t appreciate him.

The main issue with reading Dark Night is that it discusses souls (Even at the beginning of the book) more advanced in the service of God and far greater mystics than are often found… read out of context, without Ascent, it really throws off souls… most of which, my own most certainly included, are still ‘stuck’ somewhere within the first 13 or so chapters of Ascent. But that is enough for me to write, for now, at least.

 

[KEVIN_WILCOX]

The hardest thing about the first 50 years of monastic life is the first 50 years. Then it gets a bit tricky.
When you hit a wall keep walking - Or as St. John of the Cross says, to get to the Uncreated we need to leave that which is created.
God is a bed of roses, they have thorns…Or do the thorns have roses?
There is only one vocation… walk with God, it is all gift. Our response recognizes our sinful nature, and our utter dependence on Him. Choose.
Now some people are going to say there are 2 vocations, the other is not to walk with God. Evil is not reality, its the opposite, the absence.
Married state, Salesian priest, Carthusian hermit: THERE IS ONLY ONE VOCATION.

 

[curtisbratcher]

Thank you for telling me about the sequel to Dark Night. I read Fire Within which is about St John of the Cross and Theresa of Avila. I then began reading Dark Night. I am on the 14th Chapter. I had hoped that the person discerning his vocation would be able to read St John and then ascertain for himself whether his dryness was due to being separated from God or was it God bringing him from the sweetness of early Christian experience into a more mature Christian experience.
God is also putting the desire for a wife and children before him. I believe that God does this so that the one discerning vocation fully weighs his options. Entering religious life is a serious commitment and should only be done with full knowledge. God is putting the man’s desire for family before him so that he may learn to shift his affections to Christ and His Church. He says that God is not calling him to the priesthood, I would disagree, I believe that he is being called to be a priest, but then I am only a sinful man.

 

[KEVIN_WILCOX]

Although I agree with a lot of what St John of the Cross & St Teresa of Avila write it can be a dangerous trap to follow them too closely. We are loved by God, but we are not St John nor St Teresa; God is born into each person’s life who says “Yes Lord, your servant is listening.” The spiritual path is a personal encounter - “I have carved YOU in the palm of my hand, YOU are mine.” I have no answers for any person’s relationship, this is not what I am here for. I can only stand alongside…like Mary at the foot of the Cross. The spiritual life is struggle, if it weren’t it wouldn’t be an encounter in faith…and sometimes even this seems not enough. And sometimes it just isn’t there. The first man was alone with God, naked. Didn’t Jesus say “Take nothing with you for the journey”?

 

[curtisbratcher]

Although I agree with a lot of what St John of the Cross & St Teresa of Avila write it can be a dangerous trap to follow them too closely. We are loved by God, but we are not St John nor St Teresa; God is born into each person’s life who says “Yes Lord, your servant is listening.” The spiritual path is a personal encounter - “I have carved YOU in the palm of my hand, YOU are mine.” I have no answers for any person’s relationship, this is not what I am here for. I can only stand alongside…like Mary at the foot of the Cross. The spiritual life is struggle, if it weren’t it wouldn’t be an encounter in faith…and sometimes even this seems not enough. And sometimes it just isn’t there. The first man was alone with God, naked. Didn’t Jesus say “Take nothing with you for the journey”?

I agree with you completely except that we must share where God is leading us, so that maybe what He has done for us may in some way benefit our fellow travelers. For example,
I am 60 years old and a christian for 37 years and I am just now entering the Catholic Church. I now understand that God is bringing me into His Church so that I may begin to enter the second night. I only hope that my experience may be used of God to help other sinners to see God’s path in their life.

 

[anode]

Thanks again, your posts on vocations are always inspired.

I have finally started praying to be happy in my vocation. I resisted praying for a vocation for a long time, as I didn’t really want God to answer me.

Another friend said he was given some great advice by a priest who said, when you’re really ready for your vocation, pray “Holy Spirit, command me to do Your will”, but be ready for a rollercoaster afterward.

In a way, I think I want this dryness to continue, as I want an excuse not to enter religious life. It’s silly, I know.

I think that your tendency to try to help others along into religious life is your realization that you may not be called to it but others are. I do the same thing. I’m married. I know a lot about communities of women which I am always trying to pass along, as in a recent post about communities singing Greg chant. I do this bec I had an attraction when young, which I still have, tho’ I don’t qualify in the least and never have. Weird.

You too may have an attraction, but not a vocation. I do think that you should talk this through thoroughly with a spiritual advisor, possibly a psychologist, and vocation directors at communities you visit. Responsible community directors aren’t going to accept an otherwise attractive person whom they deem unsuitable.

 

[Hidden_One]

Thank you for telling me about the sequel to Dark Night.

You misread. Dark Night follows Ascent. Ascent is the first several parts of a book that was never completed; Dark Night is the next part after it. That’s why I believe that no one should read Dark Night without first reading Ascent.

 

[KEVIN_WILCOX]

Curtis, (good to have a chat with you), try to get hold of a copy of The Glories of Divine Grace, Fr. Matthias J. Scheeben, Tan Books and Publishers Inc., U.S.A., 2000, ISBN 0-89555-509-3
In precis, the spiritual life is not about us doing something for God; rather it is about us getting out of the way and letting the Grace of God pour into our lives. Our world has to be “Transfigured in Christ”. There is nothing I can do with ‘my’ life but hand it over…now I’m getting into the “fountain principle” written about by St John of the Cross and found in St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Growth in sanctity: God freely gives to us, we freely give it back to God. There is nothing we can claim as ours, everything we can claim as God’s (evil is not anything more than an absence of Grace).

 

[Hidden_One]

In precis, the spiritual life is not about us doing something for God…

“There are too many people who go before God with the pretence of being useful to Him.” - St. Thérèse of Lisieux

 

[anode]

Think of it in terms of marriage, also a sacrament. (along w/ holy orders). There’s a young woman (aka girl) whom you’ve known all your life. She is from a fine family, she’s good looking, intelligent, well-educated. She likes you, seems potentially seriously interested. Your parents like her and her family. So why don’t you go out with her? What’s *wrong *with her?

Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with her, but there’s no chemistry there. You know her well enough to know that you are not interested in her. Your family & friends say that you* ought *to be–she qualifies in all the right criteria. But you aren’t interested. *You are not attracted to her. * What would marriage be like with her? Probably not good. Maybe in the far east, you could learn to love each other. Maybe . But in the western hemisphere, there is a good chance the match would fail.

As Cloisters says, attraction is very important. I would forget St. John of the Cross. You aren’t a saint or mystic–I assume. You are going to get into deep trouble trying to imitate him if you aren’t ready.

I would seriously pay attention to attraction. Your 3 month stint w/ the Salesians may be very useful in determining the depth of your attraction. If, at the end of it, you aren’t attracted to religious life or the priesthood, I would seriously re-think it.