Help! great anxiety over entering the seminary

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ptjd42

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Hello all. In advance I thank anyone who will respond to this.

I am a 20 year-old sophomore in college. I have been trying to self-discern for the priesthood off and on for the last 4 years. It all began in my junior year of high school when I randomly asked my pastor about the priesthood because I guess the idea struck me as maybe something I’d like to do. My problem is that any time I would seriously contemplate the idea of entering seminary, or the priestly life, my mind gets full of anxiety and fear. Sure there are some few times where I see the joy the priesthood offers, but these times are the exception for me and not the rule.

The feeling of “maybe this is my calling” would come and go, but when it did come up it rarely evoked in me feelings of happiness. I pushed it out of my mind in an effort to be rid of the feelings of anxiety and depression. However, I guess I feel some sort of obligation to look into it because it continues to come up in my mind periodically. But the fact that any time I really give it some thought, it merely makes me terribly anxious and sad.

This current occurrence was so bad that I contacted the local seminary rector out of desperation to try and make the anxiety dissipate; it is so bad that I can’t seem to enjoy or focus on anything else. Needless to say it hasn’t and my efforts to explain my apprehensions to the rector seemed to be dismissed as merely the usual anxiety. However, I cannot stress enough that I do not feel very happy with the idea of going to seminary because of:
  1. the crushing anxiety
  2. talking with my mother and grandmother (who is the holiest person in my family) yielded them to plead with me to finish school since I’m already halfway through so that I won’t lose all the opportunities I have next year (a job that pays my room and board that is in my field of choice and a $2K scholarship)
  3. I do not find the idea of celibacy very appealing, and to top it off, I am in a death-struggle with Satan due to a sexual addiction to Internet pornography that I have been fighting since I was 14, so I guess I question whether or not celibacy is even very likely for me.
Despite all of this, I feel guilty that I would not want to choose this path, even though the mere thought fills me with despair. I guess I feel that since maybe I thought about it before, and the fact that my pastor felt I might have a vocation, I feel like I must go through with it. I guess I could be accused of holding the priesthood up as the “ultimate vocation” and feeling that all other vocations are not as good. I realize that priesthood is the “higher” calling over marriage, but I guess I don’t feel like me serving in any other way would be good enough to God. Which makes it sound like I might have this calling, I realize, but it makes me miserable to think about it. I am much happier to think of myself as a married man, who is faithful to his wife and children, and maybe even as a deacon. Does this make me selfish, because I would rather do that? I feel like it may, even though I realize that to be married is a huge sacrifice as well, and is pleasing to God.

My other problem is that anytime I raise my doubts in my mind, I immediately admonish myself that all I’m doing is merely making excuses…but I swear I only want to be a good Catholic man in any way…I basically fight with myself and it tears me to pieces so much that I can’t seem to think straight, at which point I admonish myself again for not having courage.

I guess it would also be helpful to add that I fought with scrupulosity when I was younger (13-14) and guess I still am. I also used to stress mightily as a child about schoolwork before I had even had any thoughts about the priesthood. My senior year of high school, I was so depressed I contemplated suicide for a whole month (thank God I didn’t go through with it, even though I suffer now, for I realize it would have caused my friends and family such anguish). However, I cannot say that I have not contemplated taking my life since then, if only to end what seems to me to be terrible anguish.

I realize the priesthood is a sacrifice, and that acting in persona Christi priests must suffer somewhat. But I don’t see why God would choose for me a path that causes me so much sadness and pain, even though it may bring souls to Him. I just don’t want to disappoint the Lord…I will be meeting with the rector later today and honestly don’t know what to tell him…

I apologize for the length of this post and assure you that I will pray for anyone who answers me. Thank you so much, even though I am in tears right now I am thankful for what God has given me and this forum. God bless you all.
 
If if you find it unheathy for you to consider the Priesthood, then perhaps it isn’t your vocation. It’s somewhat evident that you need some healing, and this would seem to be a priority whatever life-path you choose. If the idea of becoming a priest causes you to feel “crushing anxiety”, then quite possibly it isn’t your vocation.

It isn’t selfish to consider marriage…without marriage you wouldn’t exist…most of us wouldn’t exist…that is how sacred that marriage is! Marriage enables God to bring into life loved human beings to be with Him for all eternity.
It takes balance and great courage to live the Sacrament of Marriage also, great courage and love to welcome God’s little ones into your care.

As regards suffering, no one escapes it. However every path in life also has its joys.

I can ask Blessed Zelie Martin and Blessed Louis Martin to pray for you.
Zelie wanted to be a nun, Louis, a priest, but God desired their marriage. They became parents of a saint, Therese of Lisieux.
I can also ask their daughter Therese to pray for you. She went through a painful few years of scrupulosity as a child.
 
Trishie, if you would pray for me, I would be very grateful. Thank you for your eloquent response. It has brought me a small measure of peace, something I haven’t really experienced for the last few days.

And yes, I realize I do require some healing, both psychologically and spiritually. It is very hard for me to know where to start on that front however…
 
Yes I will pray for you. It’s actually a vocation of mine to pray for vocations, and for priests and religious. You wouldn’t have realised that from my post. What actually triggered my going to Mass daily for many years now, instead of every few days, was that I felt called to pray for priests…and I thought, how can I do that if not with the greatest prayer of all time!

I won’t just pray about your vocation, whatever it is, but very much for you as a person. You are a good, sincere young man, and your post already made me take you into my heart to keep you in prayer.

God bless you,
Trishie

Seeking God’s will

Our God, You see me anxious about discerning the right course, and then my subsequent doubts. I fear that if I misconstrue Your will, someone may be denied what You would delight to give through me. Bless them, supplying what my uncertainty or confusion denies them.

I trust that whatever good I honestly attempt will be guided and transformed by You, regardless of my obvious failures. Perhaps when I die, I may discover that my present life hides the overflowing richness of Your love embracing others through my efforts and prayers.

Please ccept my gift of myself to You. Temper my faith and faithfulness in Your love within the events of my life. Burn away my sinfulness and apathy through daily responsibility and prayer. Let everything for which You created me, be completely fulfilled. Worship and delight Yourself in my life.
 
I didn’t come immediately to push you towards Priesthood in your doubts, because you are a unique person whose life is known only truly to God;
and because I know that we are all parts of the whole Mystical Body.
The Body needs many parts. It can’t do without the obvious external parts like the head, but the head dies without the lungs and arms and legs and so on. The following is something I wrote one time I was thinking about all this.

It isn’t that I’m promoting what you are called to or not called to, only saying that whatever part you live in the life of the Church, it is valuable. I’m first of all a mother, so my immediate reaction to you and what you said in your first post, was to feel a gentle protectiveness towards you. For me, as a mother of three sons, the gift of love extends beyond my own sons. At one time a priest suggested that I have a “gift of spiritual motherhood”…because as it happens, we all are given gifts for others that may not be the obvious and expected gifts.
Personal responsibility in the church
Our God, whatever the vocation of everyone who comprises the visible manifestation of Your Church, within it we are all parts of one another. Therefore, we are required to love, serve and cherish each other. However, many people expect others to minister to them, while failing to recognise their responsibility to the community.

If we neglect to witness You to the world and amongst ourselves as committed participants in Christ’s Mystical Body, we all experience a weakening of faith, charity and peace. Our selfishness becomes a community wound.
The more mediocre we seem, perhaps the greater is God’s trust in us. You ‘exalt the lowly’, so however mundane and hidden our efforts, our contributions of prayer and service become powerful forces in the life of Your Church.

Even as many of us continue to serve, the world plunges—here, deeper into oppression, discord, war, injustice, atheism and despair—there, deeper into selfishness, materialism, complacency, unbelief, and immorality. Many persons fail to hear, to respond to, or to see convincing witness of love and truth in Your people, to halt this decline.

Some people experience lack of relevance to their lives in Your Church, where it appears to fail life’s practical requirements. They may lapse into atheism, agnosticism or alternate belief, or they may compartmentalise their faith between minimal religious observance and ‘practical’ or pleasure-seeking materialism. Lukewarmness may appear normal while deep religious commitment may be deemed unreasonable or suspicious.

Some people, who observe the dedication of those committed to the gospel, are admiring, yet discouraged by example that they feel unable to follow. Other persons may be scandalised by the sinfulness and failures of the devout, unaware that these persons are repentant for their sinfulness and strive to overcome their faults while humbly trusting their lives and actions to God’s mercy.

God have compassion upon the discouraged and depressed, as we determine to choose hope and compassion. Discouragement may paralyse spiritual life, causing its victims to forgo many blessings of the Church. Reveal to everyone the vision of his or her unique sacredness in Your love, and our place in the communion of saints.

You desire to convert and unite us as we offer ourselves to You in our ordinary lives. You accept us wholly in our present reality, our actual weakness, and our individual natures. Grant us faith that in both our virtues and in our efforts to overcome our frailties—through Your love we become instruments of witness and service, of charity, justice and peace.

You desire us to serve each other in faith and charity as You sanctify us in the continuing flow of events and interactions of our lives. For the fulfilment of Your will and for true manifestation of ‘Church’, we depend on the transforming power of Your love upon our efforts.

Inspire our hearts and wills with such gospel conviction that we commit our lives as priest, religious, or as dedicated laity. Help us to carry our joyful cross of mutual need and service in Christ, who exemplified these realities then bid us to follow. Let our witness be such that many more will be inspired to accept the mission of Christ.

Let laity offer active support, so that priests may fulfil their sacramental function without isolation and needless stress and so that overwork does not erode their prayer-life (witnessed by Christ as essential). For throughout time, the command and invitation of our Saviour remains the same. It is to “love one another as I have loved you”…“by this all will know that we are family” thus preaching the gospel to each person by the way we live our lives.

In our daily human struggle, please grant us the Christly love that lays down life in generous service of others. For this was laid the cornerstone of Your Church. For this, we are made sisters and brothers of Christ, and are sent out into the world. Thus, let Your Church continually conform to Christ’s image.

Thank You, God, for trusting us with the responsibility to love and serve each other and You. Let our faith and labour bear great harvest.
 
Hello, First of all you are pretty young , in my opinion think you have an internal battle because you have to weigh in many factors to being more established, like a home, maybe marriage, kids, car, then on the other hand thinking like a future Priest the exact opposite my friend. What makes you happy? What is your passion? I have an anxiety disorder
and a few thing I do, first breathe slowly, walk outside, listen to easy listening music. Have fun! Best wishes on your future it will work out.
 
To Dana:
Thank you for your response. God has truly blessed me with the responses of people like you. As for what I’m passionate about, I guess I haven’t really found that out yet, and this is part of why I’m struggling so much. And I am very sorry to hear about your anxiety disorder. Sometimes I wonder if I might have one as well. Thank you so much for the advice in dealing with anxiety! I’ll be sure to use it the next time I run into it (which, God willing, will not be soon!). I will be praying for you.

To Trishie:
You are truly an amazing woman and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your kind words. I hope that I may find a woman who is as God-centered as you to be the mother of my children should I end up seeking the married life.
 
*Trishie, you are a force of nature. I have an MFA in Writing, and I know superb writing when I see it. These reflections of yours should be published. Please, please seek out a Catholic publisher. What a book of prayers it would be. *

ptjd42: The Internet porn should be your first priority. With that said, I imagine you’ll need some therapy. I have struggled with the same thing (I was scandalized by porn at 8 years old when some friends of mine and I discovered several large grocery bags full of pornography in an alley carelessly thrown away and not in the garbage can). I know the allure of Internet porn, and besides the usual suggestion of getting a spiritual director (a good idea) but a psychologist and weekly therapy should be looked at.

The point is, you don’t know if you have a vocation, and you are not at a place where you should even be thinking about a vocation right now. You’re not ready, and you know it, hence, crushing despair. It won’t get better if you go it alone.

Young people often fall in love with God, and often comes that moment of “Aw shucks! No more fun for me! Now I’m going to have to suffer for the rest of my life and become a priest/nun/brother. I don’t want to Lord, but I’ll do whatever you say…” Sound familiar?

Love God. That is your first vocation. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. But you don’t sound like you love yourself right now. That’s why you’re torturing yourself with the porn. I know. My wife left me just 5 months ago, and I’ve struggled in the vacuum left by her absence. Trishie helped me. Study her posts. She’s trying to help you, too. So am I. God loves you, son. That’s what you feel. He is reaching out to you with his grace, and you’ve mistaken his touch for a call to the priesthood. It’s common. I’m going to say don’t worry about it, but you will. So I’ll say it again. Don’t worry about. I don’t know what your insurance situation is like, but get some therapy. It’s actually pretty great because you get to talk all the time and the doctor has to listen to you. That’s his job. The Internet porn is blocking Christ’s grace from fully reaching you, like it’s blocking Christ’s grace from fully reaching me. But you are not alone, and you CAN be healed (part of my strategy to stay away from the porn is spending a lot of time on CAF. If you read enough posts the time just flies by and then it’s time to go to bed and you’re too tired to look at Internet porn. Plus, by typing lengthy replies, your hands get tired :D).

Let me try and make it easy for you (and I was a seminarian, so I have some authority to say this). You do not have a vocation to the priesthood. At least not now. (Does that feel any better? No, I imagine it doesn’t). You cannot, as my father says “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” You have my prayers. But do something constructive and see a good psychologist. If he suggests that you get some meds, get the meds. I imagine your next post might be “But I’m already in therapy” or “Been there done that.” If that’s the case, find a different doctor, and try it again. I’ve gone through three psychologists and two psychiatrists already, and I finally found one I like. Peace.
 
**Confession: **

Just *last night *I felt so compelled to look at Internet porn that I did. And you know what? I saw the images and I felt sick. That’s right, sick. For the first time in a long time, I felt sick looking at naked women. How great is that! What a pleasant surprise. I’m healing a little :). I’ve spent long hours recently thinking about other people’s troubles and responding to them that Christ woke up in my heart in a very big way. It was such a relief.

Just wanted to add that.

That should be your penance. I see that you’ve only posted four times. It is April 7th. By this Good Friday I want to see your post count at, oh…20. Are you up for the task? Get out of your own head for a while. Christ will work himself in while you are distracted contemplating the suffering of others. I haven’t been over to the morality forum in a while. Usually there are a few masturbation threads running. Contribute.
 
Forgive me, but I had to post here one more time. I’ve been doing my own penance as well, and I’m glad to say that this is now my Post #200!

Yeaaah for me!
 
Nom:

Thanks for the kind and wise words. I am actually kind of relieved that a former seminarian is telling me that I don’t have a call to the priesthood. I don’t know if I should worry about that, but like you said I should not worry at all (easier said than done, I realize).

I am sorry to hear about your wife. I understand the pain you must be going through in dealing with a pornography addiction. Too many people in our society write porn off as something “all guys look at”. Let me be honest: NO MAN SHOULD EVER LOOK AT PORN, EVER. It ruins lives. I would know.

And I think that your idea for a penance is a good one. I will do my best to reach 20 posts ASAP.

I was seeing a social worker through Catholic Charities for a while, but you are right and I probably need psychological help. I will begin looking into local Catholic psychologists.

God bless you and may you one day know true freedom from porn through Christ’s grace!
 
dana49 said:
Hello, First of all you are pretty young , in my opinion think you have an internal battle because you have to weigh in many factors to being more established, like a home, maybe marriage, kids, car, then on the other hand thinking like a future Priest the exact opposite my friend. What makes you happy? What is your passion? I have an anxiety disorder
and a few thing I do, first breathe slowly, walk outside, listen to easy listening music. Have fun! Best wishes on your future it will work out.
Click to expand...
*To add on to what Dana said so well…

You mention that
I am a 20 year-old sophomore in college. I have been trying to self-discern for the priesthood off and on for the last 4 years.
Click to expand...
First of all you are young so there is no need to rush. Secondly I would advise seeking either a Spiritual Director or at the very least a Priest at your parish or perhaps a Priest on campus should there be one. Let them help you in the discernment process. It may well be that you are not called to the seminary(or conversely that you are indeed called), a priest can help you to figure out more clearly where your vocation lies… (And don’t worry that if you do speak to one that they will automatically tell you to enter seminary… they are there to help you in your own individual path which may or may not end in the seminary) You have mentioned that you have some issues to work through.( Those issues would need to be resolved, and a priest might help you to come up with some concrete ways to tidy up your spiritual life shall we say?? )
That you do not feel at peace when thinking of having a vocation. ( By talking to a priest you will begin to see specific things you can do to help you decide if the path is right for you. They would also be of invaluable help to you in figuring out if you have a vocation and when is the right time to begin to pursue it)
I would seek some guidance. By seeking outside help from a priest and verbalizing your thoughts and hopes and ambitions you can get some concrete advice and direction which ought to help you on your journey.
Many here on the vocations forum pray daily for vocations and specifically for those in any stage of discernment. You will be in our prayers!
Blessings of Peace and all Good!
 
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