I've just fallen in love with a religious order at first sight

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Honestly, within 30 seconds of meeting a friar of the Franciscans of the Immaculate yesterday, I started shivering, I didn’t want to eat, I felt like a teenager in love.

Only problem is, I thought I’d already come to the end of the discernment process. I was only going to meet the FI’s to tell them that, in the months since first contacting them, I had realised I am not called to religious life. I now have a girlfriend, who has been incredibly supportive, and I find myself growing in holiness by being around her, but I can’t ask her to wait AGAIN while I discern AGAIN. I still don’t feel like I have anything to give to the religious life, whereas I feel like I could be a really good married deacon.

I’m not running away, I’ve been living with the Salesians for the past 3 months, eating with them, praying with them, and realised within a matter of days that the dream of becoming a religious was just that, a dream, and not even a dream that I desired. It certainly didn’t help me to enter more lovingly into the service of God.

A friend, who is also discerning, asked me what aspect of the FI’s life appeals. I couldn’t think of anything. I’m not sure I could cope with the severity of their fasting and penance, I don’t identify with either aspect of their apostolate, I’m not a contemplative kind of person. I love that they are trying to be saints, and their consecration to Our Lady (I’ve also made the total consecration), but maybe this feeling is just the call to be holy. Their holiness is certainly contagious, and I want to be like that.

I don’t know. Is it possible to fall in love with a religious order at first sight?

To quote The Godfather “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”
 
DL82 said:
Honestly, within 30 seconds of meeting a friar of the Franciscans of the Immaculate yesterday, I started shivering, I didn’t want to eat, I felt like a teenager in love.

Only problem is, I thought I’d already come to the end of the discernment process. I was only going to meet the FI’s to tell them that, in the months since first contacting them, I had realised I am not called to religious life. I now have a girlfriend, who has been incredibly supportive, and I find myself growing in holiness by being around her, but I can’t ask her to wait AGAIN while I discern AGAIN. I still don’t feel like I have anything to give to the religious life, whereas I feel like I could be a really good married deacon.

I’m not running away, I’ve been living with the Salesians for the past 3 months, eating with them, praying with them, and realised within a matter of days that the dream of becoming a religious was just that, a dream, and not even a dream that I desired. It certainly didn’t help me to enter more lovingly into the service of God.

A friend, who is also discerning, asked me what aspect of the FI’s life appeals. I couldn’t think of anything. I’m not sure I could cope with the severity of their fasting and penance, I don’t identify with either aspect of their apostolate, I’m not a contemplative kind of person. I love that they are trying to be saints, and their consecration to Our Lady (I’ve also made the total consecration), but maybe this feeling is just the call to be holy. Their holiness is certainly contagious, and I want to be like that.

I don’t know. Is it possible to fall in love with a religious order at first sight?

To quote The Godfather “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”
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I know many men and women who say that they walked into a religious house and felt that they were home. I guess this is like falling in love at first sight.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
I’m not so sure what’s going on now. I prayed before the Blessed Sacrament last night, asking God to give me the strength to live a vocation with the FI’s. At first I felt a peace about it, but now there’s a real ‘come-down’. I even told my dad. He wasn’t happy, but I explained that it’s still only a remote possibility.

It’s a few days until I can schedule an appointment with my S.D. but since I’m living with a community of priests, I felt I ought to ask some advice. One Indian priest who doesn’t know me very well said that it’s a beautiful sacrifice to offer up your life in the religious life, and I just freaked, started crying, got angry, couldn’t feel any sense of purpose in it. Another priest, the superior here, who has spoken to me about vocations several times in the past suggested it may be a temptation to light, and that someone with my rigorous, scrupulous tendencies ought to avoid very extreme religious orders. That restored my sense of peace.

Now I come to think of it, being immediately attracted by the ‘obviousness’ of the FI’s holiness is maybe a schoolboy error on my part. The Salesian brothers here have a holiness which speaks of great joy and humour and the love of God. In comparison, the rigours of Franciscan Immaculate life might be more obvious, but as I’ve already said, has no appeal, nor is it making use of my talents.

On the other hand, the witness of the FI’s has given me a real kick into gear as regards living the lay vocation in greater holiness. Now it just comes down to one question I guess, is the goal of all of this ‘peace’, ‘integration’, becoming a whole person, using all of my talents together, which includes the side that is attracted to this kind of rigour, corresponding to the parable of the talents - which would likely lead me into married life with a possible FI Tertiary role, or is the goal of all of this ‘sacrifice’, selling everything, giving up all my natural talents, in order to be completely conformed to this one momentary desire, corresponding to the parable of the treasure in the field - and we all know where that leads?
 
DL82 said:
I’m not so sure what’s going on now. I prayed before the Blessed Sacrament last night, asking God to give me the strength to live a vocation with the FI’s. At first I felt a peace about it, but now there’s a real ‘come-down’. I even told my dad. He wasn’t happy, but I explained that it’s still only a remote possibility.

It’s a few days until I can schedule an appointment with my S.D. but since I’m living with a community of priests, I felt I ought to ask some advice. One Indian priest who doesn’t know me very well said that it’s a beautiful sacrifice to offer up your life in the religious life, and I just freaked, started crying, got angry, couldn’t feel any sense of purpose in it. Another priest, the superior here, who has spoken to me about vocations several times in the past suggested it may be a temptation to light, and that someone with my rigorous, scrupulous tendencies ought to avoid very extreme religious orders. That restored my sense of peace.

Now I come to think of it, being immediately attracted by the ‘obviousness’ of the FI’s holiness is maybe a schoolboy error on my part. The Salesian brothers here have a holiness which speaks of great joy and humour and the love of God. In comparison, the rigours of Franciscan Immaculate life might be more obvious, but as I’ve already said, has no appeal, nor is it making use of my talents.

On the other hand, the witness of the FI’s has given me a real kick into gear as regards living the lay vocation in greater holiness. Now it just comes down to one question I guess, is the goal of all of this ‘peace’, ‘integration’, becoming a whole person, using all of my talents together, which includes the side that is attracted to this kind of rigour, corresponding to the parable of the talents - which would likely lead me into married life with a possible FI Tertiary role, or is the goal of all of this ‘sacrifice’, selling everything, giving up all my natural talents, in order to be completely conformed to this one momentary desire, corresponding to the parable of the treasure in the field - and we all know where that leads?
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You’re under the roof of St. John Bosco’s Salesians, and having read the saint’s biography, I am sure he would want you to be at peace. St. Dominic Savio decided he would be a saint, and started walking around looking glum. Don Bosco asked him if he were ill, and when the elder saint was informed of the younger saint’s ambition, the elder told him that saints were happy people.

Salesian spirituality is a gentle one. St. Francis de Sales wrote in *An Introduction to the Devout Life *to always be gentle with oneself. This is how the Spirit actually works–He gently gets our attention, then gently attracts us in His path, without anxiety. The saint was always admonishing, “Gently, and without anxiety…”

What is the opposite of scruples? Ask the superior there that question, and please report back his answer.

St Teresa of Avila said that we are the hands and feet of Christ. I’ve always imagined myself a glove, and invited the Spirit and Jesus to come fill it, and use it however they see fit. (Pun not intended).

Blessings,
Cloisters
 
Salesian and Franciscan spirituality are not at odds with each other. They are both very gentle, if one knows how to study mysticism. Francis de Sales and Francis of Assisi were very gentle men (of course they were gentlemen too). Both were very much in love with Christ. Both had a wonderful sense of humor and neither took himself too seriously. Their gentleness comes through this great humility that they share.

The difference between the two communities is very important to understand. The Salesian family of men is a family of Clerks Regular. They were founded as a religious congregation for priests, most of them were educators and in later years many became parish priests. Their community life serves a very important purpose. Everything that they do in community supports their ministry to the laity. They design their schedule, activities and customs to help the brothers fulfill their ministry in the Church.

The Franciscan family of men is a lay community of mendicants. The Church uses the term lay, even though many Franciscans are priests and bishops, because the order was never founded to be an order of priests. Priests have always been welcome among Franciscans, from the early days. But the focus of the order is brotherhood. Every man who enters the Franciscan family enters with one fundamental desire, to be a brother to his brothers, as Francis was a brother, and as Christ was a brother to the Apostles. St. Francis of Assisi founded a family. That’s why the abstract term “fraternity” and “community” are not found in his writings or in the rule. The word brother and brotherhood is at the core. The life of the community, its disciplines, its prayer, its customs serve one purpose, to help each member be a holier and better brother to his brethren in the community. Ministry outside of the community serves to help the brothers become holier so they can bring that holiness into the community for the salvation of the brotherhood and the glory and praise of the Trinity.

While Salesian life points outward toward the service of the laity, the Franciscan life points inward toward the sanctification of the brotherhood. Both serve the Church, but in very different ways. Service to the laity is part of the apostolic mission of the Church. The sanctification of the brotherhood is part of the mystical life of the Church. When one member is sanctified, the whole body benefits. Both are very ecclesial, but in different ways. Both are necessary for the Church’s holiness. Both are very simple, if one stops looking at and analyzing the externals and focuses on the origin. The origin of both communities is a simple acceptance of God’s will for oneself. The two Francis sought only one thing, to fulfill the will of God in their lives. That’s pretty simple and straightforward.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
Thanks for all your help. I am starting to feel more peace about both directions now (marriage or religious life). It’s started to strike me (or rather, the thought has re-surfaced, but more beautifully) that married life, and the diaconate in particular incarnates Mary as the spouse and handmaid at the side of the Lord in a particular way that the priesthood will never know, in the same way that the priest incarnates Christ in a way the lay person will never know.

I know if God does give me the peace to embrace the Franciscans of the Immaculate, I’d be mad not to accept the great love that He could pour out through me. I also know that I’m not mad about loving the brothers, nor about priestly service after the Salesian model. I still feel like the way I can give myself in LOVE (and to give myself over to strict penances but have no love, as St Paul writes to the Corinthians, would be meaningless) is through married life and the diaconate. It would be odd if a Franciscan started writing about Jesuit spirituality, and I feel like my call is as a writer about the secular world and the lay vocation. In the FI’s I wouldn’t even be able to write at all, except maybe when I get too old to do manual labour, though maybe by that time my ideas would have been distilled by discipline (though whether or not by love remains an open question).

I was talking to one of the Salesian brothers today about the volunteers he organises to go and teach in Africa for a year. The idea that I could do that, as a married or single man, make a difference, give something to the Lord made me both excited and peaceful. The Franciscans of the Immaculate make me excited and fearful. There’s still this sense that I have the ex-evangelical black-and-white scrupulosity syndrome which prefers literal interpretations of scripture to more symbolic ones, to literally go and sell all I have might actually let my conscience rest. On the other hand, to keep giving, to give everything every day in the married life, to be always using the talents I have (instead of burying them) in the service of God and the Church, to offer up my academic work, to offer up eventually all my spare time in the diaconate, to love to spend my time with my family, and to work all the time I’m away from them so I can devote my time to them when we’re together, that would also be a life of total self-giving, one that I would love, and feel peace about, and would be able to love others. I’ve had the ‘temptation to light’ before, wrote to the Carthusians about a year ago, my Spiritual Director sorted that one out pretty quickly, and the Carthusians saw me coming and brought me to my senses.

Or is that just a cop-out?

One way or the other, those FI’s, gotta love them, they’ve turned my life around in a single day. Stopped over-eating, stopped watching TV, took up daily adoration, I no longer get to the end of the day with a massive catalogue of sins to write out for my next confession (combination of genuinely sinning less and being less scrupulous), and have also become aware of some unresolved father-issues from my childhood, which were released in a single flood-tide and have made me 100 times more thankful for my own dad, and more willing to see the manfulness in being a dad myself and stop feeling inadequate just because I’m not going for the ‘hard’ path. Parenthood is hard, it’s a cross of sweetness and an altar of sacrifice… and I can’t wait!
 
DL82 said:
Parenthood is hard, it’s a cross of sweetness and an altar of sacrifice… and I can’t wait!
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I can’t ague with that. I was blessed with both vocations. I was married and the father of three children. Became a widower and a single parent . . . later heard the call to enter the religious life, so not I’m a Franciscan Brother. I guess that I can say that I’ve been on both sides of the cross and I don’t regret either.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
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