Not a People-Person

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Augustine

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It seems to me that religious brothers and sisters and ordained priests and deacons are people-persons.

Is there room for a someone who’s not a people-person?

:blessyou:
 
Just guessing here, but I think after a few years in the religious life anyone would become a people person.
 
On the other hand, priests, etc., can be equally possesses of all human traits as any other persons - and can be quite strange - just like any other person.

Furthermore, were the Cistercians who observed the strict vows of silence “people-persons”? I have little doubt that they would have had all the charitable intentions towards others, but the silence must have had it’s effects on personal interchanges.
 
Well of course, our dear priest is not really a people person, he has faults like all of us but he does truely love his flock for all that.

Saints in general and I am not specifying the above would be difficult persons to be with on the whole I think because they amplify your own weakness by their goodness.
 
If you’re not a people person, just go to grad school or somethin’.😃
 
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Melanie01:
Saints in general and I am not specifying the above would be difficult persons to be with on the whole I think because they amplify your own weakness by their goodness.
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I would strongly disagree with that statement. True holiness would do the exact opposite - amplify your own goodness with their goodness.
 
I would not worry about being a people-person. Just start discerning your vocation and that will sort itself out. If you are meant to have a Religious vocation, God will lead you to it (not that it will be easy). If you are not enough of a people-person or scholar-person, or prayer-person, or hard-work-person, or whatever the charism of the community requires, they will delete you faster than clicking the X on the toolbar.

What I am saying is: a community will decide for you whether you belong there. Talk to your priest. Talk to the vocations office of your diocese. Don’t state your non-people-person case. Just start the process and see where the Lord takes you.

I have found that even hermits, who are called lengthy periods of silence and solitude, are delightfully people-friendly. Different people have different thresholds of happy interaction. I suppose a hermit would be miserable in a college fraternity.
 
“How can you say you love God whom you cannot see, if you do not love your neighbour whom you can?”

From contact I have had with contemplative religious in the parlour, they were and are ‘people people’ and echo the words of Thomas Merton that the fruits of contemplation should be made available to all in the parlour and this is what I have found, that contemplatives have much to offer spiritually in the parlour, aside from letters and the interaction in their own communities with their fellow contemplative religious.

Not only this, doubtless our contemplatives contribute as ‘people persons’ through their prayer life and prayer in the main is a very hidden worker. Our contemplatives are our power houses of prayer where The Church and mankind and associated needs are very much alive within contemplative communities.

God calls us to whatever state of life and His Love reaches to all, hence if in a contemplative cloister I do not find myself coming to an active love of all…echoing the words of Jesus with which I opened this thread…then perhaps something is amiss somewhere in me as a contemplative religious (if I were). Possibly if I enter a contemplative community or become a hermit because I am not a people person, then my ‘vocation’ may not be a vocation at all. Certainly something is amiss if entering a contemplative community not being a person person and I do not arrive there within the community or heremetical life, something is spiritually amiss. The words of Jesus are quite clear: “How can you say you love God whom you cannot see, if you do not love your neighbour whom you can?” This is a question Jesus poses and states that the criteria or thermomater as it were of loving God is how much I love my neighbour.

My thoughts only…

Joyous Christmas and Blessings!🙂

Barb
 
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cheese_sdc:
I would strongly disagree with that statement. True holiness would do the exact opposite - amplify your own goodness with their goodness.
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Good point Cheese_sdc, never thought about it from that angle…goes to show i am probably the type of person who sees the glass half empty instead of half full:)
 
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