Should I get a day job, while communicating with a community about a vocation?

  • Thread starter Thread starter foolishmortal
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
F

foolishmortal

Guest
Do you have multiple meetings, at least with orders that don’t have roomy monasteries for inquirers? Should I get a day job or is a shorter period than that? Could it hurt my vocation to do so–like I’ve got split interests? I can live at home unless it’s an order far away and requiring frequent meetings. Then, i might have to pay for a place to stay and for food unless, that is, provisions can be made where you earn your keep at a Catholic place that can take you in.

Thanks!
 
I would get a job. Thinking you have a vocation does not necessarily mean you do have one. Also, it may take time to figure such. Also, it will allow earn money so you can take some courses (not necessarily theology or philosophy) you may eventually use in any path you take.
 
Definitely get a job. I got in touch with someone discerning a Trappist vocation on this forum who has been directly discerning his vocation to that order for over a year, after spending time discerning a call to at least one other religious order before that. I hope he doesn’t mind me mentioning his experience on this thread. 🙂

The basic structure (at least for Trappist discernment, which is the only order about whose process I really know anything) is that you make a couple or few visits over a period of up to a year or more before making a visitation of 4-6 weeks during which you live basically as a novice, though perhaps they will be a little more easy going with you based on the situation. After that you leave for a bit and, if and when the abbot and novice director feel you are ready, you will be called back to the monastery to begin your time as a postulant, which is followed by the novitiate and then simply and later solemn vows - presuming bot you and the order with which you are discerning feel you do indeed have a vocation from God within that order.

In short…get a job! 😃

In Christ’s Love,
Stephen
 
Would you advise against trying to join a way out-of-state community, then?
 
Of course not, geographic location has no bearing on where your vocation may be - though it may obviously make visitations a bit more difficult. Keep in mind the geographic distance, or lack thereof, may in some way be a part of God’s plan for you - as He always makes the most perfect plans for us!

Discern your vocation in faith, hope, and love, and don’t let something as insignificant as distance get in your way. Even if it’s very difficult to visit the community to whom you are discerning a vocation, the worst that may mean is you have to save up adequate funds between visits, which God may use for the strengthening of your vocation or as time to present alternatives to you. Trust in Him and all will be right!

In prayerful hope.
Stephen
 
3Sanctus said:
Of course not, geographic location has no bearing on where your vocation may be - though it may obviously make visitations a bit more difficult. Keep in mind the geographic distance, or lack thereof, may in some way be a part of God’s plan for you - as He always makes the most perfect plans for us!

Discern your vocation in faith, hope, and love, and don’t let something as insignificant as distance get in your way. Even if it’s very difficult to visit the community to whom you are discerning a vocation, the worst that may mean is you have to save up adequate funds between visits, which God may use for the strengthening of your vocation or as time to present alternatives to you. Trust in Him and all will be right!

In prayerful hope.
Stephen
Click to expand...
3Sanc is right on.

Don’t let a little thing like distance stand in your way, tho’ it might be sensible to start looking closer to home. But if you’re interested in communities that are far away, you’ll have to travel. I don’t know anything about your aptitudes or work history, but there are still a lot of temp jobs around for which you could sign up. If you’re in health care, you could work for a locums agency. If a teacher, you could do substitute teaching, taking summers and vacs off for discerning. I agree that a job history is a good thing to have and you* will* be asked for recommendations; count on it. I personally think that it would look a little weird to be ‘not working’ --possibly for years?–while you discern. Not all of us can fall back on our trust funds!
 
I read your response from other website that you were tired of living in “the World”. Don’t forget that you can not escape from the reality that you will be in this world as long as you live. The question is “do you belong to this world?”

How long do you think you have to wait before being accepted into a religious order? If you don’t know for sure, then you should work. However, gettting a job is practical for everybody. Even in some communities, they work as a doctor, teacher, a lawyer, etc … I think you should get a job to support yourself, to gain expriences in dealing with others and with yourself in the “real world” situation. When you are in a religious community, you are still in a real world - you will still deal with the ugly, the bad, and the good.

I could also understand that when you work, you don’t have enough time to take days off to visit different religious orders, but you can still have weekends to visit them.
 
I figured the Trappists and other monasteries just kept people as guests, who were discerning.

I guess you’re right about some having to work outside a friary. Maybe that’s why monastic communities are called, “stable”.
Still, you probably would get a good formation before they’d send you elsewhere, right?

Anyway, I’ve always been fascinated by the Franciscans and wanted to wear their habit and be without bothering about worldly things. Wearing the clothes might help better make the man (or woman, for nuns).
 
foolishmortal said:
Anyway, I’ve always been fascinated by the Franciscans and wanted to wear their habit and be without bothering about worldly things. Wearing the clothes might help better make the man (or woman, for nuns).
Click to expand...
You should have a spiritual director. S/he will help you a lot.
 
I will be having someone to visit about this weekend and he will probably be able to write sometimes via e-mail. He was a priest, but it was under good terms that he left, as sad as a priest leaving the ministry is sad.

I’m thinking I would not seem as melancholic if, in informing the misinformed, I have a Franciscan outfit on. It would just be expected I’d say those things.

I hadn’t thought of the temp thing in a long time! I’ve never heard of that health care one.

Thanks everyone! That’s not to say I’m ending the discussion, though.
 
You know, the simple, classically brown (though in also coming in grays and blues) gown-shaped clothes, tied by a white cord, and the whole thing topped by the hood. I don’t know if it’'s called a habit, as a nun’s outfit is.
 
foolishmortal said:
You know, the simple, classically brown (though in also coming in grays and blues) gown-shaped clothes, tied by a white cord, and the whole thing topped by the hood. I don’t know if it’'s called a habit, as a nun’s outfit is.
Click to expand...
I see. What do you want to do with the outfit?
 
Keep in mind being a Christian of any stripe is about deeds and about your heart meeting with Our Lord in the Holy Spirit. Habits are irrelevant to the whole business.

Here’s a quote from Thomas Merton someone gave me on another thread:

“No writing on the solitary, meditative dimension of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.
If you want a life of prayer, the way to get it is by praying.
I do not live in a hermitage— I live in a house, what I wear is pants, what I do is live, How I pray is breathe.”

I think that’s one of the best - if not the best - quotes on religious life I’ve ever seen. 🙂

In Christ.
Stephen
 
Oh, and since it can always use another prayer, check out the Jesus Prayer. It’s the best way I know to fulfill Saint Paul’s instruction to “pray always” and matches up with what Thomas Merton says about his prayer and breathing.

In Prayer.
Stephen
 
The outfit would be kind of like a badge to speak up. If you are plain-clothed, people think you’re just being preachy. You hear, “Keep your mouth shut” to be polite, even as liberals break the Second Commandment on purpose or give wicked advice.
That’s not why I would want to join an order. Personal finances stump me, but the great retirement package (always being cared for, unless you’re a missionary and the natives want to kill you) isn’t why either. I see them as fringe benefits. I am into it to use my skills for God, make up for what’s in the prayer about daily neglects, and to pray for others who neglect the same and for all of our evil-doings–and to be truly happy in the way God intends us to be happy (having Him as the only source of our happiness, even if The Source gives us good friends, nice scenery etc., provided they aren’t stumbling stones).

I think it’s sad Thomas Thomas Merton felt he was fine without the habit. Neither Muslim clerics, Hasidic Jews and Buddhist monks, nor newer young religious, think that way. It’s a powerful way to “witness”, because most people are edified by their image. He was a Cistercian, but he did get around places, I think, but at least his image would appear on the plastic bookcovers that must have been a pretty new concept then, right?

I was thinking that, as St. Francis wore their clothes, as what beggars wore, it would be fine to have matching colored pants (or jeans, if it matches the color of the rest of the clothes) and hooded sweatshirt, but it should be uniform. Maybe there would be an emblem on the sweatshirt. I think Thomas Merton was getting a bit modernized later in his writing.
 
Thomas Merton wore a habit - at least as far as I know he always did - and pictures of him in habits are around, including on the cover I’ve seen of his autobiographical Seven Story Mountain. However, I believe he was trying to make a point with what he said there - and frankly, even if he wasn’t just trying to make a point that’s how I’ve been able to make us of the quote, by His grace.

The point is anyone can live a life of prayer, and the trappings of the monastic/religious/priestly life aren’t what make one a monk/brother/sister/nun/priest. It’s about a calling to our souls from the Almighty, to whom we can react with love and adoration through prayer, good deeds, and living a more Christ-centered life. I certainly wouldn’t suggest any order get rid of their habbit or that a priest refrain from wearing clerics - those are great ways to minister to people, adorning your body in such a way as to not cover the lamp you are in Christ - to loosely paraphrase Christ’s admonition concerning lamps being kept on pedestals and such, not sure of the exact wording He used.

The point is the usefulness of the habit has nothing to do with our relationship with God, aside from the obedience a religious shows by wearing it instead of making his own fashion choices.

I believe my statement in my previous post was too blunt and without adequate explanation. I should have provided more background concerning my thoughts and been more clear on the subject, as well as more charitable. Please forgive my lack of clarity and charity.

In Christ.
Stephen
 
No prob.

The problem with the West is either/or where there could be both (people getting mad at whitened sepulchres and puritanically trying to switch everything to interior beauty only, as far as they care; the more conservative types get mad at that and get puritanical too because, well, the clothes say something to others and, eventually, yourself unless, that is, you are being stealthy like Gregory Peck in that movie where he hides Jews from Magneto–just kidding about the last name); the vice versa happens in the (Asia) East.
 
Getting a job is a good idea, since you never really know how long the selection process will take
 
Doesn’t that make inquiring time very short until vacation days kick in? I was thinking of maybe visiting Benedictines before the first visit. If the franciscans didn’t take me, I might be able to stay and help out at a Madonna House.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top