You are not interrupting the conversation, SecretaryMonday:thumbsup:, this thread’s topic is “Singlehood as vocation” and your question is on topic. I hope elizabeth_anne will reply to you, either in this thread or via PM.
May I say that it is not uncommon to have fears about oneself and one’s abilities when attraction to religious life occurs. Such fears are not necessarily correct. Sound spiritual direction is always the very best of ways to journey and probably especially where discernment and religious life (for one) is concerned. Also a phone call to your diocesan director, or an email or even an appointment does not commit you in any way. An email or phone call or visit to a religious order that attracts you is not a commitment either. Some who have entered religious life and stayed and very happily to life vows and beyond have had initial great fears about their abilities to live the life, and also contacted and visited numerous communities. You are not alone in having fears or reservation and this is not necessarily an indication of a lack of a religious vocation. Prayer, sound spiritual direction, contact religious communities - and dont give up as long as you feel you might have a call to religious life.
The Visition Order, for example, is open to those with some forms of disabilities. There may be more. Phatmass Phorum “Vocation Station”
phatmass.com/phorum/forum/17-vocation-station/ can also be a great resource and also a place of encouragement re religious vocation in the main.
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To return to “Singlehood as Vocation”
The Church is a living organism and through our history we have had many changes. Just as one example only, religious life for women and I think it applied for a few hundred years was a strictly enclosed life and always without exemption. This eventually changed (due to pressure from within The Church for change) and we now have nuns (enclosed) as well as religious sisters (undertake active apostolates outside any sort of enclosure). Once the religious habit was mandatory. Nowadays for some, it is secular clothing.
The eremitical life for example, the life of a hermit, is a consecrated state of life in The Church, and this vocation I am supposing is not a common one. In the CCC is outlined that a lay person may enter the lifestyle of a hermit without public/official/consecrated life vows - they remain in the lay state, not the consecrated state:
#920 Without always professing the three evangelical counsels publicly, hermits "devote their life to the praise of God and salvation of the world through a stricter separation from the world, the silence of solitude and assiduous prayer and penance."460
In fact, in the early Church, both a religious type of life and that of hermits began as lay life, insofar as I know.
The above paragraph incidentally comes under Section III “The Consecrated Life”.
Section II is “The Lay Faithful:”, where we read:
**The vocation of lay people **
898 "By reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will. . . . It pertains to them in a special way so to illuminate and order all temporal things with which they are closely associated that these may always be effected and grow according to Christ and maybe to the glory of the Creator and Redeemer."431
899 The initiative of lay Christians is necessary especially when the matter involves discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political, and economic realities with the demands of Christian doctrine and life. This initiative is a normal element of the life of the Church:
Lay believers are in the front line of Church life; for them the Church is the animating principle of human society. Therefore, they in particular ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope, the common Head, and of the bishops in communion with him. They are the Church.432
Again, as with the eremitical vocation,I dont think possibly it is a common vocation, but some are called to devote themselves to the lay state as celibate chaste laity, some vowed privately to the evengelical counsels, and to embrace the above terms, that is their single celibate chaste vocation is “for the sake of The Kingdom”. It may be that such a vocation will one day come under the consecrated state as a public consecration - or it may not. To me personally, I am not concerned on that point. What happens happens, what does not happen, does not happen (Divine Providence). As I said, The Church is a living organism and as our history unfolds there can be changes. Nothing changes in the terms of The Gospel, while our understanding of it will continue to grow and unfold, both in terms of The Church as The Mystical Body of Christ and flowing from that,- in our individual insight as members of The Mystical Body.
John Ch 16:
[12] I have yet many things to say to you:
but you cannot bear them now.
[13] But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come,
he will teach you all truth. For he shall not speak of himself; but what things soever he shall hear, he shall speak; and the things that are to come, he shall shew you.
John 16:13]
Latin]
[14] He shall glorify me; because he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it to you.
[15] All things whatsoever the Father hath, are mine. Therefore I said, that he shall receive of mine, and shew it to you.
As I have stated in previous threads relating to the single celibate chaste state, while it does not always apply, I think it probably unwise even lacking prudence perhaps to embrace the vocation without spiritual direction and ongoing spiritual direction. A vocation and call from God does ask that one understands exactly what that vocation and call actually means in specific details and understandings and in the same way for one’s actual personal call. In religious life, various forms of consecrated life and in the priesthood (seminary or noviciate) this takes place in formation. The consecrated hermit, I believe, is under the supervision of his or her bishop and writes their own rule of life approved by same. As I understand it the requirements prior to being consecrated as a hermit under Canon 603 are quite demanding both in terms of understanding and length of formation prior to consecration.
For the single celibate chaste person (not consecrated formally in The Church) formation takes place in spiritual direction ideally. However, we cannot place limits on God, rather be open personally to His Will and Divine Providence (as The Church does) and always personally in line with what The Church teaches us.
Pope Benedict recommends spiritual direction for every Catholic, including those in the lay state.
Catholic Catechism:
918 From the very beginning of the Church there were men and women who set out to follow Christ with greater liberty, and to imitate him more closely, by practicing the evangelical counsels. They led lives dedicated to God, each in his own way. Many of them, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, became hermits or founded religious families. These the Church, by virtue of her authority, gladly accepted and approved.458
919 Bishops will always strive to discern new gifts of consecrated life granted to the Church by the Holy Spirit; the approval of
new forms of consecrated life is reserved to the
Apostolic See.459
I gave in a previous post contact details for the Pontifical Council for The Laity and our lay contact point for laity matters in the Holy See.
) Were you fully professed at the time this illness developed, and were you able to receive some kind of special dispensation from perpetual vows because of your condition? I ask because I am both interested in pursing a vocation to religious life, and also concerned that I might not be able to “handle it”.
Pray about it and ask The Lord to be with you and then simply trust that He is, because with you is where He is.