CHAPTER THE SECOND

 

Discerning between Marriage, Priesthood & Religious Life

 

 

I am often teased of believing that everyone has a call to religious life or the priesthood. Lovingly, young people joke and say I don’t believe that anyone is called to marriage. I laugh with them and renew my love for marriage and explain why they would think that.

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Our culture is a feeling culture. Everything seems to be based in the emotions over truth. IF I FEEL this or that is right or false or true, well then, because I FEEL IT, I must be right. Not always so. Our emotions are not always right. Many times, they can be misleading and even lead us down a path that could be quite dangerous and even destructive to our moral and spiritual life.

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Don’t get me wrong, feelings and emotions are good. They are an important part of the make-up of the human nature. They are given to us by God. He experienced them in His Sacred Humanity and so they are sacred, good and even blessed by God if they are drawn or born from a right faith, a certain hope and a perfect charity. I say this because if our thoughts are not firmly rooted in the truth then our emotions won’t be either. Many times, our emotions are reactions to past hurts, past pains and subconscious ways of thinking. However, that’s a topic for another day.

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Marriage is a natural pull on the human heart. It is a good that God created in Eden. It was the last thing that He created when, after creating Eve, He gave them to each other

and declared, “This is why a man shall leave his Father’s house and cling to his wife, so that the two might become one flesh”. God loves marriage because it is the human expression of the interior life of The Trinity. God loves it so much that He did not destroy it at the flood and it was through Abraham’s wife that God would bring forth The Messiah.

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God so loved marriage that He, for centuries before and after the Incarnation, uses it as the greatest expression of His love for us, “As a young man marries a virgin, so shall your builder marry you, As a young man rejoices in his bride, so shall the Lord rejoice in you”. John the Baptist calls himself the “Best Man”, our Lord “The Groom”, and He will work His first miracle at a wedding. our Lord so loved marriage that He raised it to the level of a sacrament and decreed that marriage shall be a sign of Christ’s love for His bride, the Church and the Church’s love for Christ.

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With a vocation so exalted by God, no wonder so many feel drawn to it. It is a noble and holy vocation. And, natural to us. Natural because our hearts are created to love and to be loved. On a purely natural level we see marriage as the answer to this God given desire for love. Giving ourselves 100% to someone and receiving their 100% gift of love is such a holy desire. Especially since it brings with it the gift to be co-creators with God in bringing forth children and rearing them in the love of Christ. What a wonderful supernatural vocation.

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Yes, supernatural vocation. If God calls one to marriage than it is supernatural because it is dependent on grace and is a sacrament. It is a “calling”. It is a way for each spouse to reach the heights of Christian perfection. Their marriage, lived out according to the explanation of St. Paul, will be a great source of grace to the Church and even to the world.

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All this being true, good and beautiful, St. Paul says that it is better not to marry. Paul is not degrading marriage! And, he is not anti-family! He has the higher marriage in mind, which we

shall discuss at another time. Be that as it may, Paul reaches above the symbol of marriage and goes for that which it symbolizes, the union of Christ with His Church, or in this case every soul. Since the incarnation, the human person is now wedded to Christ in baptism. Therefore, a soul consecrated to the Lord takes on the role of the “Bride” or “The Church”, and by their consecration, betrothed themselves to the Groom, Christ.

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The desire for marriage is a good thing and it is a natural desire, but because it is a natural desire built into the very fabric of the human person, we need to first ask if we are called to the priesthood or religious life. Before asking if the Lord is calling us to this wonderful sacrament we need to discern that which is wholly supernatural.

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Our society has everything so backwards. Young people start dating at such a young age that they get emotionally involved and dependent on relationships before they are even old enough to know what a relationship entails. What sick society holds dances for 4th graders, 5th graders and even junior high? How are young people supposed to hear the supernatural call to give themselves to Christ when they are thrust into the world of dating, dancing and relationship drama? Those young people need to be guided in virtue and purity. How will they be able to discern a life of chastity, if since the age of 10 or 11 the world is pushing them into relationships that they are not ready for?

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During my first years in the seminary we had a day of reflection with the great John Cardinal O’Connor of New York. I’ll never forget how he began one of his conferences. Looking intently at all of us seminarians he said: “If you men don’t feel drawn to marriage, if you men don’t desire a wife and family, if you don’t think about being fathers, then get out of my seminary! I need real men!”. I chuckled inside but it was no laughing matter and the good Cardinal did not mean it as a joke.

He was serious. He then invited us to rise above the natural desire for fatherhood and marriage to the supernatural. He told us to see, like Christ, the Church as our bride and every soul we encounter and serve as our sons and daughters.

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I use this story to relate the truth that just because I desire marriage or parenthood doesn’t mean that it is my vocation. The truth being that we must have a deep love for and respect for marriage and parenthood. Not to have a deep love and respect for it would be a terrible mistake. It could be that our love and desire for marriage and parenthood is not because we are called to it, but to ascend to the supernatural marriage and parenthood. To espouse Christ and become the father or mother of thousands could very well be the reason why God formed such a deep love for it in our hearts.

My advice has always been to first discern priesthood or religious life. Put dating on hold. Read up on religious life. Visit the seminary. Speak to the vocation director of the diocese and learn the beauty of the priesthood. Read up on religious communities. Make visits to the ones that speak to your heart. Read the lives of the founders. Remember, if God is not calling you He will make it clear. But, discernment is not just sitting quiet waiting for the Lord to speak. That is part of discernment. the Lord expects us to act. Or, as St. Augustine says: “The God who made you without you, will not save you without you”. We must do our part.

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The reason why we don’t date and discern priesthood or religious life at the same time is because we need to discern with an undivided heart. It could very well be that we are being called but can’t respond with a generous heart because our heart is divided between our call and a person to whom we have entrusted ourselves. If God calls us to the priesthood or religious life it will take an undivided heart so that we can love Him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. So, in order to discern we must discern with an undivided heart.

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The choice of God is not between a person we are dating and the religious vocation. It is God’s choosing for us between the two vocations of priesthood/religious life or marriage. It may turn out that you will marry the person you are dating, or it may not. The choice is between two states in life. And the heart must be free to see and love both vocations and be able to say to the Lord: “Not my will, but thy will be done”. Like our Lord in the garden, you may say those words sweating blood, but they are necessary words. Words which express a detachment from the vocation that I want to the one that the Lord has prepared for me.

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If we step away from dating and truly open our hearts to God we will find the freedom necessary to discern. Having prayed, sought spiritual direction, visited communities, read the lives of the founders and saints, investigated, visited and spoken to religious communities, you should be able to come to the end of your search. At the end, you may find yourself saying, “I love religious life and the priesthood. I see and understand its beauty and its spiritual richness. However, God is calling me to marriage”. Blessed be God! This was the case of St. Thomas More and the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux. They first discerned the call to religious life and in so doing, through the various circumstances, God called them to marriage. Obviously, they were the better spouses, parents and Catholics for having done so.

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Be prepared! At the end of your discernment you may very well discover that God is calling you to Himself. Calling you to “choose the better part”. It could very well happen that you will discover your true vocation. Having set aside your plans and designs you will come to know God’s. You may find out that your call is a call to be vowed, espoused, not to any mere mortal, but to God Himself, to His Church. The beloved of your soul, Jesus Christ, calling you to be a mother, a father, spiritual mother, a spiritual father. Giving life to souls through your life of prayer, penance and apostolate. Whether that apostolate be active ministry or the apostleship of prayer.

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So, I ask you, is your heart divided? Is your heart free? Do you love and respect marriage? Do you love and respect the priesthood as God does? Have you truly freed your heart from the detachment of relationships so that you can with freedom, discern the vocation of priesthood and religious life? God asks for an undivided heart. Is your heart divided? Are you open to whatever God wants?

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Once again, getting married or becoming a priest or religious is really not your telling God what you want for your life. Consider that God may want to be the sole love of your life. He may very well want you for Himself, to belong to Him and Him alone. Because he is God, and such a call is above the natural desire of man, but a supernatural desire, it deserves precedence in our life. By right, we should give first place to the discernment of priesthood and religious life.

 

 

Lectio for Chapter the Third

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Ephesians 4:7-16

But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said,

“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.”

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(In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is he who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love.