One of the privileges we have as seminarians is going to school visits with either high school or grade school students. It is always a lot of fun to answer their questions about life at seminary and why we want to be priests. But the purpose of our visit is typically to talk about the thing we are currently living and discerning: vocations.
The whole idea of vocations is a buzzword in the world of many young adult Catholics. In many cases, I have met folks who realize God is calling them to a particular way of life, and they become like Nicholas Cage going on some mysterious treasure hunt. While the call of God is indeed mysterious, it does not need to be something that causes distress and anxiety. In fact, these things are not from God. Instead, the reality is that you and I are an eternally loved son or daughter of a Father who desires nothing but the most unimaginable joy for our lives. Quite simply, He delights in us!
And, the good news is, I also have a gift of being able to infallibly tell you your vocation in life.
So, here it goes:
Your vocation in life is…
To be a saint. Nothing more, nothing less.
The reality of God’s calling in our life is fundamentally to bring us into the eternal beatitude of heaven – to be saints. This is the base and foundation of our entire Christian life. Everyone one of us is called to holiness, plain and simple.
So, how do we become holy?
Unfortunately, holiness is not a self-help project. In fact, if you try all by yourself, I can guarantee you will fail.
On the positive side, though, the Father has given his Son to be with you every moment of your life, and even allowed Him to experience death so that even in the grave you are not alone. In other words, Jesus wants to walk with you from your conception all the way to heaven. He wants you to be his saint.
What does this all have to do with discerning a state in life such as priesthood, marriage, or religious life?
Everything.
The call to holiness is primarily a call to friendship with Jesus – to walk with him every step of our lives. In the most fundamental way, Jesus is our vocation. He is the goal itself. It is out of this relationship with Jesus that we are led to a particular state in life. It cannot be otherwise. Our vocation is not a means to finding Jesus. Rather Jesus is the source and destiny of our vocation. Only in Him can we find lasting peace, and only in Him can we be led to our vocation.
In sum, God has called us to extraordinary freedom as his sons and daughters – not to a spirit of fear and timidity. So, do not become discouraged with the process called discernment. Even if things seem cloudy and uncertain, you have a loving Father who sent His Son to guide you back home.
When I was a young man in college, I went through what most young men go through – the dating scene. As it goes, I found some young women who were attractive, and I sought to gain their attention. I would take them out for ice cream, or go to a movie, or whatever else seemed like a decent date. Then would follow the entire digital dismay of timely text messages and Facebook likes, followed by an impossible discernment of whether this person likedme or not. Inevitably, after a few dates, there was then the awkwardness of defining the relationship – Are we a couple? Or just friends? Are we just talking? (whatever that means – I think we all talk to dozens of people every day!) In short, the dating scene as I knew it was one of the most confusing places to be – and for a Catholic man who was desiring to live a life of virtue and sanctity – it made the discernment of my vocation nearly impossible.
Then, I met a young woman during my senior year who flipped that on its head. After I was clear with her that I was interested in dating her, we sat down and had a conversation about the purpose, or telos,of our relationship. She was a committed and faithful Catholic woman, and I was striving to live a life of holiness as well. As we reflected on the nature of our relationship – it very quickly became clear that our relationship should be aimed at what all relationships should be aimed at – heaven. In other words, the relationship I had with her was most fundamentally no different than the relationship I was to have with any other person on planet earth – a relationship of love – in which the salvation of the other person is placed at the forefront.
After that discussion, it seemed everything had changed in our relationship. No longer was there the anxiety about whether she liked a picture I had posted on Facebook or the urgency to send so many text messages in a day. Most importantly, there was never the awkward decision when it was appropriate to say those three little words: “I love you.” Instead, when we placed the salvation of the other at the forefront, it was a no brainer – as Christians we have no other choice but to love each other.
Now, all of this is not to say that our relationship was all rainbows and butterflies after we realized our purpose. In fact, it turned into one of the most painful experiences of my life. After we had been engaged for nearly an entire year and were mere months away from our wedding – an incessant restlessness continued to stir in my heart. Though I had thought about priesthood previously, the thought became unshakeable. And so, I was faced with the gut-wrenching decision to bring this up with my fiancée.
After many tears were shed and sobs shared, we decided to call off our wedding. Quite literally, one of the most painful experiences of our lives. But in the midst of that unforgettable conversation on a warm July afternoon, our conversation ended with three of the most surprising words for such a moment: “I love you.” In spite of the ending of our engagement and plans for marriage – our fundamental disposition did not change. We still desired the will of God and each other’s salvation above everything else.
As I write this now, I am three years into my seminary formation and was just recently formally declared a candidate for holy orders. Nonetheless, I still love my ex-fiancée. Obviously, I have no intention of marrying her and we are not romantically involved with each other – but I hope with the entirety of my being to see her in heaven someday. Though we talk very rarely, I pray for her quite often. I have offered many Mass intentions on her behalf, and I look forward to the day when I am a priest who is able to bring her the means of salvation through the sacraments. In short, though she is not my particular bride, she is very much a part of the Bride of Christ (the Church) – and I hope to celebrate with her in unending joy at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.
So – why do I share this story with all of you? Quite simply, because I wish I would have known all of this back when I first started on the dating scene. As Catholic men, it is imperative that we love the women we date even before we go out with them for the first time. As St. John Paul II made abundantly clear in his theology of the body, God has assigned the dignity of every woman as the duty of every man[1]. Whether we are married to a particular woman for 75 years, or called to lifelong celibate chastity, we must seek the salvation every woman we meet – even those we date.
The benefits of this simple principle are many. For instance, I found that when love of the other is put first, there was no longer the cat-and-mouse game of who likes who more or less. Likewise, the questions regarding purity and chastity became much clearer. If I’m actually seeking to love someone by placing their salvation first, I no longer asked the question “How far is too far?” Instead, I began to think of ways to protect and uphold the dignity of my significant other as my chief duty and delight. And as we grew in purity, the beatitude regarding the pure of heart truly seeing God (see Mt. 5:8) became reified. In short, by loving the other person first, purity ensues, and the will of God becomes much clearer.
It seems to be the most obvious thing for a Catholic man, but when it comes to romantic relationships, the primacy of love often seems to go out the window. However, I can assure you if we enter into any relationship with the primacy of love, we will soon find ourselves being configured to Christ Himself who is both Bridegroom and High Priest. While we will undoubtedly be wounded as He was, we will also undoubtedly be welcomed into His Father’s arms. And all of this does not have to wait only for the life to come. In fact, if we live in the primacy of love now, we can already begin to sing with the great multitude of heaven: “Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready (Rev. 19:7).”
This post originally was written for the folks at Those Catholic Men. It can be found here.
A group of seminarians from Fort Wayne-South Bend who formally declared their intent to pursue Holy Orders
As 2018 came to an end, and we begin 2019, it was not a glamorous year for the priesthood. In fact, it was one of the most devastating, humiliating, and repulsive years for priests. Through the heinous and unconscionable actions of some clerics, simply wearing a Roman collar in public often gets stares as if I were an accomplice to a network of monstrous criminals.
And in spite of it all – no, because of it all – I stillwant to be a priest.
At its core, my vocation is singly centered on one thing – a friendship with Christ. Despite my weakness, sinfulness, and unworthiness, Christ reached down and chose me for His own in the waters of baptism. He has nourished me daily in the Eucharist, strengthened me with His Spirit in Confirmation, healed me with His anointing, and continues to bind up my wounds in the sacrament of penance.
Friendship, at its deepest roots, changes everything. The experience of friendship is one of the most marvelous experiences of life. I would argue that it often goes beyond human expression. Just take a second and try to explain your best friendship to someone else. It’s pretty difficult, isn’t it? Yet – I do think we can say a few things about friendship.
First, friendship is a real experience borne out of an encounter. When we meet some one who becomes a friend, there is something remarkably different about that encounter. In the highest forms of friendship, the friend sees the other as more important than himself. A perfect example of this is the sacrificial nature of a husband and wife. At some point, both bride and groom recognize that the other was worth laying down their entire life. So, too, did the divine Bridegroom do for me. In spite of my infidelity and sinfulness, Christ still chose to befriend me – at the cost of His own life.
Secondly, friendship is built upon trust and belief in the other. Once I knew the friendship of Christ, I started to take seriously His promises. While I could do anything with my life, it is hard for me not to be moved by Christ’s words in John 6:53: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” If this is true, and because of my friendship with Christ I believe it is, it seems that the fullness of life is inseparable from Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist. In other words, without a priest, there is no Eucharist. And without the Eucharist, there is no life.
This brings me to the final point of friendship – it is life-giving and inviting. Friends, rather than becoming isolated from others, display a certain joy that is full of life and inviting. So, too, with Christ. His friendship has called me out of the darkness of my sin, filled me with the warmth of His love, and given me a desire to share that divine joy with others.
In short, I cannot deny my own lived experience and encounter with Christ. I am a sinner. I am unworthy. Whether in spite of it, or precisely in order to draw me out of it – Christ chose to befriend me. He has given me a new life, brought me abiding joy, and promises me eternal life – and I trust him. Thus, it only seems reasonable to continue to live in this friendship and to invite others to it. For it is only in the friendship that one person becomes like the other. For the priest, this means becoming like the Great High Priest and Savior – Jesus Christ. And only by abiding in this friendship will the face of the priesthood be properly restored.
One of my favorite aspects of seminary life is one that took me a long time to get used to: that I live in the same house as Jesus in the Eucharist. This is perhaps one of the easiest parts of seminary life to let become ordinary and to slip under the radar of active thought and appreciation. But the fact remains, while at the seminary I have the awesome privilege of living in the true presence of Jesus.
This reality had me thinking about what friendship with Christ really looks like. Generally, someone spends a lot of time in the presence of friends, and in seminary we spend (by choice, and by the fact of living there) a lot of time in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. So often, friendship itself, let alone friendship with Christ, is not understood well. It seems to fall apart into either a mutual admiration society or an equal-exchange club.
Friendship with Christ is neither about an equal-exchange club, where I do some nice deeds for Jesus and he gets me into heaven (real friends aren’t keeping score), nor is it a mutual admiration society, where we spend countless hours giving undeserved or useless praise to one another. Friendship with the person of Jesus is a call to a love that exchanges everything about oneself with the friend. Friends make sacrifices for each other and are willing to drop everything for one another. Nothing about us can be hidden from good, long-time friends, and so it should be in our friendship with Christ.
Friends don’t look at each other, they look at a common goal. C.S. Lewis once said of friendship, “Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.” Part of our relationship with God should be spent looking face to face as lover and beloved, but we shouldn’t neglect the aspect of our relationship that calls us to authentic friendship. The reality is that for most Catholics, spending copious amounts of time in front of the Blessed Sacrament is not possible, and even might betray their vocational duties to their family. Therefore, friendship is something that must be intentionally cultivated, because friendship requires the knowledge that Jesus is by your side, with you, in all things, even when you are not beholding his presence. This means that our friendship with Christ can be built when we simply recognize his presence in all moments of our day, and spend those moments in the knowledge that he is with us as we work, play, relax, etc. Invite him to come into your struggles, joys, hopes, fears, etc. A good friend doesn’t really need anything from you, he just wants you.
In this friendship, this life lived with Christ, it is really easy to become caught up in our “status.” This can become a huge impediment to progress in our friendship with Christ, and it is a problem that I have noticed those discerning priesthood can be especially susceptible to. It can really put the brakes on journeying toward holiness. In seminary we sometimes term this the “super-discerner.” Imagine a friend who, every time you spend time with them, is constantly asking or worrying about where your friendship stands. We have to make sure that our relationship with the person of Jesus Christ is lived, not constantly reflected upon. Don’t get me wrong, we should take moments of prayer to reflect on where we are and how the Lord has been with us and moved us, but if that is the only thing we do when we pray, our friendship will not grow.
One of the most important aspects of this friendship to keep in mind is that a friendship must be lived in the present moment and in the first-person perspective. Often, we try to make excuses for our actions and others’ by acting as though we are the omniscient third-person narrator of life. We have to remember that God is the omniscient third-person, and we are the first-person character in our lives. That means, to really grow in friendship, we must live it and trust in the Lord. This frees us from worrying and anxiety so that we can live this awesome life with and for the Lord, especially with him as our closest friend. May God give us the wisdom and strength to invite him into our lives and cultivate a friendship that will challenge us to grow in holiness!
This post originally appeared in Today’s Catholic.
A Voice in the Wilderness 