In honor of Vocations Awareness Week, I thought I would post a reflection I gave in Laramie, Wyoming a year ago this week. Blessings!
If I were to tell you the full version of my vocation story, you would be held in thrall for around three hours, regaled with a tale that seems at times to be everything from spiritually profound to romantically tragic. But we don’t have that much time, and as I have spent the last week thinking about what to share with you, I have come to the conclusion that how my vocation came about is not nearly as important as why it came about. Not every young person with a vocation to priesthood or religious life is going to fall in love while in discernment and walk forty miles down the shoulder of a busy interstate to win her over, and not every young person is going to have the same powerful spiritual experiences as I have had in past prayer. What every young person is going to experience is the same sense of calling, is going to ask the same question of, “What does God want me to do with my life?” I will tell you.
It is only in the last year and a half of Jesuit novitiate that I have come to understand my own vocation. To give you a little bit of background, I was a student here at the University of Wyoming from the Fall of 2002 until the end of Spring 2004. It was here at the Newman Center that something quite remarkable occurred in my life: I chose to be Catholic. It was here that I decided to keep coming to Mass on Sundays, even without my father waking me up on Sunday mornings; it was now my decision. That decision, so seemingly small at the time, opened the door to a new world of friends and even during my most homesick times I realized that the Mass I attend here is the same Mass my family attends back in Iowa where I am from. The Catholic Church for me, for any Catholic really, is home regardless of where a person is in the whole world.
Choosing to remain Catholic also opened the door to the Search retreat. It was during this retreat, my first, when the small spark of faith within me grew to a little flame. I got a taste of prayer’s power and the great sense of energy and community a group of young Catholic people can foster when they gather in the arms of the ancient faith. I also learned the power of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, something that I used to think very little of before. Now, next to the Eucharist, it is the dearest sacrament in my life.
With the gift of faith and community that this Newman Center gave me, I transferred back to Iowa when I changed majors. There I became involved in another Catholic student center, eventually being hired as a peer minister to work with students in the areas of community life and spirituality. It was also in Iowa that I first began to wonder what it was that I should do with my life, and I knew that God was the only person with any answers. So I began to pray as best I knew how, and not only did God let me know that He was listening to my prayers, but He eventually introduced me to the Society of Jesus. During my time of discernment I sought out a spiritual director, I began asking other priests and religious about their own vocation stories, I kept in touch with the Jesuit vocations director, and I read everything I could on the Jesuits and vocations in general. I went on retreats and vocations experiences as well.
Eventually I came to a crossroads, having to discern between being with the woman I had been waiting to be with for my entire life, or applying to the Society of Jesus. In the end, after a long and heart-wrenching dialogue and experience, the love we both had for God far outweighed our love for each other, but only after a few months of my heart healing was I ready to start filling out my application. As you can see, I was accepted, and now I am nearly halfway done with my second year of Jesuit novitiate. God willing, I will make my vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in August.
When I first entered, I thought that I was simply doing what God wanted me to do, that I was obeying His will. In hindsight, though, I feel that something else entirely was taking place. I made all of the decisions that led to my being here in front of you today, and that is a key aspect of vocation- choice. Vocation is a choice- God would never force you into a vocation. A person’s vocation is a gift one makes of their life to God and to the world, and it is only a gift if it is freely chosen and freely given. How does one freely choose their vocation?
Vocation, for me, is first and foremost about love. All of you, not just you young people, but every single person present must hear this truth and if you ignore everything else I say from here on out, that is fine. God loves you. Vocation is rooted in this truth. Let me expand on this.
In the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, the first contemplation is what is called the First Principal and Foundation. This is the key thing that the rest of the thirty-some days of silence build upon and if you don’t get it, the rest of the retreat will make little sense. It goes like this, “Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. And the other things on the face of the earth are created for man that they may help him in prosecuting the end for which he is created.”
A question you might ask yourself instead of, “What should I do with my life?” or even, “What does God want me to do with my life?” is, “How can I live my life in a way that best allows me to praise, reverence and serve- to LOVE –God?” Vocation, for me, is all about loving God as a response to His loving us. Look at it another way.
Think about everything you are grateful for in your life. Think about everything in the world around you. God labored for six days to create all of this goodness for us, and on the seventh day He rested and even gave us the Sabbath Day that we might rest one day a week and take time to enjoy the creation He lays before us. God has given us everything.
As time went on, God realized that we needed more if we were going to be saved. God had already created everything; what more could He give? He gave us everything else He had- His body, His blood, His Son and His Spirit, and He has always given us His love. Now we have been given everything that can possibly be given; we are unthinkably rich. What about God? What about God’s wants and desires? This is where vocation comes in.
We are beings full of desire and God constantly labors to see that our desires are fulfilled; again, think of everything He has given us! God is all-powerful, all-knowing, eternal and mighty and is rich beyond all reckoning. But there is one thing He treasures above all else that He doesn’t have- our love.
Our love is the only thing God wants and that God does not have and cannot readily possess. He wants desperately to have our love and has given everything He has in order to try and earn it. Vocation is His pursuit of a person’s heart, His way of whispering into a person’s ear a path they could take to journey closer to God in love, to be one with Him for the rest of their life. For most people, vocation comes through meeting that someone you want to spend the rest of your life with. Marriage is a beautiful way to God; two people journeying deeper in their love for God through their love for each other and their children. For some people, vocation simply means living a single and holy life. But for some, vocation is something else, something quite radical.
Marriage, in my mind, is the most natural vocation; it makes sense culturally and biologically. Single-life is not that much more a stretch. Religious life and priesthood goes against all human nature and all cultural expectations, especially here in this country. Yet, for those people who sense a calling from God to this way of life, God tells us that despite all the challenges and unknowns and despite the unnatural, or rather, supernatural aspects of the lifestyle, He knows that our gifts make us uniquely suited for a way of life that denies the self so much so that we might be made available for so much more. We do not give our lives to one other person, we surrender our lives completely to God; our vocation is to lose our life in service of God and others.
Vocation is not about solving the problem of your life, but making a choice that best allows you to use your gifts to love God for the rest of your life. We are created to praise, reverence and serve God. What way of life best allows you to do this?
Vocation invites a person to come into a deeper knowledge of their own heart and how they love. Pedro Arrupe, who was our Superior General following Vatican II, said something that I think describes vocation very well:
“Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love and it will decide everything.”
All the artwork you see up in the domes, yeah, those are all mosaics; not paintings.
