Vocation.
Vocation.
Vocation.
Marriage.
Vocation.
Vocation.
Priesthood.
Vocation.
Vocation.
Monk.
Vocation.
Vocation.
Missionary.
Vocation.
Vocation.
Vocation.
Yeah, that is basically where my thoughts and prayers dwell 25-75% of the time. Okay, that is a big range; but I am trying to take it like it is each day -- varying a lot. Even last night I dreamt of getting married, and strangely enough it was an arranged marriage. At first I was like, what!? and then I thought about it and was like, "hey, she's pretty, and who knows if I will ever actually meet someone; why not?" And then today I have been desiring so deeply to be left in peace to pray and think, and I picked up my breviary a moment ago and wished I was a monk (at least some of the time... if only that was a thing, being a monk now and again). On Christmas I was really interested in becoming a priest so that I may minister to my flock as a shepherd is supposed to.
Each day, each moment even, my mind and heart move from one vocation to the next. Where will it be in say, a week? A month? A year? Who knows. What I do know, is that discernment and waiting for your calling is not very fun. I even recall someone one time telling me and a group of young adults that we were in "discernment heaven" right now; all I could think was, "heaven? I dunno about you, but I hope this is not what heaven is like. No, I am in discernment purgatory." So how do we make it through this purgatory? How do we wait to be called?
Perhaps a year or so ago, some friends of mine introduced me to talks by this priest named Fr. Michael Schmitz (He is a chaplain for the University of Minnesota - Duluth Newman Center). Since then, I have been downloading his homilies on iTunes and listening to them frequently. He is a beautiful speaker, and almost every homily changes the way I look at some aspect of life. I just listened to the one he posted of his homily from this past Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent. If you are interested in listening to the homily yourself, you can find it on iTunes (search UMD Newman) or listen to it here:
In this homily, Fr. Mike talks about waiting. He brought up how we are very impatient people. Sometimes, we even will take a longer route just because we cannot wait. For example: maybe you are sitting in traffic, and you cannot wait; so you drive around some cars and hop off the highway to take a detour. The distance that it takes using the detour will make the overall trip last about ten minutes longer, but it is worth it if you don't have to wait in traffic.
Is this you? I know it is me. His point is not to say that you are a bad person for doing this. He is only trying to make a comparison between this and our lives. We hate waiting. We want to know now! And Fr. Mike talked about his own vocational call, and how hard it was to wait.
For those of us who believe God has a purpose for us and our lives, we want to serve Him now. Unfortunately, just as Fr. Mike struggled to wait for his vocation, praying each day for ten years, "Lord, tell me what my vocation is; I am ready!", we do this and forget that we are supposed to serve Him now... just not in the way we think. I know his struggle -- I have had the exact same prayer for the last few years of my own life, and I constantly say, "Lord, just tell me what you want me to do; I am ready now!" Yet we miss that the most important part of life is not the goal, but it is what we do to achieve the goal. The most important part of life and the best way to serve God is to grow into the person He has called you to be! This is not to say we do not have a specific vocation, but that even when you reach that vocation, if you stop trying to grow you have failed God. There are plenty of priests, brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers who have their lifelong vocation, yet are failing to grow. So we must desire for our vocation, yes; but realize that vocation is just a goal, and we must remain focused on what we do right now to grow into the person who can take on that vocation.
God tells us things when He is ready to tell us, not when we think we are ready. I may pray to God for my vocation, always stating that I am ready to hear it, but in humility accepting that He knows when I am truly ready.
May God grant you patience in waiting for your vocational call, and when He calls you that you will be ready and will listen. And may we always continue to grow, and strive to sanctify ourselves as well as our neighbors in everything that we do.
