Discernment: a constant purgatory

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.

Abandonment to Jesus (part I)

Do you ever have those times where your prayer is very dry, not as frequent as you would like, or even you have just fallen into some old bad habit; and although there are frequently other times where your prayer is on fire and you seem to have huge growth in your relationship with God, it just seems darn near impossible to become a saint due to the bad times? It’s like this: often, you do everything right and aim everything at becoming a saint, but then there are those times that you fail in this or just struggle with it you think you have to begin the trek back up the mountain all over again.

Well, maybe I am alone. But today I began to think about this a lot as I was reading and meditating on a section of the book, "I Believe in Love", which is a personal retreat based on the teaching of St. Therese of Lisieux. The section is titled Abandonment to Jesus. What hit me right off the bat, and which I constantly try to set my focus on in prayer and then in my daily life, is what Jesus says in scripture (John 15:5) about how without him we can do nothing. And then St. Paul confirms this in a positive address of this abandonment when he writes in his letter to the Philippians, "With you, Jesus, I can do all things." (4:13) This has not only been my desire for the past 5 years of my life, but I have slowly witnessed this transformation occur within my disposition and the truest desire of my heart and soul. Yet, when I had times of dryness in prayer or fell into one bad habit or another and my "rhythm" was thrown off, I felt like I went back to square one. To me it seemed as if I had to begin again in my journey of giving my entire self to Him. What a scary thought! I don't think I ever ended up giving in and assuming it hopeless, but it definitely was extremely daunting. I figured that if I died during those times, or right as I tried to claw my way back out of the hole I seemed to find myself in, that although I may still reach heaven, my desire for sainthood was safe to say out of the question.

All of these thoughts are a hoax laid out by our humanity; we see life like a task, and so we can find ourselves restarting the task when we mess up. Here is where I will enter into the thing we often overlook -- and make sure this sinks in -- salvation is not dependent on us! It is a slap in the face of your Creator to say that He cannot work through the darkness and shine forth His light. It is the arrogance of man to see himself as so important that he can achieve his own sanctity. Christ sanctifies us! He sanctified us through His death on the cross, and if we go to mass, He sanctifies us every day with His body and blood! St. Augustine said in the Summa that the Eucharist transforms our souls into Jesus through love.

Here we can look at this determination for sanctity in a more appropriate light: So when I receive Jesus, do I not become Him? If I go to mass every day and receive Him in the Eucharist, am I not becoming Christ? But wouldn't you say that sometimes you do not feel like Christ? What about the times you fall into sin? Are you not disconnected from Him? It just seems as if some days I am so miserably a sinner that I must have fallen from where I was in Christ's love, and most especially in expressing Christ's love. Let us think more about this! Even through all of this, each day, do we not see things more than ever as He does? Of course! Do you want to serve Him more today than you did yesterday? I am sure you do.

Our issue is that we have mistaken sensible fervor for sanctity. There is a great difference! Sanctity is the disposition of the soul that has life based on graces given to us, as well as from virtues that are infused as gifts from the Holy Spirit. Sensible fervor? That varies. It is on the same level as a feeling. Can we determine our love for others or God's love for us based on the way we feel that day? Of course not! Yes, what we do matters; but our Creator knows of our human frivolities and He looks much more at what we are, His beloved children (and that our souls desire Him), than at the things we do for Him.

So, what does your heart want? Even better, what does your soul want? Mine wants Christ. And so each Communion is used by Christ to grow the seed within our soul. We become more of Christ each time we receive Him in the Eucharist. 

This still leaves the question of why we fall back into sinful habits or even just fall away from a stable prayer life. If I am becoming more like Christ every time I receive Him, why have I not become extremely holy? Why do I feel like I have to restart every time I am not "at the highest of heights" in my journey to sainthood? This is because "we bid Him come, but we do not permit Him to enter." (pg. 83 IBiL) We tell Him with our mouths to enter our house and then He enters souls to make them like Him; but we close the door to our hearts and do not let Him actually take over. (I can only think of the song "Jesus, Take the Wheel" by Carrie Underwood right now, which is unfortunate, because I do not actually like country music)

Abandon yourself to Jesus. I am sure that He is so much more present in you than your humanity would admit. You can love so much more than you think you are capable of because you are trying to love with your love instead of with His love. His love is so much stronger. I pray that each day I am able to see that, even if I have a bad day, even if I am not feeling it 100%, Christ is still present within me and I still can give Him myself and He will love even when I feel like I cannot. Our relationships are not based on feelings. If they are, then they will falter so quickly.

Breaking the Mold

Over the past two weeks or so, I feel as if my purpose in life has been stuck in the mud. I am not okay with where I am, and I truly, deep down want to change and keep moving towards becoming the best version of myself, and to one day be a saint. I want to give God my whole life, to do something incredible, but not for my own credit but for His glory. How easy it is to say! How seemingly fluid it seemed to be going over the past two years, too. Yes, I had (and apparently have) my ups and my downs, but they were very beneficial and usually easy enough to pinpoint. But over these past two weeks, it has been so very difficult to even become motivated to move.

            At the beginning of this break I had time to become refreshed and renewed. The past semester had worn me thin. But the busyness also kept me out of trouble. And by the grace of God, the first week of break was similar in terms of that busyness, but not to the extent where I was completely drained, as I had been the previous months during the semester. And I had thought I was on the cusp of something big – on the brink of fullness; of a final freedom from the bondage that Satan held over my soul. And he was doing so with this sin that kept creeping back, sin that was my last gap between allowing Christ to rule my life instead of allowing myself to do so.

This sin is a sin I have always been told is okay because I desire to avoid it, I desire to be done with it, but I am a young man and that is part of being human and being the age I am. To this I say yes and no. I agree and I disagree. I want to call bull on this concept partially because I think it gives a false sense of urgency to men my age. An urgency that is not present, that it is okay if you are still committing some sin because of your age and gender, and God will pull you out in good time. It especially gives myself this false sense of urgency; and I will not say it has led me to sin, because that is not fair to myself or the priests who have given me this advice, but it has presented a challenge to my conscience and to my very actions because I easily excuse myself from blame by saying things in my mind like, “I am a young man, and it is just something I cannot control” and other such stupid thoughts. Bull. Why? Doesn’t society love to tell us we are just products of our environments and we cannot change things about ourselves? They do, and that is why it upsets me that: 1. I am told I am just a young man and purity is something I cannot control (as well as others can, ex: young women), and 2. I haven’t changed much.

But can we take a minute and look at the saints? Actually, hold off – let’s look at non-saints first, but are people our society glorifies because of their achievements. I want to look at the hundreds, if not thousands of people who we love to hear about, those who have “beaten the odds” or have “made a name for themselves”. Why do we love these people so much, or at least their “success” stories? We love them because it inspires us and shows us that it is possible to break a mold. We love them because unlike us, they didn’t like their situation or the stigma to what they were, so they chose to become what they wanted to be. Now why can’t we all do that? If these ordinary people did it, why can’t we also?

I think it starts with the fact that we are not encouraged enough to do so. And not just encouraged to do so, but on the flip side we are not reprimanded for our lethargy. We are not scrutinized for being who we are and not trying to be who we want to be. I am not saying to yell at the fat kid to lose weight because he should. I am not saying tell people they aren’t good enough or just telling them they straight up suck. I am saying we need to tell kids they can be more, can be better, and can be different. We need to encourage kids to get up and act, and when they choose not to, we need to try and let them see what they are missing out on.

One big problem in our society I see today is that prejudice is not just this judgment we have of other races, ideals, ethnicities, etc. but that it has become a problem with who we are together as people. Differences are being looked down upon instead of praised. Great athletes are praised for their abilities but are mocked for their beliefs, because as a certain race they should believe this or do this. Give me a break! These people already broke the mold, why try to bottle them up more? It is just a jealousy of the rest of society that they are not different enough, are not who they want to be, so why should this guy have everything? One prime example I noticed while watching ESPN the other day: Robert Griffin III, a rookie quarterback for the Washington Redskins, has had an excellent season and has been praised for his athletic ability. But some black ESPN analyst a week or two ago made some pretty bottling comments about RGIII because of who he should be, because he is an African-American. This guy had the nerve to rip on RGIII because RGIII recently had an interview saying he didn’t want to be part of a mold, that he was his own man and he had certain beliefs and really that he just wanted to be seen as a human being and not have to follow some “code” because of his race. Isn’t that what ending slavery was about? Doesn’t African-American society praise Martin Luther King for the same thoughts? But in our culture today, we have been stuck in this place where blacks and whites, although both free, are separate cultures – very little mixing occurs, and when it does it is because “someone betrayed their own”. And this is not just a wall that has been drawn up by whites, in fact I think it has been equally drawn up by blacks. So RGIII finally comes out and says, screw this, I want everyone to know I am a human being first and foremost, and I want to be a human being with all of you; black, white, red, brown, whatever! And then here comes a black man, the first to call RGIII out for not being black, and first to basically say, dude, you are trying to stand on the top of the wall but there is not room up there to stand – jump to one side or the other. RGIII has made a no-mans land, and he wants it to be everybodys land (I want it to be everybodys land).

But the reason I brought this all up is that as a society we have been told we must be the way we are and there is no changing that. If we do change something, it can only be so extreme. Obviously RGIII realizes he will forever have black skin, but he wants us all to realize that we have been so stupid to not see past that for so long. We have been so stupid to not called each other on and encourage each other to break the molds that have been placed on us. I know I am stuck in the mud today partially because of this. I know that I don’t do certain things (and I say certain things) because of my race, my body type, my looks, my religion, etc. when God has called us to be the greatest versions of ourselves so that we may serve Him to the fullest!

So today my biggest problem is this lethargy, this deactivated moment of my very self, of the man I want to be. How can I change that? How can I get back to a daily finding of myself, a daily seeking of a better moment, of the best decision each moment, so that one day I will be completely His? How can I be motivated to not be okay with who I am or where I am? What do I need to just keep becoming who I need to be?!

What I need, is people who also do not want to be stuck where they are, people who do not want to be the same as they were yesterday. I need people around me who are willing to make changes in their life and live not for themselves, but for others. I need to not be alone in my idea. Please join me, but only if you are up for the challenge.