Today is the 61st annual World Day of Prayer for Vocations to the vowed religious life and to the priesthood. In the preface to The Ear of the Heart former actress Dolores Hart, now Mother Dolores Hart, a cloistered nun of the Abbey of Regina Laudis since 1963, gives an insightful and realistic definition of the vocation to religious life: "Many people don't understand the difference between a vocation and your own idea about something. A vocation is a call--one you don't necessarily want. The only thing I ever wanted to be was an actress. But I was called by God." She might have added that it is not easy.
She described her first night in the monastery: "I got into bed. Suddenly I was consumed with overwhelming loneliness . . . I lay awake for a long time. . . I could touch the opposite wall with my hand. I lay there, terrified by the enormity of the step I had taken. I began praying . . . I cried myself to sleep that night. I would cry myself to sleep every night for the next three years."
Many of us can identify with that sense of isolation and the enormity of the step, a realization that only sinks in after the door of the novitiate closes behind us and we ask “What have I done?” The question does not disappear upon pronouncing vows be they first or final.
Vocation comes from the Latin root: Voco, vocare, vocatus. To call. To name. To summon. To invite. To challenge. These meanings overlap but each has unique implications that may come to the fore as we consider what a vocation is.
August 24 of this year will mark 27 years since I entered the Jesuit novitiate after several years of discernment. June 9 will mark 17 years since ordination as priest. But June 8 of this year will be very special. The long story version.
On the Friday before Thanksgiving 1992 George Murray, SJ, MD and I were having coffee after rounds at Mass General. At some point he cleared his throat and said, “I have to ask you a question. You don’t have to answer but I have to ask. Have you ever thought of becoming a Jesuit?” I had been thinking for about a year. We chatted a bit. Four years later he picked me up at Logan Airport and dropped me off at the novitiate.
Flash forward to 2004. At the suggestion of Jesuit Fr. Ignatius Hung Wan-liu, a long time friend, I met Kao Chia-yang, a Taiwanese grad student at Georgetown. After knowing him for a year and having many meals together at the Jesuit residence, I took him out to lunch—a Taiwanese restaurant too. There was an agenda.
On the return trip and with a very dry mouth, I did my best imitation of George’s question. Chia-yang was thinking. No one had ever asked and no one knew. On June 8 I will be at Fordham University Chapel to vest him at his ordination as a Jesuit priest as George did for me 17 years plus one day previously. There will definitely be photos though I will not be taking them.
Vocation stories, the narratives of what brought a man or woman to enter, are unique to each narrator. Some of the stories proceeded smoothly whereas others were marked by agonizing doubts, fits and starts, and almost paralyzing uncertainty.
Most vocations do not attract the kind of attention that Dolores Hart’s did back in 1963. But even at the usual levels of anonymity, not all family and friends are pleased or supportive. The majority seem to support the decision or the become supportive with time, but there are exceptions. Indeed, the sister of one monk whom I know has refused to visit him in the 25 years he has been in the monastery despite living an hour or two away.
A religious vocation takes time to reveal itself. It also takes a long time after entering before a man or woman is to ready to make a lifelong commitment. Only after years of prayer, testing, self-examination, observing, and being observed can one be ready for that final lifelong commitment. The course is not always easy. Nor is living in community.
The late Mother Dorcas Roselund, OSB also a nun of Regina Laudis, entered after practicing pediatric gastroenterology. A small woman, who had a crushing handshake, she described the challenges of living in a monastic community as “The new martyrdom” explaining that “they used to throw Christians to the lions. Now they make us live together." She got that right.
Despite the drawbacks, the losses and the closing of certain possibilities that accompany the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, many of us who have lived them for years can imagine no other way of life. But it takes a while to figure that part out.
Two elements are crucial for vocations to the vowed religious life or priesthood. The first is prayer, prayer for vocations, prayer for those discerning vocations, and prayer for those who are living their vocations. The second is to ask and to listen. It is important that another person ask and then listen to the response. Discernment can be lonely. Those who are willing to listen diminish that loneliness.
That other may be a parent or grandparent who sees something, a friend who detects a spark, or a member of a religious order who has a gut feeling that needs to be explored.
Someone needs to ask the simple question, "Are you thinking of entering religious life?" “Are you thinking of becoming a priest?” and then listen to the answer. If the answer is yes, don’t offer the usual counter-arguments such as the ever popular “you would make a terrific parent.” Ask "what brings you to this decision?" "have you begun the process?" And then listen to the answers. But, never help make the decisionif the young man or woman asks “Should I enter or not?” That is between the individual and God, no one else dare interfere with that dialog.
And pray that the young—or even not so young—man or women, will say with Mary,
Fiat mihi secundum tuum.
“May it be done to me according to your will.”
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Photos were taken at the University of Melbourne during the one free week we had during tertianship. Melbourne is the second oldest university in Australia, founded in 1853, two years before Penn State. Only had one afternoon wandering there but it was great.
Fr. Jack, SJ, MD
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