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Reflection

Deception in Discernment

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The following essay by Br. Gabriel Torretta, O.P.,  first appeared in Dominicana 60:1 (Spring 2011), 7-9, and it and was recently reprinted in its online edition. We reprint it here because of the excellent insights it provides on the subject of vocational discernment.

If you’ve ever thought about a priestly or religious vocation, perhaps this prayer has passed your lips: “God, if it’s your will that I do this, just give me a sign!” The prayer is easy, natural, and ubiquitous among those ‘discerning.’ But this little prayer may also be the single easiest way to short-circuit a vocation and leave a man dead on the waters of life.

The problem with this prayer is that it pits God’s will against mine, as two discrete entities, one of which must give way to the other. Will looks like a zero-sum game: if I win, God loses, and if I lose, God wins. The danger is that when I compete with God, whoever wins, I lose.

Moreover, the prayer assumes that God’s will is an inscrutable mystery that I must implore Him to reveal. My will bears no sure relation to God’s, and I have no way of knowing if my desires are really holy or just selfish. My desire and my will are like a mercury thermometer with all the numbers rubbed off; I could be edging toward spiritual hypothermia or burning with zeal, but I’ll never know unless God puts the numbers back on. As a result, I have to ask God to give me extraordinary signs so that I can know what to do and how to do it.

But asking for signs from God is a dangerous endeavor. More often than not, “God give me a sign” really means “God, do what I tell you,” or “Give me the kind of sign I want you to give.” Jesus himself addresses this problem in the Gospels; after a series of remarkable miracles and authoritative teachings, the disbelieving scribes and Pharisees tell Jesus, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You,” to which Jesus responds, “An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet” (Mt 12:38-39; cf. Mk 8:11-12, Lk 11:29). The question betrays the blindness of the questioners, because Jesus’ entire life is the sign they claim to be looking for. The Pharisees refuse to observe the reality unfolding before them and instead ask for a sign on their own terms. The honest men among the Pharisees may have asked the question in earnest, hoping that God would help them decide whether or not to follow Jesus. But their purported ardor for God’s will blinded them to the marvelous ways God was actually working in their lives.

This is the blindness of moralism. The moralist ‘discerns’ as if to wrest the secret of God’s will out of His hands by brute force; dashing from one spiritual program to another and from one vocation event to the next, he pours out novenas, rosaries, and mass intentions, begging God to reveal the mystery of his vocation. All the while the moralist ignores the actual signs God has been pouring into his heart. For God’s will is not radically opposed to my will; rather, God’s will works through mine, moving it by grace to respond to Him with a total gift of love. Jesus spoke of this to the great Dominican mystic St. Catherine of Siena after a period of spiritual darkness: “Your will is a sign to you that I am there, since I would not be within you by grace if you had an evil will” (Letter T221/G152). Formed by a life lived with God, my will can be the signpost by which God directs me where He wants me to go.

Vocation is not a shell game in which I have to outwit God and find the perfect life He has hidden among all the options in the world. Vocation is a call of love to love. God moves our hearts to love Him, to answer the one, universal call to holiness. The Christian’s task is to respond to that love concretely with the complete gift of himself. To give himself utterly, he needs the honesty, generosity, wisdom, and prudence that come from God, for which he must pray. Then, when his heart burns with a specific desire to love God with this woman, or this religious order, or in this diocese, then he decides and commits himself irrevocably into God’s hands. This is the mystery of vocation. This is the mystery of love.

General interest

Israel’s Hope

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Earlier this month, fittingly on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary,  His Excellency Edward J. Slattery, Bishop of Tulsa, established the Daughters of Mary, Mother of Israel’s Hope as a Public Association of the Faithful, in view of their becoming an Institute of Consecrated Life.

The foundress of the community, Rosalind Moss, is a noted convert from Judaism who is well-known in the Catholic world through her work with EWTN and Catholic Answers.

In religion, Rosalind Moss is now Mother Miriam of the Lamb of God. On this happy occasion, she received the traditional Benedictine habit, given that the Daughters of Mary, Mother of Israel’s Hope have begun to follow the age-old Rule of Saint Benedict.

For more on this wonderful story, click here.

News

Building the Church on–and in–the “Rock”

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architectural drawing of new House of Formation in Little Rock

The former convent at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Little Rock, Arkansas will once again be a place to support religious vocations.

Last month, Bishop Anthony B. Taylor announced that the Diocese of Little Rock will be establishing a new House of Formation for current and potential seminarians at the Sisters of Mercy convent, which was used for religious education classes and parish offices until 2009. Msgr. Scott Friend, vocations director, said the house, slated to open next year, will have bedrooms for ten seminarians or discerners, two priest apartments, kitchen, meeting room/library, dining room, common area and chapel.
He also said that the House of Formation will have a constant presence in the lives of Catholics in the area, especially at Good Counsel. Instead of being photographs on a vocations poster, the men will be present at parish and diocesan events. He said this will help continue to foster a “culture of vocations” in Little Rock.

General interest

Fr. Neuhaus and the Priestly Vocation

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Fr. Raymond de Souza offered a fitting tribute to the late Fr. Richard Neuhaus at the First Things blog in honor of the 20th anniversary of Fr. Neuhaus’ ordination as a Catholic priest. His ordination took place at St. Joseph Seminary in Dunwoodie in 1991, a year after his reception into full communion with the Catholic Church.

Fr. de Souza noted that Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York was present at Dunwoodie on the eve of the anniversary to kick off the new academic year, and he drew lessons from Fr. Neuhaus’ remarkable life.

“Few of you will have a life as public at Father Neuhaus had,” Archbishop Dolan said. “But we can all learn from him. The key to his life as a Christian disciple was that he always did his prayers in the morning before reading The New York Times. Prayer before penance, he would say!”

Fr. Neuhaus understood that holiness is an urgent matter for all. Therefore, he stressed that seminary and the priesthood ought to be a pilgrimage toward holiness. The long road of fidelity—of holiness—begins now. Father Neuhaus was fond of saying that the solution to our crises in the Church is fidelity, fidelity, fidelity!

Our first response to the spiritual and moral crises of our time must be our daily pursuit of holiness.

Resources

Light of the Nations

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This Saturday, September 17, 2011, the Institute on Religious Life is pleased to present a day of recollection for priests, religious, and laity at the Marytown Retreat and Conference Center in Libertyville, IL.

The theme for the day of recollection is “Light of the Nations: The Specific Role of Consecrated Religious in the Life and Mission of the Church.”

Fr. Brian Mullady, O.P. will offer reflections on Vatican II’s rich yet often misunderstood teachings on consecrated life. He will show that Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) provides the blueprint for the authentic renewal of the Church in general, and of consecrated life in particular.

Only by closely studying and then putting into practice these teachings can consecrated men and women learn to embrace a life of perfect charity after the manner in which Christ practiced it, and thereby allow themselves to serve as eschatological witnesses of the kingdom.

Fr. Mullady is a nationally known Dominican priest, retreat master, and spiritual director, and he serves as the theological consultant to the Institute on Religious Life. Father also teaches at Holy Apostles Seminary, writes for Homiletic and Pastoral Review and Religious Life magazines, and frequently appears on Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN).

To register for the event, or for more information, click here.

General interest

Missionaries Find Faith in Vietnam

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The September 9, 2011 edition of the Rhode Island Catholic included this uplifting article about Greenville, RI pastor Fr. Francis Santilli and one of his parishioners, Donald Turbitt, who just returned from a missionary trip to Vietnam.

The mission trip was coordinated by Turbitt, the Vietnam coordinator for Renewal Ministries, Inc., an Indiana-based international nonprofit dedicated to fostering renewal and evangelization in the Catholic Church in 25 countries throughout the world.

Father Santilli and Mr. Turbitt were able to minister to seminarians as well as families during their visit, where they found a real hunger for the faith despite government opposition. They also visited convents belonging to the Lovers of the Holy Cross, a community of religious sisters dedicated to working with the poor, handicapped, and children.

The missionaries were even blessed to attend the final profession of eleven sisters during an early morning Mass in Phat Diem.

“Families are deeply honored if one of their children is in religious life or the priesthood,” Father Santilli noted. He added that the church is the “center of life” for the faithful in Vietnam.

General interest

Vocation, Anyone?

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The New York Times recently ran a feature article on Fr. Paul Arinze, a Nigerian-born priest who serves as vocation director for the Diocese of Madison. In his “spare time,” Fr. Paul serves is a tennis umpire who has worked at Wimbledon and, most recently, at the U.S. Open.

He doesn’t seem to be neglecting his “day job,” though. Madison projects that it will ordain 26 men between 2012 and 2019, and the diocese is welcoming a record ten seminarians for the 2011-12 academic year.

General interest

New Video on French Religious Foundress Highlights Virtue in the Face of Family Difficulties

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At the age of 28, Jane de Chantal, a French noblewoman, was faced with the difficult task of getting beyond her husband’s accidental death and raising five children. Beyond that, she was compelled to live at her father-in-law’s estate and  put up with his irritations.

A very devout woman, she then met St. Francis de Sales and the two formed a lifelong friendship. Francis confided to Jane his desire to found a religious order that would be welcoming to women who seek a deep relationship with God, but who for one reason or another could not live with the physical rigors of traditional religious life.

In 1610, the two officially established the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary. Before she died, St. Jane de Chantal founded 86 houses of the Visitation.

All of this is recounted in a new video on the life of St. Jane de Chantal, which has been viewed over two thousand times on Gloria.TV in the first week of its debut.

The video was produced by VocationPromotion.com for the Second Federation of the Visitation in the United States and is featured on the website www.VisitationSpirit.org.

General interest

New Video on Redeeming Medieval Captives Goes Viral

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Offering one’s life in exchange for another Christian whose faith is in danger is certainly a noble cause. Maybe that’s why a new video on the history of a men’s order founded to do just that is attracting so much attention.

The nine-minute video, “Redeeming Medieval Captives–The Story of The Order of Mercy,” has gone viral on the Catholic video website Gloria.TV, with more than 2,000 views this week.

The nine-minute video explains the origins of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy, complete with period paintings and drawings depicting 13th century ships, ancient drawings of men captured by Muslims, as well as prayerful modern-day Mercedarian friars.

Quoting the Mercedarians’ official historical record, the video says, “The real risk of captivity for a Christian captive in the power of the Saracens was the danger of renouncing the true faith. . . . The very circumstances of captivity were a real, ongoing and serious temptation for Christians whose faith was not very strong.”

Find out what experience motivated St. Peter Nolasco to found the Order by viewing the video and visiting the  Order of Mercy site.

News

On the Road Again

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The “Running Nuns” of St. Charles Children’s Home in Rochester, New Hampshire are holding their 15th Annual Labor Day 5k Road Race this Labor Day.

The road race fundraiser has helped the sisters provide hundreds of children with the guidance, therapy, and love they need to prepare them for life with new families. All proceeds of the road race go to benefit the children at the St. Charles Children’s Home.