That special something…

Today I would like to return again to the subject of discernment. In my previous post I wrote about some of the things I’ve wrestled with during my current discernment process. I explained that I find the call to be holy and the call to Holy Orders rather difficult to distinguish from one another and I expressed my frustration that many people seem to assume that the former necessarily implies the latter….

 

Professional Counseling

Those who become monks and nuns take vows of (1) poverty, (2) chastity and (3) obedience. These three are known as the Evangelical Counsels. I’ve found that a lot of discernment material, when you really boil it down, focuses upon these three areas. The problem is that the Church teaches that all Christians are called to live out these counsels!

“Christ proposes the evangelical counsels, in their great variety, to every disciple”
– Catechism of the Catholic Church, #915

I guess this does affirm something that I’ve thought for some time – that there are many common threads which run through all the vocations. There are also common graces which all people are reliant upon to live out their vocation, regardless of what that vocation might be.

This means that whether you are a monk, priest, husband or single, you are called to live out the evangelical counsel of, for example, poverty. However, each person is called to live out this counsel in his given state of life. This means that what the virtue of poverty looks like in the life of a monk is rather different from that of a priest, a husband or someone who is single.

The problem is therefore, if everyone is called to live out these counsels in their given state of life, what determines that “given state of life”?

One answer I’ve heard is that it’s a matter of degree.  So, for example, if you feel called to live out these counsels in the most radical way possible, you’re called to be a monk. As explanations go, it’s not bad, but I don’t find it particularly satisfying…

 

The X-Factor

Over the last few months I’ve heard many discernment stories from people in every state of life and I have noticed one commonality between all these stories…

Many of these people went through dedicated periods of discernment much as I am doing. They spoke to married couples, priests and religious to help them in their discernment. They received spiritual direction. They had several meetings with a vocations director. They took the surveys and read the discernment books. Some of these activities they found helpful, others less so.

However, the commonality between all the stories that I’ve heard is that, somewhere along the line, they felt something draw them towards their ultimate vocation. For some it was a great event, but for many it was something small, like a seemingly insignificant comment from a friend. This “something” was personal and, to be fair, fairly subjective. This “something” isn’t so much worked out, but experienced and responded to. It seems to me that the tools of discernment and much of the discernment process itself is the creating of the time and space for this to happen and cultivating the disposition to recognise this “something” when it occurs.

With that in mind, next time I’ll discuss some of the images of discernment which have found helpful. As usual please, thoughts, arguments and limericks in the Comment Box below…