An Open Letter to All Those I’ve Poked, Prodded, Nudged or Otherwise Nagged about the Possibility of Having a Religious Vocation

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!

When I ask people if they’ve ever thought about religious life, I get a lot of questions. Some of them are more explicit than others. Probably the most common one is, “Why me?” This is usually meant in two senses: 1) “Why would God call me to religious life? 2) “WHY GOD?! WHY DID YOU SIC JOE ON ME?!”

I hope to answer these questions in the course of this blog post.

First, “Why you?” If you want to get to the root of that problem, take it up with God. But why would I suggest it to you? For a long time, I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was. I thought maybe just as Padre Pio gave off the odor of sanctity, maybe people with vocations gave off an odor too. I also wondered if maybe it was just a sixth spiritual sense that starting tingling in the presence of someone who was priest or nun material. (To my credit, I was usually fairly accurate.) But after years of taking my bets on the future seminarians of America, I think I’ve identified what it is and it's very simple: I sense that there’s a deeper than ordinary love of God stirring in your heart.

Now, the second question you’re probably wondering is, “Why is this vocational stalker writing to me?” Well, a few reasons. First, I know that more often than not, there’s more stirring in your heart than you’re willing to publicly admit. Congratulations, you don’t have to admit anything to anybody in the course of reading this blog post. No vocations director is going to pop out of your computer screen, a screen shot will not be published in your school newspaper for your girlfriend to see, nor will strange men dressed in pantaloons and armed with halberds be appearing at your door any time soon to escort you to the seminary. (If you’re thinking about becoming a nun, transpose that last sentence to match your gender.) Rest easy, the social pressures of discerning a vocation do not apply here.

Second, if you are thinking about the priesthood or religious life, I know it’s not an easy process. I know it can be confusing, isolating, intimidating, and also exciting, joy-filled and mysterious. I’ve been there for ten years (not all by choice either.)

So why am I writing? If you’re not discerning a vocation, I hope it will help shed some light on how ordinary people turn into priests and nuns. If you are discerning a vocation, I hope to let you know that you’re not crazy, you’re not alone, and that you’re embarking on a greater adventure than you’ve ever known, filled with joy the likes of which you can only imagine.

So if I’ve nagged you about a vocation (even if I haven’t, I’m praying for a lot more of you than I’ve nagged) and it’s crossed your mind at least once, here are some thoughts that I hope will help you discern.

Thought One:

It’s A Lot Simpler than You Think

When people say they’re discerning a religious vocation, it’s interesting to see what they mean by it. For a lot of people, discerning a vocation is like doing astrology. They think their destiny is written in the stars. If they carefully chart the alignment of patterns, events, and strange coincidences in their life, they will be able to unlock God’s great master plan for their life. If they're lucky, a voice will eventually boom down from Heaven and give them specific instructions, but if they do their job right now, they should be able to track the invisible hand of God well before then. Thus when the planets are clearly aligned, they will know for certain whether they are being called to the chaste single life, married life, or religious life. How do I know this goes on? I was one of them.

One thing I had right was that this call to religious life didn’t come from me. It wasn’t like any ordinary career where my choice to become say a lawyer was based purely on my likes and dislikes. (And a lawyer would be to my tastes: I'm naturally stubborn, inclined to argument, I like money, I like splitting hairs, etc.) But in discerning a vocation, God was drawing me towards things that instinctively I shrunk away from. It’s not natural for humans to desire poverty and it certainly wasn’t natural for me to want to submit my will to a religious superior. But that’s exactly what was happening. This was all clearly supernatural, none of it was coming from me, which meant that God was up to something. I figured that if God was at the wheel, all I had to do was unlock that great master plan of His and follow the instructions from there.

Ten years of discerning a vocation have made me think there’s a little more nuance to it than that. What I’ve come to realize is that the call for everyone (single, married or religious) is the same: they are all called to love God. No matter how your vocational planets align, the fundamental call doesn’t change. That call is lived out within the context of each vocation. A married couple, for instance, lives out the call to love God by working hard for their families, being examples of Christian virtue for their children, passing the joys of the faith onto their kids, and loving their spouse the way Christ loves His Church. A single person likewise lives out their vocation to love God by being Christ to the people they work with, giving of their time to volunteering, being examples of faith to their nieces and nephews, etc.

What distinguishes a religious vocation from single or married life is the way in which the religious falls in love with God. A person who desires religious life has fallen in love with God so deeply that it’s become all consuming. If they are to adequately the love which they have for God, it means giving everything. I’ll give you some examples from my own life. Every Catholic should have a deep love of the Eucharist; after all, the Eucharist is Christ Himself. What I discovered as a freshman in high school was that love of the Eucharist had so consumed me that if I was honest with myself (and I wasn’t always) I wanted nothing else. I felt Christ’s love and joy burning in my heart when I came into His presence. I wanted to return love for love but the only way I could do that was to give my life for Him present there, standing at the altar, bringing others to same love and joy that I had known.

Every Catholic is called to be generous, but Christ’s love had so taken me over that I wanted to be free to give everything. I wanted to be poor so that I could say I had given everything: nothing was my own, all was given out of love.

Every Catholic is called to spread the faith, but this joy I had come to know in Christ was so strong that passing the faith onto my immediate family wasn’t enough: I wanted to be free to go the far corners of the world to tell others about the joy I had found.

I realized this when I was a senior in high school. I had been discerning a vocation for three or four years at that point, depending on how you count it. I’d only had the nickname “Pope Joe” for two. Like a normal high school kid, I met a girl and fell head over heels for her. I was so happy being around her and I started to wonder if I couldn’t have my cake and eat it too. Sure, Christ meant a lot to me, but wasn’t that the call of every Christian? Couldn’t I live out my faith as a married man too? I decided to pursue the relationship and I quickly discovered something: my heart was divided. My every thought was about Christ, my free time was spent before the Blessed Sacrament, and when I tried to give my heart in a special way to this girl, I realized it was claimed. I couldn’t do it. Set aside the mystical calculus (we can talk about the spiritual events that went with this later), I had fallen in love with God enough that I wanted nothing more than to respond to that love by leaving everything and having only Him.

For those you who were wondering why, "I'm in a relationship" didn't convince me you weren't discerning, that's why.

A religious vocation is about falling in love with God in a singular way. That means a vocation is not static, your destiny is not written in the stars, your freely chosen actions are always a factor. God is stirring in your heart and it is your choice how to respond to it. If you choose to allow yourself to fall more deeply in love with Him, you may find yourself desiring to return that love in a deeper way, desiring to abandon everything and follow Him. You can choose not to of course and God will still work with you, but you would have missed a very beautiful way of life.

This means discerning a vocation is a lot simpler than the Catholic astrology I know many of you were attempting to do. You know what God’s call is for you right here and right now: to love Him with your whole heart. Live that out now. Find ways to respond to His love, to live out your faith. Pray more, dig in and learn about your faith, do service even when it stretches you, learn to love the people in your life with a more Christ-like love. Return love for love now and in time you just might find  that the only adequate expression of that love is in giving all to Him: to be poor, chaste and obedient for Him.

Does this mean you don’t have to discern? Not at all. But the question you have to discern is much simpler: 1) Will I allow myself to fall in love with God and respond to that love without holding back? 2) Is my desire for religious life truly grounded in love of God? Ideally the answer to both questions would be yes. If it's not, that doesn't mean that you don't have a vocation, just that you may not be going into it for the right reasons. Take a step back, do some internal housekeeping, and then you can see. But if your answer to both questions is yes, let nothing hold you back. God is waiting for you and all you have to do is run to Him.

You're Free to Say No, But Would You Want To?

So now we come to the question: what if you say no? If a vocation was a destiny, no doubt this would come with catastrophic results. You can see what happens to people in ancient Greek mythology when they try to rebel against fate: fate chews them up and spits them out.

Fortunately we’re not pagans.

A family at prayer

Recall that a vocation is fundamentally a process of falling in love and trying to express that all consuming, burning love as best you can. If it’s truly to be love, your free will is a major factor. That means at any time in this discernment process you can say no and God will still love you, still work with you, still give you the grace necessary to walk with Him throughout your life. I’ve known guys who I’m pretty sure had the makings of a religious vocation, but for whatever reason didn’t pursue it. God is still working through them. Many of them have beautiful families now and are raising their children to know and love God. His grace is still at work.

That being said, be careful of your reason for saying no. Just as you want to be sure you say yes to a vocation out of love for God, you want to be sure that saying no to a vocation isn’t your way of running away from God. God needs your permission to work in your life and if you choose to run from Him, He can offer you all the graces in the world and you’ll never receive them because you’ve chosen not to. Don’t do that. There’s no reason to be afraid of God like that. Yes, He may ask for you to let some things go, but He only does so to bring you to a deeper, more abiding joy with Him. No matter how you decide to respond to His call, be sure to stay close to Him.

Mother Teresa with Christ's
little ones

So it’s true, you are free to say no to a religious vocation. The question is, would you want to? What you’re being called to is a beautiful way of life. Yes, of course that means leaving behind some things, but it means gaining so much more. You’re looking at a way of life that frees you to love God with an utterly undivided heart, to be His instrument of grace in the world, to witness His work every day in miracles big and small, and to carry His light into dark places. In following Him in such a special way, you get to know His love and His joy in a way many people may never know. In saying yes to His call, you get a privileged place from which you can witness His grace at work in souls and even be His instrument of it. You can say no to that, but why would you want to?

"This is my body."

My last bit of advice: don’t discern alone. You don’t have to be ready to sign on the dotted line before you talk to someone about the possibility of vocation. Remember, if that thought's occurred to you, only God could have put it there. A desire for religious life isn't natural, it's supernatural and so if that's there, God’s knocking at your heart in some way. Consequently, you don't want to ignore or try to blow it off: talk to someone. Talk to someone you trust, whether that's a priest, a nun or just a close friend. You're more than welcome to talk to me if you'd like; I'm happy to listen. My email is joseph.moreshead@portlanddiocese.org. Shoot me an email and we can find a time to chat.

Don't keep it bottled up inside you. The discernment process should be one that's full of joy; after all, it's all about falling in love with Christ, the source of joy itself. But the devil loves silence. He can twist those thoughts of a religious vocation and take what should be a gift and turn it into to a burden. Keep it to yourself and the discerning a religious vocation can become lonely, confusing, and seemingly unanswerable. This is Jesus Christ we’re dealing with; it doesn’t have to be like that at all. Talk to someone.

Know of my prayers for all of you who are discerning, those who I’ve nagged about it, those who I quietly suspect might have a vocation, those whose vocation I’ve yet to know of. May God grant you peace, clarity, and the singular joy that is His.

God bless,

Joe