This article has been imported from our web archive. As a result, it may contain formatting errors, broken links or images, or other inconsistencies from the original publication.
A vocation is worth waiting for
By Dorothy Cummings McLean
January 15, 2010
Dorothy Cummings McLean
Back at the Abbey, we studied vocations in the last year of religion class. Our classroom was across the hallway from bulletin boards covered with career information, so it would not have been surprising if we confused the concept of vocation, a calling from God to live in a certain state of life, with vocation, a chosen career. We worried about both at the same time; it seemed that we would have to make a decision about both at the same time.
Our religion textbook outlined four vocations: married life, religious life, the priesthood and single life. The chapter on each vocation included a little story and a few quotes from the famous. The story about single life featured homeless people, male and female, exchanging affectionate wisecracks in a soup kitchen. There was a quote by diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld describing his deep loneliness as a single man. Terrified of both homelessness and loneliness, I did not find this chapter inspiring. I prayed for a vocation to married life or religious life. I didn’t care which one, just as long as I wasn’t saddled with a vocation to the single life. I married in a panic at age 25, was divorced at age 27, got an annulment at age 28, and was single for a solid 10 years.
Our religion textbook outlined four vocations: married life, religious life, the priesthood and single life. The chapter on each vocation included a little story and a few quotes from the famous. The story about single life featured homeless people, male and female, exchanging affectionate wisecracks in a soup kitchen. There was a quote by diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld describing his deep loneliness as a single man. Terrified of both homelessness and loneliness, I did not find this chapter inspiring. I prayed for a vocation to married life or religious life. I didn’t care which one, just as long as I wasn’t saddled with a vocation to the single life. I married in a panic at age 25, was divorced at age 27, got an annulment at age 28, and was single for a solid 10 years.
I’m not blaming a religion textbook for the crisis of my mid-twenties. What does concern me is the idea that vocation is something a young person has to decide as soon as possible, at latest by the age of 25. This approach negates the truths that a vocation is a calling from God and that God, being free, reveals His plan for our lives on His own schedule. God calls, the creature discerns that call, and only then should the creature respond. Panicky anticipations can end in disaster.
Another troubling idea is that God calls a man or woman to a state in life completely unsuited to his or her personality and prayerful desires. I once received a 1 a.m. phone call from a friend in a state of drunken panic, crying because he thought he was being called to the priesthood and he didn’t want to go. Another friend, despairing of marriage, had her parents drive her to an American convent as she wept. Still another friend told me of her plans to marry a man with severe personal problems because she felt it was time she made a commitment to something. But vocation is not something God imposes on us; vocation is something a person discovers embedded in his or her heart. The embrace of a vocation is not the shouldering of a yoke as much as it is a falling in love.
This falling in love can happen at any age. A friend of mine fell in love with the idea of religious life when, as a child, he dreamed of being part of something bigger than himself.
He joined a religious order at age 18. Other friends were in their thirties when they fell in love with the men who became their husbands. I know nuns who discerned their call in their twenties and a nun who discerned that call in her forties. We read every year in The Catholic Register of men who discerned their vocation to the priesthood as boys and of men who discerned it as they approached middle or old age. God does not necessarily give us our marching orders when we are 24.
So what do we do in the meantime? We live as single people in the world, working, praying and waiting as we remain open to God’s call. And we learn to ignore the world’s idea that the best and only vocation for everybody is marriage. Most people do marry, but a crushing percentage of marriages, even among Catholics, end in divorce. This makes me wonder whether all those who marry were truly listening for God’s call or whether happy vocations to the permanent single life, priesthood and religious life are being abandoned due to familial and social pressure. It may be also that there are some who will be called to married life, but not yet. We do not live in a society that encourages maturity; it may be that many of us are well into our thirties before we are (or our future spouses are) ready to handle the challenges this vocation brings.
Long-term singleness, if lived in Christ, is not any kind of failure but either a joyful embrace of God’s call to remain single or, for those who long for marriage or religious life, a willingness to wait in faith and hope. Single life is the state into which we are called at birth, and there is no shame in remaining single unless and until God calls us definitively to another way of life.
Another troubling idea is that God calls a man or woman to a state in life completely unsuited to his or her personality and prayerful desires. I once received a 1 a.m. phone call from a friend in a state of drunken panic, crying because he thought he was being called to the priesthood and he didn’t want to go. Another friend, despairing of marriage, had her parents drive her to an American convent as she wept. Still another friend told me of her plans to marry a man with severe personal problems because she felt it was time she made a commitment to something. But vocation is not something God imposes on us; vocation is something a person discovers embedded in his or her heart. The embrace of a vocation is not the shouldering of a yoke as much as it is a falling in love.
This falling in love can happen at any age. A friend of mine fell in love with the idea of religious life when, as a child, he dreamed of being part of something bigger than himself.
He joined a religious order at age 18. Other friends were in their thirties when they fell in love with the men who became their husbands. I know nuns who discerned their call in their twenties and a nun who discerned that call in her forties. We read every year in The Catholic Register of men who discerned their vocation to the priesthood as boys and of men who discerned it as they approached middle or old age. God does not necessarily give us our marching orders when we are 24.
So what do we do in the meantime? We live as single people in the world, working, praying and waiting as we remain open to God’s call. And we learn to ignore the world’s idea that the best and only vocation for everybody is marriage. Most people do marry, but a crushing percentage of marriages, even among Catholics, end in divorce. This makes me wonder whether all those who marry were truly listening for God’s call or whether happy vocations to the permanent single life, priesthood and religious life are being abandoned due to familial and social pressure. It may be also that there are some who will be called to married life, but not yet. We do not live in a society that encourages maturity; it may be that many of us are well into our thirties before we are (or our future spouses are) ready to handle the challenges this vocation brings.
Long-term singleness, if lived in Christ, is not any kind of failure but either a joyful embrace of God’s call to remain single or, for those who long for marriage or religious life, a willingness to wait in faith and hope. Single life is the state into which we are called at birth, and there is no shame in remaining single unless and until God calls us definitively to another way of life.
Dorothy Cummings McLean