The Messenger - September 2008 - Editorial September 08
By - 01 September 2008
The Call: I feel we have become defensive today when anyone mentions vocations. I do not know how often I have been told that it was easier in my time for me to follow my vocation. I would have had the support not only of my family, it is argued, but also of society at large.
People were proud to have a priest in the family. The silent implication is that today, that support is missing. Is that why there are fewer vocations now?
It is certainly true that the support made it easier, but it was never an easy decision. There were so many questions: What was a vocation exactly? Where did it come from? Was it serious? And why me anyway? Weren’t there other people more worthy? Etc, etc. If the thought persisted some serious prayer began. Probably you talked in confidence to someone, but the question would not go away: How can I be sure?
Everyone who heard the call has gone through something of the same dilemma and later recognized it clearly in the stories of people like the prophets in the Bible. God’s answer always was It is I. Do not be afraid. I will be with you. But of course, that meant you had to take the decision to answer before you could tell for sure. In a sense the invitation only becomes real when you have accepted it. I was to learn from St. Ignatius that you put this question openly to God and - Ignatius would caution - listen for God’s response. It may come in surprising ways.
A day came in early September when some eight or nine young men looking very self-conscious in black suits met on the train to the seminary. I wanted to ask them how they could be sure of where they were going. Maybe they had the same question. But nobody broke the ice - or not at first, anyway. We were certainly an hour on the train when I became aware of a conversation that held my attention. One of the group was talking about his background: the school he attended, the priests he knew, what great guys they were, about how he always wanted to be a priest, so that he had no difficulty about making his decision.
I don’t know how the tone changed but he seemed to falter, and when someone asked what he would have been doing that Friday evening if he were not going to a noviceship, he never answered. There was silence in the carriage. Somehow, we all knew that he was on the wrong train. Whatever a vocation was, we knew he did not have it. And that shared recognition encouraged us to think we did. God, it seemed, had answered our prayers in a most surprising way.
He returned home the following day and we began the slow testing out of our vocation. In time, some more decided that they too, did not have a vocation. We were to miss them more than the first one; we had become friends. But no one ever said it would be easy.