Dear father, my dear faithful, a priest friend of mine when he was a young man
spent some years agonizing over what state of life to choose thinking whether
he should be a priest or whether he should get married. And one day he met an
old Irish priest and he he asked him "Father when did you know that you had a
vocation?" and this old priest said to him "in my day we didn't talk that way we
just picked something and did it." Today the second Sunday after Easter we call
Good Shepherd Sunday on account of today's Gospel of course, and so
traditionally dedicated to this promotion of priestly vocations. This
word vocation - you know how we usually think about the idea of a vocation to
the priesthood or to the religious life for that matter, that God by some
extraordinary act of his Providence implants in these chosen souls a special
something that determines the state of life. That they must embrace then as that
person reaches adulthood. It is of the utmost importance that he figure out
whether he's got the special something in his soul or not. If he doesn't figure
it out, if he doesn't get it right then his salvation will be difficult and he
will pretty much always be a fish out of water,
unhappy, interiorly tortured, maybe even risking damnation. Even many books on
vocation or on the spiritual life present this this notion of vocation and
there's just a couple of problems with that standard notion. The first is, no one
can tell you what that special something is.
And no one can tell you actually how to find out if you've got one or not. And
there's a very simple reason for that: there is no special something! There's
nothing in theology that supports the truth of the theory that I've just
outlined. I'll spare you the lengthy history, but that notion of vocation does
not appear in the Church until the sixteenth century or so. The Fathers of
the Church don't talk about searching the depths of your soul to find a
vocation. St. Thomas doesn't talk that way either.
And many recent authors have claimed that a vocation consists in an
attraction. And they don't do a very good job of explaining what that attraction
is. Often it seems to come down to a matter of feelings. Significantly that
idea of attraction was explicitly rejected by a commission of Cardinals
during the pontificate of St. Pius X but it's hung on rather
persistently anyway. Vocation is an ill-defined term and ambiguous so it
becomes confusing. How would you respond if I asked you what a vocation is?
Some would say that it means every person's place in life; priests, religious,
single, married, everyone has a special vocation. Others would say it refers to
just to consecrated states of life, priests or religious - you know we say we
need more vocations that's what we mean. Others might talk about that special
something in the soul that we've already mentioned. To become a priest one does
indeed need a divine vocation. Canon law lists it as a requirement. St. Paul says
to the Hebrews, "neither does any man take the honor to himself but he that is
called by God as Aaron was." He says to Timothy, St. Paul does, "impose not
hands lightly upon any man." So how does one know if one has a vocation?
It's pretty simple. Through the Church. It happens when the bishop calls
the candidate at ordination. So was that that old Irish priest wrong?
Not exactly. Someone cannot just choose the priesthood strictly but he has to be
called by God through the church. And no one - no matter how much he wants to be a
priest - no matter how much he's attracted to the priesthood - no matter how strong
his feelings might be on the subject - no one has the right to be ordained apart
from such a call from the bishop. On the other hand that old priest was certainly
on to something. How does one get to the point where one is a in a position to be
called for ordination? When we all show up at the ceremony of ordination
the bishop doesn't start calling random guys out of the crowd. One puts oneself in
that position by going to the seminary. But as another experienced priests told
me in a different context when I first began to think about it,
"Remember no one has a vocation to be a seminarian."
It's not a state of life. The reason you go is to offer yourself for the
priesthood. That's how you end up in the position to
be called by the bishop. And what must one have to enter the seminary? Special
calls, nice feelings of attraction? No. Right intention. Which
must be supernatural. And if it's supernatural, of course grace is going to
play a role. We're going to be prompted by grace to want to do this but we're
not talking about a rare or extraordinary grace. So right intention
- any supernatural intention is sufficient. To save one's own soul, to save other souls,
to be able to offer Mass, etc. So the right intention. Lack of impediments
There are not that many impediments and most of them are fairly
obvious. You can't just run off to the seminary if you're already married, for
example. And then fitness - not physical fitness - moral, intellectual fitness. And
again they're not enormous requirements. There there needs to be a...
certain degree of health, at least an average aptitude for studies, a certain
level of maturity. But having those those simple requirements, the right intention,
lack of impediments, and a degree of fitness, one can enter the seminary and
present oneself as a candidate ultimately to be called by the Church to
ordination. So a great many young, unmarried men may simply choose to
pursue the priesthood and then do so to the best of their ability in the
seminary. Then after they've persevered and received the necessary formation, the
Church will call and that is the vocation. We know we need more priests
and I would say the primary reason that we don't have more is a lack of
generosity. But fuzzy notions about vocations and who can and cannot become a
priest play into this this lack of generosity. It's easy to hide behind
the idea, "well I don't have a vocation because I don't feel an
attraction, because I don't think I've got one of those special somethings in
my soul." The 'special something' theory puts the burden on God: "All right God, if
you want me to do this then you've got to prove it to me,
show me by unmistakable signs that this is what I meant to do." I think we need to
shift the responsibility back where it belongs: to the young Catholic man making
his life decisions. "All the good that Christian civilization has brought into
the world is due at least radically to the word and works
of the Catholic priesthood," says Pius XI. When we talk about the priesthood we're
not talking about something minor or unimportant or secondary. Jesus Christ
Himself is the priest, and he shares his priesthood with other men in order to
continue on earth his mission of saving souls. The more good priests there are,
the more Souls can be saved - it's really that simple.
We live in the midst of the greatest crisis the Catholic priesthood has
endured in her 2,000 year history. In the church at large the priest has lost the
sense of his mission, of his dignity of the incomprehensible power that God has
bestowed upon him. He forgets that he speaks in the person of God made man
himself, and in so doing, brings our Lord Jesus Christ down upon the altar to
continue the redemptive sacrifice and to give the divine gifts to Catholic souls.
No one can do that but a priest. He forgets that he speaks in the person of
God made man himself, and in so doing absolves the faithful from their sins,
restores them to the life of grace, and reopens the gates of heaven that
they had closed by sin. And no one can do that but a priest. He forgets that he has a
divine Commission to teach and to govern souls in the name of Christ, and so to
lead them to their ultimate destiny. No one can do it but the priest - The Catholic Priest.
And these things are forgotten, or ignored, or dismissed as
unimportant. And here we are in the Society of Saint Pius X, the heirs
of Archbishop Lefebvre who in our days saved the true notions of the Catholic
priesthood from extinction, and here we are unable to go to all the souls who
need us - unable to go even to all the souls who asked for us to come.
We're unable to develop our apostolate like we should. We see our priests
dropping out of active ministry because their health is ruined
sometimes by overwork. All of this because our numbers are
insufficient. We need more priests. Souls need more
priests. That's the state of things and we need to face the reality of that
situation. Souls are falling into hell by the millions because they lack
priests to teach them, to guide them, to give them sacraments. The young men in a
parish like ours are privileged in the order of grace beyond nearly everyone in
the world: having this access - even everyday if they wanted - to the
traditional Mass, the traditional sacraments, traditional preaching, and so
on. And it's not a matter of deep soul-searching to find some mysterious
calling in the depths of our being - it's a judgment of prudence. Realizing that
the priesthood is worth pursuing and deciding to do it! In the words of our
friend the old Irish priest, "picking something and doing it." Picking, in fact
the best thing that there is. It's a judgment of prudence, and it's a matter
of generosity. We need to think about God, about souls, about rebuilding Catholic
civilization, and stop thinking about ourselves and our worldly desires. We
need to realize how generous God has been with us and to look to make a
response. If it's an option for us, the priesthood is the best response that we
can make. We offer God the perfect sacrifice and we bring him to souls. He
will reward that generosity. There is a desperate need. God has invested in us
and we can make a choice, and we must make it guided by prudence, and by
generosity. Practically, what does that mean for those of you cannot be priests?
Do what you can to encourage that generosity by prayer. Your own spiritual
generosity will help a great deal. Encouragement: especially from parents.
It's remarkable but some people's first instinct when someone says he's thinking
about a priestly vocation is to dump cold water on the idea. "You? No way!" Even
if he doesn't seem like the best candidate, encourage the idea, tell them
the things that... "well you need to work on some things but keep that as a goal." Many
of us in our youth didn't look like the most exemplary candidates for the
priesthood, but we turned out more or less alright! Love the priesthood. To love
the priesthood, look past the flaws and the mistakes of your priests, and see
with the eyes of Faith the ministers of our Lord Jesus Christ working for your
salvation. For those of you who can be priests, for whom it is still an option,
remember that if our Lord Jesus Christ is truly God, there's nothing better for
you than to be one of his priests. As Saint Ambrose said, "nothing is more
excellent in the world." Ask yourself what really stands in your
way? And if those obstacles actually matter. Pray. Of course it's the
obvious advice, but not to pray to know if you've got that special something
that doesn't exist, but pray for the strength to be really generous. And
certainly talk to a priest about it. Many of us here are happy to talk to you about
it - I'm especially happy to talk to you about it. I'm the Vocations Director for
the District in addition to being Prior here, so it's kind of my my specialty. And
then if the choice is there before you, take up the challenge. Choose
to pursue the priesthood and do it. We entrust this intention of having more
priests for the Church, for the Society, having priests from Our Lady of Sorrows,
we entrust it to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of the clergy. That she might
obtain the grace of generosity for young men especially from
our parish, and raise up an army of holy priests, Amen