Special Case: Discernment of Vocation

Matthew 4:18-20

SPECIAL CASE: DISCERNMENT OF VOCATION

An overemphasis on vocation as an exterior call can endanger responsible selfhood by fostering the kind of conformity and outer-directedness that easily lead to immaturity. More seriously, an excessive emphasis on an external summons can result in a feeling of being trapped—a feeling that saps all enthusiasm for living and ministering. Without free choice, joyful commitment is impossible. Once a Jesuit priest was approached by a man at a busy shopping mall. “By chance, Father,” he asked, “are you a Jesuit?” “Not by chance, sir,” the priest responded, “but by choice!” It is this sense of personal freedom that enables people to serve the Lord gladly.

On the other hand, an exclusive reliance on the interior can easily lead to self-deception and delusion. If we are not open to feedback from others in the faith community, our blind spots can lead us into error or lull us into a proud and stubborn sense of certitude that gives the impression that we have a direct line to God. Furthermore, an excessively subjective sense of call may lead to weakened commitment and compromise when difficulties arise. Because discipleship always entails a cost, following Jesus with fidelity, whether in the lay or the religious state, our commitment to an interiorly felt sense of vocation can find valuable support in the external ratification of that call by the community.

Concretely, reconciling the interior and exterior requires that we take seriously the data emanating from our heart and life situations, as well as the opinion of others who, by training and charism, can keep our heart searching enlightened and free from self-deceit. Honest and integral discernment of our vocation involves listening to God, speaking both within our hearts and in the world around us. It calls for a sensitivity to our inner desires, as well as an ability to interpret those desires through a process of prayer, reflection and spiritual direction.

Source: Wilkie Au, S.J., By Way of the Heart: Toward a Holistic Christian Spirituality (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1989), pages 70-71.

THOMAS MERTON ON DISCERNMENT OF VOCATION

“A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live. Thus, if one is called to be solitary, he will stop wondering how he is to live and start living peacefully only when he is in solitude. But if one is not called to solitary life, the more he is alone the more will he worry about living and forgetting to live. When we are not living up to our true vocation, thought deadens our life, or substitutes itself for life, or gives in to life so that our life drowns out our thinking and stifles the voice of conscience. When we find our vocation—thought and life are one.”—Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (1958)

PRINCIPLE OF CONGRUENCE

One may affirm the existence of a vocation when interior inspirations and desires are confirmed by exterior circumstances, e.g. the acceptance of the candidate by relevant and legitimate ecclesiastical authority. Entailed therefore is the principle of congruence: the interior—psychological and spiritual—reality of an alleged vocation must be confirmed by the exterior—empirical or circumstantial—reality. The interior reality by itself or the exterior by itself would be insufficient to confirm the existence of a vocation.