I do believe, as some spiritual writers have written, that God gives each of us a vocation to live out. In Roman Catholic spirituality, Fr Ronald Rolheiser says that we were put on this earth with a divine plan for us. In that light, one question would be “how do we see vocation in this light?” Well, in discerning our vocation, we need to see it as something that we give ourselves over to, and in very many cases, that comes at a price, and the price is that of having to renounce our own dreams and passions. We need to be free to accept it or not, but each choice has its consequences. The last thing we would ever want is to be accused of having to make the choice to live a misdirected and misguided life.
I have this thought of my vocation largely because a couple of weeks back, on 20 June, I celebrated my 23rd sacerdotal anniversary, because it was on 20 June 2001 that I was ordained a Catholic priest at my ordination to the priesthood in the parish of St Anne’s.
Anniversaries tend to give us reason to ponder and appreciate in a new way how we are living our lives. I am certain that married couples would annually think seriously about how they have lived out their marital vows, bringing back to mind the ways they have made the effort to vow to love each other, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, till death separates them for good.
It should not surprise anyone that in our present world, there is a culture that permeates everywhere, that there is a belief that personal freedom is the aspiration of everyone. I recall fondly how my own father responded to me when I asked him if it was alright with him if I entered the seminary to pursue my desire to become a priest. He asked me why I wanted to do this, and I said that deep inside of me, I believe that God is calling me to become a priest and going to the seminary will help me to find out if this is truly God’s calling. This was what dad told me: “Well, it’s better that you go into the seminary to find this out for sure, because if you don’t, you may live to the age of 50 or 60, and find yourself asking the same question, and by then, it would be too late for you to do anything about it.”. And he closed his response by assuring me: “Remember – if you find out that this is not for you, just pack up and come home. The door is always open to you, and you will always be welcome home.”
Each year on the anniversary of my sacerdotal ordination, I always fondly recall those reassuring words from my father, who has already passed away. And I find myself smiling to myself, that I had the courage to ask for the blessing of my parents to enter the seminary.
Of course, the training of the seminary years was not a walk in the park. Okay, sometimes it did seem like a park – Jurassic Park. But I will say that I truly enjoyed the discipline of the seminary system and the way that each day was planned out for us. Examinations were a regular part of the life of a seminarian, and I once calculated that in our 7 years of seminary training, we went through a gamut of around 70 different examinations, ending with a mammoth examination for the Baccalaureate of Theology, taken in the seminary in Penang, West Malaysia.
It was James Hollis, a Jungian therapist, who said that vocation is a summons of the soul. He also says that it is as if we were sent to a land with a royal assignment, and if we dithered or forgotten the task, then we would have violated our reason for being where we are in life. Painful as it sounds, there is deep truth in that.
What I am certain of is this – at the end of our lives, when we stand before our divine judge, we will hear Jesus say whether we have lived out our God-given vocation. At that moment, we will know for certain if we have given the best of our lives to what God had planned for us from the moment of our creation.
Heaven and the eternity that will be lived out in heaven will be a time to celebrate the mercy and love that only God, the giver of life, can give a soul. There will be an endless experience of joy and peace in our hearts when we know that we had fulfilled what God willed for us in life.
Ultimately, it’s not so much that we choose our vocations, but that because our vocations have chosen us, the two choices merged and harmonized in our lives.
It will be a sad experience to know at the end of our lives that we had wasted our lives because we chose only what our hearts desired, all because we prized our freedom more than anything else.
May God be with all of you who are discerning your vocation now, and for those who have already made their choice of vocation in life, may you find the joy and happiness that only God can give.
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