Today the Dean of Students at St. Joseph's Seminary - Dunwoodie, Father Andrew King, was the principal celebrant and he preached the homily. The readings from sacred Scripture for today's Mass give us lots of grist for the mill given the question of discernment of spirits and God's call to the priesthood. How could one not think of mission, discipleship, preaching Christ crucified and risen and salvation when listening to Scriptures? He raises some excellent questions in the discernment of God's will viz. service as priest. One the points Fr King raises and that I find compelling is one that we at the dinner table frequently mention, the distinctions needed in vocation discernment: that priesthood and marriage are not of equal weight or of lasting importance. Marriage is a good and many people have a calling from God to be married. BUT priesthood is oriented to the supernatural, to salvation, to our final end, and thus not on the same level as marriage: its goal is different and higher as it concerns communion with the Blessed Trinity. Father King is quite good in pulling out some very central questions.
One could not find a more fitting place than a seminary to
reflect on the Sacred Scriptures presented to us this morning... readings that
manifest the Divine sovereignty and initiative... and the free human response
which is inspired, supported, and guided by Divine grace.
The Divine sovereignty is shown by the Lord's choice of who
to call... He is not bound by human expectations of judgments of who is more
deserving or less deserving.
St. Paul..... knows himself to be unworthy... "I am not fit to be called an apostle,
because I persecuted the Church of God."
Isaiah ... "I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people
of unclean lips"
St. Peter.... "I am a sinful man"
Apparently, all this is true: there is no disagreement with
Isaiah's assessment, nor with Paul's, nor with Peter's. Indeed, their self knowledge, and
admission of being unfit to be in the presence of God is a necessary condition
for the ever deeper conversion that allows them, to remove obstacles to a
greater love for the Lord.
The acknowledgement of their weakness is paradoxically
united with a deep confidence in what God can work through them. Trusting less
and less in themselves, they trust more in God.
Even more paradoxically, the less they trust in themselves,
the more freedom they have to act.
Isaiah says:
"Send me." ... a bold statement!
St. Paul 'matter of factly' says that he has worked harder
and done more than all the other apostles!
St. Peter says less, and lets his actions speak... leaving his
boat, net, and life, to become a disciple of the Lord.
A reflection on the readings could go in a number of
directions, and circumstances invite us to look at the vocation to the
priesthood in particular.
There have been difficulties with the way priestly vocations
are presented.
At the beginning of the last century, there was considerable
controversy in France over the nature of a priestly vocation. It became so
heated that an appeal was made to the Holy See, asking for an intervention.
Pope Pius X established a commission of Cardinals to examine the particular
matter of controversy, and on June 26, 1912 they issued a brief statement that
noted that the judgment of the Church is integral to the definition of what a
priestly vocation is. This corrected a tendency to overemphasize the subjective
dispositions of one claiming to have a vocation, and marginalize the judgment
of the Church (i.e. the bishop).
In our own day, I think that we often, with the best of intentions,
speak of priestly vocations in a way that makes it very unlikely that a person
will recognize such a vocation.
We begin with the questions: "Does God want you to be a priest?" "Is God calling you to be a priest?"
The response, and the appropriate one, for most young men
is: "I don't know... after all, how do I know what God thinks about something
like that, and how would I know?"
We continue: "Well, do you feel like God is calling you to
the priesthood, do you feel an attraction to the priesthood?"
The response:
"I haven't thought about it all that much, but I know that I feel an
attraction to marriage, so I guess God is calling me to be married."
This sort of conclusion is all the more likely, given the
tendency to speak about marriage and the priesthood as vocations, without
making any distinctions in the way we use the term 'vocation'. Frankly, even if
we make the appropriate distinctions (that the attraction to marriage is
written into our nature, while the priestly vocation is supernatural, so that
both can be present in a person), the fact that both are called vocations will
lead many of the faithful to view them as equivalent.
The questions: "Does
God want you to be a priest?" "Is God calling you to be a priest?" are good ones... indeed essential ones.
Archbishop Dolan tells of a conversation he had while
serving as rector:
Once, while rector of the North American College in Rome, I
was interviewing on of our new students.
"Why do you want to be a priest?" I asked him.
He looked at me a bit awkwardly.
"Pardon me, Monsignor, but, what I really want has nothing
to do with it. I want to be a priest because I have discerned - after a lot of
prayer, soul searching, and talking with people I trust, - that the Lord wants
me to be a priest. It's not about me. I'ts about Him. I only want to be a
priest because I believe He wants me to!"
Bravo! He is right on target.
[Source: Is Jesus Calling you to be a Catholic Priest?, National
Conference of Diocesan Vocation Directors. 2008]
I suggest that in the current circumstances, a brief
introduction can clear the way for someone to answer these essential questions
more accurately - and thus to recognize a priestly vocation in themselves or in
another.
Introduce the matter by asking:
"Are you willing to be a priest?"
And also, "Why would a person be willing to be a priest?"
Why are you willing to be a priest?
A
person can say 'yes' to this without claiming to know the will or mind of God.
They
only have to know their own mind and will.
Further
their own mind should be informed in such a way that will lead them to say
'yes'.
Propose the reasons why a person would be willing to be a
priest. Look to things such as:
-mankind's
need for salvation
-Christ
is savior
-Christ
saves by means of His Church
-the
necessity of the priesthood within the Church
-the
glory given to God by a heroic priestly life
-friendship
with Christ found within the priestly life
Are you willing to be a priest?
Are you willing, for the salvation of souls, and for the
glory of God, to be a priest?
If
you are willing to be a priest, this is a sign that very possibly you have a
vocation. It is an indication, though not a guarantee, that God is calling you
to the priesthood.
If you are not willing to be a priest, pray about it some
more, and ask yourself why not. Perhaps you don't have a vocation to the
priesthood, but perhaps you do, and it will become clear to you through the
work of grace in prayer.
Are you willing to be a priest? ..... It leads back to the
question - the most essential question --
"Does God want you to be a priest?"... but it seems to offer more
'traction' so to speak for the young man hearing the question to get him moving
to take practical steps towards the priesthood.
The point to get across is that if you are willing, and you also have the
appropriate qualities (such as upright motives, generosity of spirit, physical
health, mental ability etc.) then it is quite likely that God is in fact
calling you to be a priest - that you have a vocation. In retreats, and even in
the early years of seminary this is tested and examined, and through
'discernment' one comes to a greater confidence that that one does or does not
have a vocation to the priesthood.
If you do have a vocation, you make a free decision as to
whether or not you will accept it.
Finally, as emphasized in the 1912 declaration of the Holy
See, the approval of the Church is an integral part of the vocation.
A good treatment of this (and related topics) was written by
a priest of New York: Msgr.
Charles Hugo Doyle, in Looking toward the Priesthood: the nature, dignity,
necessity and signs of a sacerdotal vocation (1961). Another priest of N.Y: Rev. Joseph W. Grundner translated in
1937 an excellent book called Vocation to the Priesthood by Wilhelm Stockums,
an auxiliary bishop of Cologne (not to be confused with Stockums' book on the
priesthood). A superb treatment of discernment is found in a 35 page booklet Is
Jesus Calling you to be a Catholic Priest? published by the National Conference
of Diocesan Vocation Directors. It was written by Fr. Thomas Richter, the
vocation director of the Diocese of Bismark, ND.
A few cautions:
We should be cautious about setting low human expectations
on the number of priestly vocations that the Lord wills to raise up. Accounts
(I have not seen official numbers) from years when the faith showed more
vitality in New York, indicate that some Catholic boys' high schools were
sending a significant number of their graduates to seminaries of one sort or
another. I would not be surprised if ten percent of fit Catholic young men have
a priestly vocation.
Does that sound excessive?
Suppose there were three Catholic families that between them
had ten boys and ten girls. Would it be surprising that from those three
families, there would be at least one priestly vocation? There is your ten percent.
We should also be cautious about setting low human
expectations on what is possible, even in the relatively near future. A priest
I know in South Dakota is pastor of a large parish (unusually large for his
diocese, but more common on the East Coast). The other year they had a prayer
campaign in the parish - asking that two young men from their parish would go
to a seminary that year. They got it. Two entered. I have to get in touch with
him to see if they continued the prayer campaign this year, and what has
happened.
The contribution that Catholic couples can make is evident:
grow in holiness, and should God bless them with continued fertility, have more
children.
As priests, you can do a lot to help make these things
happen.
In all of this we turn to Mary, the Mother of Jesus the
Priest, to Mary the Mother of Priests. I don't know of any title that
identifies Mary particularly as mother of seminarians, but there is no doubt
that she has a special maternal care for seminarians. Many priests will tell
you of the particular evidences of her maternal care and intercession for them
as they made their way through the seminary to ordination. She helps us to
respond well to our own vocation, and to be effective in leading others to do
the same.
We need Mary's continual presence to guide us, preserve us,
and protect us. The devil has strategies not only to lead us into distractions
or despair, but also, should we avoid those pitfalls, to misguide our zeal.
Mary our Mother will counter our adversary, and obtain what the Church needs -
a love and high regard for priestly vocations, and what we - both priests and
those preparing for priesthood -
need, particularly the grace of humility.
