ASK WITH FR. TIM - EP 1
HOW DO I DISCERN A CALL TO THE PRIESTHOOD?
So often these days, it seems that people focus only on marriage as a vocation in life. And yet, without the priesthood, we will be starved for the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. We believe that God has a vocation for everyone. What is a vocation that comes from the Latin to call? If we listen, if we answer, that is our response. We call it obedience. Obedience means to listen. The act of faith would be our response if someone feels that they might be called to be a priest. There's probably some pretty simple indications to start with.
Do I pray? Do I like to pray? Do I enjoy going to Mass or do I find it dull?
But if someone enjoys prayer, enjoys going to mass, likes to serve God's people, then there's every possibility that God is calling that person to the priesthood. Many people would like to think it's going to be like Moses at the burning bush, that all of a sudden we'll get divine intervention and the clouds will open up and a thundering voice will tell us, you will be my priest.
Usually it's much more subtle than that. If we think of Elijah the great prophet a thousand years before Jesus, he was told at the end of the first Book of Kings to go up on top of Mount Horeb and wait for God to meet him there and speak to him. He didn't say when he was coming, and Elijah had to wait there a long time. And if you recall, when Elijah was on the mountain top, there was an earthquake, there was a windstorm, and there was a wildfire. And those things would be terrifying on flat ground, let alone in a mountain peak. But Elijah was patient and trusted in the Lord. He knew that God was not speaking to him through the wind, through the fire, through the quaking of the earth.
But then when all of that subsided, and when he was really listening and there was a flat calm,
He heard the immense, intense, almighty, all powerful God speak to him in the tiniest whisper.
And I think that is how we discern God's call in an age when everybody has earbuds in and they're so seldom in silence. We have to find those quiet places and quiet spaces and make devoted, quiet time for God, but then not to do all the talking.
So often when we're praying, it's the honey do list. All the things that we need God to do. And why haven't you done it already? The timetable for their completion, the Hail Mary pass for the sport that we're not ready to compete in, or the test we did not study for the promotion we haven't earned. But if we listen for the tiniest whisper, not only will we hear God speaking to us through our own voice, when I think I hear my voice inside my head, but we might also hear it through other people. I can't tell you, as I was coming up in high school, how many other people said, have you ever considered being a priest?
God speaks to us through events and persons and activities.
Discernment is something that can happen in one's heart, in one's home, in one's parish, in our school, and yes, for some in a seminary. When I graduated high school, I went to a college seminary to discern whether or not God was calling me to be a priest.
And that is a place where you have to live the life of the priest. So we did not date. We prayed the prayers. The priests pray. We went to mass every day. We went to confession regularly and participated in the life of the priest long before we were ever called to holy orders. That helped me. Certainly, it also helps other people to decide what is God calling them to? Statistics will tell us that only one third of men that go into a college seminary actually get ordained as priests, but the others go on to live, in most cases, very productive lives in the church, raising families where perhaps there will be a vocation to the priesthood or the religious life among their children.
So it was a long answer to a short question. But the simple answer is if we listen, God is speaking, and hopefully we'll hear the tiniest whisper with him showing us the way that will lead to heaven and happiness.
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