by Therese Ivers

If you are discerning a vocation to the consecrated life or even marriage, you will have to determine whether you are even eligible to follow such a call. There are several very basic requirements that the Church has established, and in this article we will consider three of them.

Good Health

The candidate has to have sufficient health to pursue the way of life he is discerning. Health is considered under several aspects. First, by physical health. Do you have the physical health necessary to lead the life of a particular call? The fundamental physique necessary for a Missionary of Charity will probably be different than that of a person called to host retreats in a quiet, slow paced setting.

Generally speaking, religious orders will not accept a person who requires major care physically. If you are diabetic, the chances are that you will not be accepted in a religious order. If you have only a leg and the order is really into farming, you’ll probably not get accepted there. The reason is that candidates have to have good health. It has to be sufficient for the style of life those lead in that community or way of life.

Mental health is a huge requirement for living as a healthy Christian, not to mention for being a potential consecrated or married person. This should be fairly obvious, but it isn’t. If you are mentally well balanced and have normal relationships with people, then you may ready to begin to discern a call to the consecrated or married states. You really aren’t ready if you are in the middle of a traumatic experience or overcoming deep psychological wounds.

On the other hand, if you experience grave enough problems in the mental arena, you owe it to yourself and to society to take care of them. Realize that it is not reasonable to expect to grow in a full human and spiritual manner if there is an imbalance in your mental habits. Nor is it possible to have normal relationships with others. In community or in a close martial union, it is almost impossible to have a great rapport with someone who is mentally off. In fact, the vows or marriage could be invalid if there is not enough mental balance to make a person capable of truly living the communal life of certain types of consecrated life or the married state.

As we have mentioned before, one needs to be well balanced. This means a certain level of maturity. You should have a certain emotional and spiritual maturity. With respect to the emotions, you should be a stable person, making sure that your emotions don’t govern you, but the voice of reason. Spiritual maturity should be present in the sense that you don’t have strongly ingrained habits which keep you on a seriously sinful path.

If you have just become sober, don’t immediately try to make a life long decision. Take a good period of time to make sure that you are learning good habits and that they are sticking with you. Sometimes a year or two of waiting and testing is a good idea. Your character is very important, and the person who forms it is yourself. No matter what your vocation, you need to have a good character, and if you don’t right now, you should start working on having one.

Canonical Age

Age is so important that the Church requires certain minimums for different vocations. Right now, 17 is the minimum age for the canonical novitiate. For marriage, it is 14 for girls (unless civil law requires a higher age) and 16 for boys. 25 is the minimum age for ordination as a priest. Of course, if maturity is lacking or if the rules of the particular community or way of life indicate a different minimum age, then that will change things.

There are also some places where there is a maximum age. There is a reason for this. Older candidates tend to be more set in their ways. A common way of life requires a flexibility to be formed in that particular form of life, and older candidates may not have the degree of flexibility this entails. In religious communities for women, 35-40 are the years commonly used as the maximum age for candidates.

Acceptance by the Competent Authority

It is not enough that there be a call by God for the individual candidate. If you have a vocation to a particular way of life, the proper authority must admit you in order for that call to be genuine. What this means is that you may feel a call in your heart to a particular person (marriage) or consecrated way of life. However, in order for this to be a genuine vocation, the other person or the proper authority must admit you to this way of life.

A candidate does not have the right to become a religious or a canonical hermit or anything else if the proper authority does not allow him to do so. The proper authority decides whether the candidate is suitable for that particular way of life. Let’s just take the instance of Susan. Susan wants to marry Joe. Well, she doesn’t have the right to demand to get married to Joe. Joe can either accept or reject her, because he is not obliged to get married to her. It is the same for a religious order. The religious order is not obliged to accept candidates who do not have a vocation to be a member.

Do you have good health and maturity, the right age, and the great possibility of being accepted for a way of life that you are attracted to? Good! Now, it’s time to check on whether you have the other 4 essential qualities. This article will be coming soon!

=> Do You Want to Know More About Vocations? Check out http://www.DoIHaveAVocation.com now for great information and resources!

About the Author

Therese Ivers is a graduate Canon Law student at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas in Rome. She is currently taking a course from the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life which is geared towards those who have the governance of, or involved in formation of those in the consecrated life.

© 2006 by Therese Ivers

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