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Ten Tips for Vocational Discernment

Therese Ivers, JCL — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:44:07 +0000

by Therese Ivers, JCL

Happy New Year! Here’s a list of some discernment tips that I hope will get your creative juices flowing in terms of shaping this years discernment process New Years resolutions… Since each tip can be the topic of a whole book in and of itself, you are welcome to share your thoughts on them and share stories by going to the forum and commenting.

Our Lady, Pray for Us!

1) Do take the time to get to know all of your vocational options.
2) Starting a religious community? Do wait until you have a few actual members together before you begin to approach the bishop.
3) Do think of the ways you can grow so as to offer the best possible version of yourself to your potential spouse, diocese, or community.
4) Do you think you’ll be more holy… if you become a sister, a monk, a priest, or get married? Try sanctifying your daily actions now!
5) Do look at vocations in their nitty gritty aspects long term, not just the wedding day, the profession day, or day of consecration.
6) If you are living alone but regularly leave your home for more than a few hours a week, don’t put in an application to your bishop to become a diocesan hermit.
7) If you believe that the acts proper to the generation of children are sinful, ugly, or horrifying, or for any other (non medical) reason would be unwilling to consummate marriage vows, please do not get engaged or start seriously discerning celibate forms of life.
If you are a man, don’t sign up for the seminary for the diocesan priesthood until you have seriously examined religious life as a brother.
9) If you are a female virgin, don’t apply to become a consecrated virgin if you have not for some time lived out the resolution to perpetually remain a virgin regardless of whether you’ll be able to receive the consecration in the future.
10) If you are thinking about religious life, don’t join a community just because your spiritual director likes it or because you see that the brothers/sisters in it are joyful and happy.

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Discerning to Death; Tapering One’s Discernment Towards Its Conclusion

Therese Ivers, JCL — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 01:19:45 +0000

by Therese Ivers, JCL

Way back in September, I was asked to help with an upcoming retreat for women discerning their vocations and who feel like they’re beating their heads on the wall “discerning to death”. This topic really resonated with me, and as I continue to prepare for this weekend’s retreat, I am seeing more and more how although there is plenty of literature giving pieces of information about the discernment process, there is hardly anything out there that talks about how to bring it to a peaceful conclusion. The goal of discernment is to figure out God’s will in one’s life, most particularly whether God is calling one to assume a lifelong commitment by virtue of ordination, vow, or consecration. In theory figuring out one’s vocation sounds pretty straightforward, but plenty of folks agonize over it, and some have never reached a practical conclusion as to whether there is a state in life they should pursue. How exactly does a person go from the beginning to the middle and then reach the end of vocational discernment?

Vocations and the Fairy Tale

Good fairy tales touch upon the deep desires of human beings. Some are about wealth as the reward of virtue and valor, a concept that even Our Lord uses in speaking about the reward of eternal life. Others talk about longevity and an absence from the ordinary woes of life (think immortality and the properties of risen bodies). The majority, however, are about romantic love in which after trial, the princess and the prince happily live together ever after. Again, this reflects the eternal betrothal between Christ and His Church…

Yet, it never ceases to amaze me when I am judging marriage annulment cases and we get someone under oath testifying that they thought that once they got married, everything would turn out great (despite the fact their spouse was abusively beating them daily during their courtship, they were both high on drugs most of the time, that they had two or three children before they decided to get officially hitched…) simply and solely because getting married in the Church was somehow going to magically make things different! It gets worse when they blame people in the Church for their failed marriage (why didn’t the priest stop us?)! How is it that the fairy tale of living happily ever after gets drummed into people’s minds when it comes to vocational choices? I will be forever happy if I marry that person… I will automatically be holy if I become a priest… As soon as I slip on that habit or religious life emblem, I’m gonna be floating around in prayer… It seems to me that good discernment starts with understanding that fairy tales are just that. Fairy tales.

The process of discerning a vocation starts with the realization that the process usually takes knowledge, dedication, and work. Knowledge is necessary to make informed choices. How much do you as a discerner know about the vocations open to you in the Church? It takes dedication to following the will of God. It also takes effort, or work.

One can say that the time of courtship, discernment for the seminary, convent, or other form of consecrated life, is normally a time of mutual discovery. It takes work, both on the part of the person making the decision to pursue a particular path or narrow it down to a path, and of the person(s) who admit that person into vows (think marriage, religious life, diocesan hermit life, and secular institutes), consecration (consecrated virgins) and ordination (diaconate, priesthood, and episcopacy). One who is discerning should work not only at improving knowledge about vocations, but self-knowledge so that obstacles and fears may be evaluated and addressed.

The Goal

The final goal of vocational discernment is to make vows, be consecrated or be ordained if this should be the Lord’s will. Yet, the immediate goal of the discerner should be to do what it takes to determine which path (if any) to which one seems to have a genuine call and make a decision to pursue it in a prudent fashion. That way, one can peacefully but purposefully pursue a possible call and offer oneself to a concrete person, diocese, order, or institute if one prudently and prayerfully determines they could be a fit. Of course a person should be “open” in that the other person, diocese, order, or institute may determine that it is not their vocation to be united with you in their particular path to holiness.

Religious Brothers

Therese Ivers, JCL — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 01:44:25 +0000

by Therese Ivers, JCL

One of our readers put in a request that we discuss the vocation of religious brothers. As a result, I would like to share a few thoughts on the vocation to religious brotherhood.

“Are we visiting the monkeys?” My brother asked this when he was about three years old. He was not talking about going to the zoo. Rather, he was referring to our practice of occasionally going to visit a local abbey on Sunday. This particular abbey has special significance for me. It was where I made a retreat before making my First Communion. It was also where I met “Brother Beekeeper”.

“Brother Beekeeper” was a monk who kept the abbey beehives. No doubt he did much more around the abbey, but I knew him as a super nice monk who showed us what he did with bees. I was writing an essay on beekeeping when I was about 11 years old, and since my neighborhood lacked bee hives, I went to the abbey because I remembered luscious honeycomb being served there for Sunday brunch they’d serve the abbot’s guests. There, this wonderful monk showed us the hives. We donned beekeeping outfits (much too big for my brother and I!) and we had a hands-on experience with beekeeping. We even extracted honey and learned that propolis (gunk bees glue to the entrance of their hives) was good for cuts. Brother Beekeeper even gave my family some honey we extracted and some of that propolis to take home as a souvenir of our trip.

Yes, monks were great in my books. One of the easiest place to find them is in an abbey. Interestingly enough, I’ve noticed that people become quite possessive of “their” monks when they live in a community blessed with a strong presence of monks. It is quite touching to hear in different parts of the United States about “The Abbey”, which means the local abbey. That goes for some of the more “monastic” brothers/monks.

With respect to more active brothers, I have only occasionally bumped into them in my travels around the U.S. They are scarce, with women religious outnumbering them oftentimes at a ratio greater than 10:1. One of my canon law classmates in Rome was a religious brother. He is a member of the Missionaries of Charity that Bl. Mother Teresa founded. He would come into class in his grey and light blue clothing and he was an asset to our class. My family has ties to some religious brothers in that some of us were educated by religious brothers in academic institutions run by them.

In some respects, I think that many Catholics tend to categorize men’s vocations into the priesthood and married states. There is an attitude that I have frequently encountered that if a man has a vocation, he should become a priest and not a brother. Somehow brothers are seen as “not as good as priests” or “wanna-be-priests” that didn’t make it. This is not the case at all! A brother is one called by God to live in community, taking the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. His role is that of intercessory prayer before God and of service to His people. Some brothers are more contemplative, and others are more active. This is a lofty vocation which God calls some men to live. This is a particular and important role in our Church. Sadly, many are not aware of this call because if they think of vocation at all, they think in terms of the priesthood or married life.

So, who are religious brothers? Primarily, religious brothers are men who are assiduously devoted to prayer and contemplation. They are disciples of Christ. Their first duty is personal holiness and to give witness to the joy of living for Christ with their prayer and penance. Then, they may devote themselves to an apostolate in the abundance of their prayer life. You will see brothers such as my classmate working with the poorest of the poor. You will find others hard at work in their monasteries plowing fields or doing work to maintain themselves. The common thread in their lives is that they are men dedicated to the hard but sublime task of taking up the yoke of Christ, both for the good of their own souls and that of the rest of us.