target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_ce3adae2-08f1-51a5-9fe3-734fcc52a9c2">3 Spiritual Doctrine of St Catherine of Genoa, ch. XIV.
1. What Do You Seek?
A passion for God
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In the name of our Lord we bid you remember the greatness of the trust that is now to be committed to your charge. Remember always with thanksgiving that the treasure now to be entrusted to you is Christ’s own flock, bought by the shedding of his blood on the cross. It is to him that you will render account for your stewardship of his people. (Ordination of Priest: The Declarations)
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O God, you are my God, for you I long;
For you my soul is thirsting.
My body pines for you
Like a dry, weary land without water.
(Psalm 62.1)
It was the summer of ’65, the Rolling Stones were ‘Top of the Pops’ and The Sound of Music had just been released to rapturous audiences. I was 19, newly confirmed and a deeply enthusiastic Christian for whom the faith blazed out and consumed all else. A year later, I read a novel called The Cardinal and to say I was inspired would be an understatement. The book concerns one man’s struggle with a vocation to the priesthood and the heroic way he eventually lived that out in the slums of New York, an account which awoke the seed of my own calling. Years later, I discovered that St Ignatius had had a similar experience when reading the lives of Sts Francis and Dominic, to which his response had been: ‘If they can do such things, so can I!’ Thus began the story of my – long and somewhat tortuous – journey to priesthood. Others will have their own. But what is common for all priests, I trust, is that we have a sense of being called into an ever-deepening relationship with the Lord who graciously shares with us his vocation.
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OUR PRIMARY CALLING
Life has taken me along many and varied paths where people and places have been formative, not least during 25 years of Franciscan religious life and the subsequent time as a parish priest. On first joining the Anglican Franciscans, I came across some words by the then Minister General, Br Geoffrey SSF. He asked a group of novices, as had St Benedict the founder of Western monasticism, to consider why they had come – a question equally applicable to any consideration of the priesthood. Was it because they thought Franciscans preached well and ran good missions? Or because they felt a need for community? Or were sickened and alarmed by the world? Or wanted to help people in need?
‘It is not wrong’, he went on to say, ‘to have any or all of these motives in your mind as you come and seek to join us. It may be that in being here all these things will be achieved. But not one of these is entirely adequate as a motive. There is one motive which must be over and above all these subsidiary motives and which must be your consuming passion if you are to become a true Friar: I come to seek God.’ (‘Vocation’, SSF)
Now I realize that reflection concerning our primary calling to seek God also applies to all Christians, but the priest, like the religious, is looked upon as someone who has made an explicit response to share their life with Jesus (Mark 3.13; cf. John 17.24). However, do you notice the way that calling can become buried by either the role we have or the work we do? Many of those exercising the ministry of spiritual direction have come to realize the need many have to rediscover their primary, personal vocation.
The ‘personal vocation’
I love the description of human life as the ‘vocation to faithfulness’.1 But, for many, vocation is normally considered in relation to the outward expression of a particular ministry: ‘[A vocation is a] particular calling to serve God and all people through one of the Church’s authorized lay or ordained ministries’.2 It’s also often understood in terms of a call to live the religious life or a ‘lay’ vocation to nursing, teaching, medicine etc. But in his book Discovering Your Personal Vocation, Herbert Alphonso SJ goes further. He writes about the importance of discovering our ‘primary calling’,3 which lies at the heart of who we are and is utterly unique to each of us. It’s that vocation which we’re to live out whether we find ourselves in parishes, schools, offices or wherever. God has written it on the palm of his hand (Isa. 49.16), and as we listen deeply to him we realize our calling. Emerging from the ‘core-self’, it’s deeper than any ministerial vocation but gives it life and meaning. When I first heard these wonderful words of St Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney, ‘the priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus’, they resonated in a place which I now realize is where that ‘personal vocation’ is heard.
To the greater glory of God
As that sense of vocation develops and we enter into the process of testing that call through training and initial formation, the foundations of our faith will be exposed, an experience that can be very hard for some. From time to time, I sit with ordinands who are going through this ‘stripping’ and have to assure them that this is quite normal and, in the end, it’s in order that their lives might reveal the glory of God in Christ (cf. 2 Cor.13.5). As tough as it may be, welcome this stripping! Yes, the journey will be hard and painful at times, and as the foundations of our faith are tested it may become apparent that they’re rooted more on external supports (Scripture, tradition, the witness of others, etc.) than on Christ. If our faith is determined by externals, whether Scripture or the Church, we’ll need to embark on a process of owning it for ourselves. At this moment we need to realize God’s utter love for us and deepen our desire to return that love as the old is stripped away that the new might emerge. Prayer is one of the places where this needs to be done as we present our confusions to God, holding on to the simple fact that we are loved and precious in God’s sight. Growing is a painful process (1 Cor. 13.11), and it takes time! Many years ago, my confessor told me to be patient with the process, keep to a simple rule of prayer and don’t get trapped by despair if entering into a period of confusion. You may be tempted to return to the certainties of spiritual childhood, but they may have to be left behind if we are to be of use to others. God calls us on a vocational pilgrimage where we must leave the known for the unknown if we are to grow into Christ. What matters is what God is doing in the heart, something the psalms, especially 139, so often express.
Of course, the ‘core-self’, the heart of who we are, is where the image of God is to be discovered (Gen. 2.7; 2 Cor. 3.3). From that place all true spirituality emerges as water gushes up from the depths of a well (John 4.7–15). Ignatius Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises, recalls the foundational importance of this place where the love of God is to be known, saying that ‘God created human beings to praise, reverence, and serve God and be happy with him forever.’ Behind all he wrote and lived was the desire that life should be lived ‘to the greater glory of God’ – Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam (AMDG) – which he took as his motto. This is what you and I were created for, and it is when we are living out of that expression of praise that we’re most fully human.
I love you, Lord, my strength,
my rock, my fortress, my saviour.
My God is the rock where I take refuge;
my shield, my mighty help, my stronghold.
(Psalm 18.1f.)
Ignatius also observes that that foundation needs to be firm if it is to support our journey with God into the fullness of our being,
