Discerning One's Vocation

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“When Yahweh called, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ he answered, ‘Here I am,’ and, running to Eli, he said, ‘Here I am, as you called me.’ Eli said, ‘I did not call. Go back and lie down.’”

God was calling Samuel, but Samuel did not realize that it was God who was calling.

“And again, Yahweh called, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ He got up and went to Eli and said, ‘Here I am, as you called me.’ He replied, ‘I did not call, my son; go back and lie down.’

“And he said to Samuel, ‘Go and lie down, and if someone calls, say: Speak, Yahweh, for your servant is listening.’ So Samuel went and lay down in his place” (1 Sam. 3:4-6,9).

This is the right reaction to have when we detect that God may be speaking deep in our soul and in our heart: “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”

What’s interesting is that God was speaking, but [Samuel] did not know that He was God.

All through our life, God is speaking to us through people, through places, through events, through ideas. He’s beside us all time.

If God has a special calling for us—to marriage, to a celibate life, to a professional work, to a particular supernatural family in the Church—little by little, He will make His will known.

God often likes to act in silent, hidden ways, but all the time, He is acting. There is a plan in our life.

Many years ago, I was brought on an excursion to the West Coast of Ireland, to a little island off the coast of Galway, where there is a road that meanders across the island.

On the other side of the island, there is an old Celtic fortress dating back thousands of years.

There is a slight incline as you walk across the island, and when you get to this old Celtic fortress, you can look back across the island and you can see the pathway that you’ve come on.

There is a well-known priest in the excursion who liked to talk a lot about the “road of life.”

He said, "You look back over the island, and you see the road that you've traversed, as it makes its way across the island with all of its twists and turns.” He liked to say that this is like the road of life.

“We look back and we see all the twists and turns, all the influences that God has used to bring us to where we are: the family that we were born into, the school that we went to, the games we played, the friends we made—all the different influences of our life.

“All of these have come to shape our character, our personality, our heart, our soul. And here we are—the road of life has led us to this particular point.”

But then you reach the Celtic fortress, and that’s the end of the road. Then there’s a big cliff, maybe a 400-meter cliff, going down into the Atlantic.

There’s a big wind that hits the side of the cliff there, coming in from Boston. It hits the cliff and goes upwards.

You have to get down on your hands and knees and peer very carefully over the cliff. You have to take a lot of care, because the wind could lift you out of it.

You see the waves of the Atlantic crashing against the rocks way down beneath you, with a great spray. It’s a terrific sight.

So you look back, and everything looks so clear, so cozy. Then you look forward, and there’s no more road.

This priest used to say, “God has brought us to the end of the road, to the edge of a cliff, because He wants us to jump.

“When you look at it from a human point of view, it doesn't make any sense. The waves, the rocks, the spray, the sea—why am I here? Why has God brought me here?”

He says, “You look at it from a human perspective and it doesn’t make any sense. But then if you look at it from a supernatural perspective, you find that Our Lady is standing six meters out from the edge of the cliff, and she’s saying, ‘Jump! Jump into my arms!’”

Everybody who has followed a vocation has jumped off that cliff, leaving everything behind.

Terra firma under our feet can seem attractive, but Our Lady wants us to launch ourselves out into the open, with faith, with hope, with daring, taking risks.

That's what a vocation is all about. It’s a pilgrimage of faith. It’s letting God take over our life and letting Him be the boss, following His pathways.

We're told in the Book of Revelation, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20).

It could be that God is the one knocking at the door of your heart, asking you for a greater generosity, a greater commitment, a greater humility, greater daring to be part of the great ideals that He wants to place in front of you.

God is always at work in our life, working on that road of life to bring us to where we are.

“The next day, as John stood there again with two of his disciples, Jesus went past, and John looked towards him and said, ‘Look, there is the Lamb of God.’ And the two disciples heard what he said and followed Jesus” (John 1:35-37).

They were looking for something. They didn't just see Jesus and were immediately attracted to Him. God must have been working in their heart and soul for a long time previously.

Pope St. John Paul II says that we all have a hole in the heart, and that hole can only be filled by God. Every human person is looking for God.

These two disciples, when they had Jesus pointed out to them, they realized, ‘That's what I'm looking for. That's who I'm looking for.’

Then we're told, “Jesus turned around, saw them following, and said, ‘What do you seek?’” (John 1:38).

Very often the verbs attached to the Holy Name in Scripture can be very instructive. “Jesus turned.” He turned around from what He was doing. He stopped where He was going. He turned towards these individuals.

Maybe these days in your life, Our Lord is turning and looking at you. “And he said to them, ‘What do you seek?’” (John 1:38).

Because truly they were seeking. Maybe, like Samuel, they really didn't know what they were seeking. But they knew they were seeking something.

God often gives us these inclinations in our desires. We're seeking, we're searching. And so, a good question to ask ourselves is, ‘Where am I? What are the signs of the times in my life?’

Our Lord makes a lot of noise about “the signs of the times.”

“‘Stormy weather today,’ you say, ‘for the sky is red and overcast,’” we're told in St. Matthew. “‘You know how to read the face of the sky, but you cannot read the signs of the times’” (Matt. 16:3).

In St. Luke: “He said to the crowds, ‘When you see a cloud looming up in the west you say at once that rain is coming, and so it does. And when the wind is from the south, you say it's going to be hot, and it is. … You know how to interpret the face of the earth and the sky. How is it that you do not know how to interpret these times?’” (Luke 12:54-56).

Look at the signs of the times in your life. What age are you? In what country are you? Who are the people you're in contact with? What are the influences that God has made in your life?

Are you in Hawaii? Are you in Alaska? What supernatural family in the Church has God brought you in contact with, of the thousands that there are?

Sometimes God whispers in our ear, but sometimes He shouts. If we look at the signs of the times in our life, we may have to admit that God is shouting at me in my life. And He wants me to jump off that cliff, to make that act of faith.

He's turning and looking upon each one of us: “Whom do you seek?” (John 18:7).

Pope St. John Paul liked to say that there are three questions that every human person must keep asking in the course of their life: ‘Where have I come from?’ ‘Where am I going?’ ‘What is my life all about?’ (cf. John Paul II, Encyclical, Fides et Ratio, September 14, 1988).

He said that on the answers to those questions, very often, will depend the happiness that we will achieve in this world.

It's of crucial importance that we find out what is the will of God for my life, because my happiness and maybe, the happiness of many other people, are going to be tied up in that.

Therefore, we have to pray, we have to ask for lights. Sometimes God shows it to us very clearly, but He wants us to ask.

He wants us to show Him with deeds that we really want to find out that truth of who we are, of where we've come from, of what our life is all about.

If God has given you a vocation to a supernatural family in the Church, that's one of the greatest gifts that He could give to any person in the 21st century.

The highest possible ideals that are available on the planet are the ideals of Christ. God is placing them precisely within our grasp.

That's why the apostles, when they heard the words of Our Lord, they answered. “They got up immediately and they followed him” (cf. Matt. 4:22). There was a certain sense of urgency.

When Our Lord said, “What do you seek?” they answered, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where do you live?” (John 1:38).

They wanted to know more about Christ. They grew in friendship with Him. That's what they were seeking. They came to be very close to Him.

“They came,” we’re told, “…and they stayed with him that day” (John 1:39). They were beginning to fall in love with divine beauty Incarnate.

The ideals and the ideas of Christ are very beautiful. Christ is love. Christ is truth.

Most people find Christ irresistible. He gives us the possibility of doing great things in our life.

There's a story of a snail who was going through a field and the snail was leaving behind him some dirty, filthy, slimy trail.

Then the snail came to a stone slab, a flat stone slab, which was commemorating some event in human history.

The snail began to traverse the slab, and when it got to the other side of the slab, it looked back and it saw the dirty, filthy, slimy trail it had left on the slab.

And the snail said to itself, “Fantastic, I have left my mark on human history!”

When we look back at the end of our life, what sort of a legacy are we going to leave? What sort of a furrow are we going to make in this world?

With our vocation, God gives us the opportunity to make a deep furrow, to do an awful lot of good, to leave a great legacy to people who come after us.

In this Year of St. Joseph (December 8, 2020 to December 8, 2021), it's interesting to look at the vocation of Joseph.

When he discovered that Our Lady was with child, he was minded to put her away privately “because he was a just man” (Matt. 1:19).

This was not part of his plans. This was a real spanner in the works. Our Lady had disappeared for three months without a word. And then she comes back and she's with child. What is Joseph supposed to think?

God treats Joseph pretty badly. Then the Holy Spirit enlightens him: “Do not be afraid, Joseph, to take Mary as your wife, because that which is begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 1:20).

He realizes something wonderfully supernatural has taken place.

The love and tenderness that he had, and his affection for Our Lady, go on to an even higher plane, because he has discovered even more that she's “the handmaid of the Lord” (Luke 1:38).

Likewise, Our Lady in her vocation—she hadn't planned to go away for three months. She didn't plan to leave the person she loved high and dry without an explanation.

She didn't plan to be with child and to go off to a God-forsaken place like Bethlehem and give birth in a stable. All this was outside the realm of her plans.

But both Joseph and Mary allowed God to walk into their life. They gave God a blank check.

“Behold, the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to your will” (Luke 1:38). We have to try and say those same words to Our Lady and to learn from the vocation of Joseph.

All the time, Joseph was discerning—discerning the will of God. It came to him in all sorts of strange ways.

Sometimes there was an angel who woke him up in the middle of the night (Matt. 1:20-25, 2:13-14, 19-20). But also, there were human ways that God used to speak to Joseph.

It was the decree of Caesar Augustus (Luke 2:1). Sometimes God makes use of very human, worldly instruments. The decree of Caesar Augustus brought the Holy Family to Bethlehem.

All sorts of amazing things can have an influence in our life to bring us to where we are.

At the same time, God didn't send Joseph and Mary an email outlining all of His plans; He spoke to them through the decree of Caesar Augustus, and He left the rest to their initiative.

He wanted Joseph and Mary to think, to work out in their prayer, ‘What is the will of God? Do we stay in Nazareth; do we go to Bethlehem?’

He wanted their correspondence. He left the ball in their court. He was hoping for a very generous response—which is what He got. They left everything. They set out on that journey. They didn’t know where it was going to lead.

But that journey was the opportunity for them to put their faith into practice, and their hope, and their trust, and their divine filiation, and their love, and their acceptance of the will of God.

John Paul II liked to say that “the vocation of Our Lady and its fulfillment was a whole pilgrimage of faith, a journeying forward in faith” (cf. John Paul II, Encyclical, Redemptoris Mater, March 25, 1987).

That’s what the journey to Bethlehem was. They put their whole heart and mind into doing what they saw was the will of God. And they did that with a great rectitude of intention. It was all for the glory of God.

It's a great way to live—for the glory of God.

I read a history book once about the history of the La Salle brothers in Malaysia. They arrived there, about 1852. They set up a couple of schools.

It took them fifty years to compete with the British government schools. But then after fifty years, they took over the lead, and they've more or less been in the lead ever since—an enormous contribution to the growth of the country.

This was a PhD thesis that was written in Oxford. It was later published. But the punchline: the opening page of the book says, “When you read this story, the conclusion you come to is that these people were working for God.”

What a great compliment at the end of our life: if people can say about us that we were truly working for God, and we left a great amount of work after us, for other people to be inspired by.

Joseph is a great model for our vocation: silent, spiritual, humble, available, manly, tough—taking tough decisions, fleeing to Egypt with a butcher on his heels, not knowing where the next meal was going to come from, staying in a strange country like Egypt, being an immigrant, having to start from scratch, begin all over again.

But then again, later in life, listening to the voice of the angel which tells him to return, he makes another decision along the way, because he hears there’s a ruler there, Archelaus, and he goes back to Nazareth (cf. Matt. 2:22).

All the time, he’s using his mind to his heart. He’s following a very divine plan.

When we see the way that other people have corresponded in history, we see a great commitment, great dedication, a great seriousness.

One important factor when we come to think about vocation is the reality of time. God is calling us now, today, this period of our life.

When Christ speaks in His public life, He doesn't talk about long-term goals. He doesn’t talk about Vision 2030 or Millennium Goals or things like that. He talks about “today.”

“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). “This day you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). “Woman, my hour has not yet come” (John 2:4). “Now has the hour come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23).

Christ gives a lot of importance to short periods of time. Time is a flowing, divine treasure. It comes, it’s with us, and then it’s gone, never to return. It’s passing.

St. Josemaría in The Way likes to say, “Youth gives all it's got” (cf. Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 30).

In relation to our vocation, God has given us a certain amount of time with which to live out our vocation; a certain amount of time in which to say yes, to give of our best.

Now is the time to go forward because now is the time that God is calling.

If we don't give our time to God, what do we give? We could waste away many months and years waiting or fulfilling other plans, but that might be a waste of time.

If we don't give ourselves to God now, what do we give ourselves? We have to keep in mind all the time that time is limited; we don't have forever. God wants us to use every little increment of time that we have.

What is the most important thing to do at the moment? It’s to build up our spiritual life.

If we build up our spiritual life, it will be easier for the Holy Spirit to make us see what God wants us to see.

Spend time every day on your spiritual reading—we tend to become what we read.

Spend fifteen minutes every day in prayer, go to your spiritual director for spiritual direction, live in the state of grace, get to Confession regularly.

Like Mary Magdalene, fall in love with Jesus. She was a great sinner, but she learned how to have a tender love for Jesus.

And try to do a lot of apostolate. Reach out to other people; become a “fisher of men” (Matt. 4:19).

Expose yourself to formation. We can’t do much without formation.

In all these, there's a certain urgency. When Our Lady realized the plans of God for her, “she went with haste into the hill country” (Luke 1:39). She didn’t dilly-dally. She didn’t wait a couple of days or a couple of months. She went quickly to fulfill the will of God.

We’re also told that when the angels appeared to the shepherds, they also “went with haste and they found Mary and Joseph, and the babe, lying in a manger” (Luke 2:8-12,15-17).

They didn't turn over and go to sleep, and say, ‘We’ll try again tomorrow’ or ‘We’ll go some other time; we don’t feel like it at the moment.’

When people see the will of God in their life, they go quickly to fulfill that will of God. They come to see that God, somehow, is working all the time in my life.

We’re told in the Book of Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Before you came to birth, I consecrated you; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations" (Jer. 1:5).

All the obstacles that may be there are not really obstacles, because God disposes of all the obstacles.

We might feel a great fear. Everyone in the presence of the supernatural experiences fear.

That's why the angel said, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God” (Luke 1:30); and also, to Joseph: “Do not be afraid, Joseph, to take Mary as your wife” (Matt. 1:20).

If God is calling us, you can be sure that the last thing the devil wants you to do is to say yes. He will provoke all sorts of fears about jumping off that cliff.

But the greatest happiness in our life comes from jumping off the cliff. It's the same in marriage as in the celibate life.

God has lit a candle in your heart. The world may want to blow it out.

We need a certain interior toughness, a fortitude, to face the possible contradictions, to live the will of God, to see that God has given me a mission in my life—a mission which is something wonderful, a mission that comes with my Baptism—holiness and apostolate, which is there for every Christian, every baptized person.

Now the calling to which God is calling me is a specification of that mission. He's calling me along a certain, very specific pathway.

He wants me to struggle for holiness and do apostolate according to a certain way that He has laid down. Certain of our pathways are ours, and certain are not.

I heard an elderly missionary priest in Malaysia once saying that all the different pathways that God has in His Church—they may not be our cup of tea, but they're God's tea.

We respect all the different pathways, but God is calling me along a specific one.

He's promised me wonderful things, the hundredfold (Mark 10:30), the great thing to think about: happiness in this world, as well as the eternal wedding feast.

St. Josemaría says in The Way, “Don't let your life be barren. Be useful. Make yourself felt. Shine forth with the torch of your faith and your love.

“With your apostolic life, wipe out the trail of filth and slime left by the corrupt sowers of hatred. And set aflame all the ways of the earth with the fire of Christ that you bear in your heart” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 1).

“Get rid of that ‘small-town’ outlook. Enlarge your heart till it becomes universal, ‘catholic.’ Don't flutter about like a hen, when you can soar to the heights of an eagle” (ibid., Point 7).

“Why don't you give yourself to God,” he says, “once and for all… really…, now? If you see your way clearly, follow it. Why don't you shake off the cowardice that holds you back?” (ibid., Points 902-903).

“You say that you can't do more? Could it be that…you can't do less?” (ibid., Point 23).

“You are too calculating. Don't tell me you are young. Youth gives all it can: it gives itself without reserve” (ibid., Point 30).

“‘Proclaim the Good News…I shall be with you…’ It is Jesus who has said this…and he has said it to you” (ibid., Point 904).

“Humbly ask God to increase your faith. And then, with new lights, you will fully appreciate the difference between the paths of this world and your way as an apostle” (ibid., Point 580).

We can always look to the example of Our Lady and of St. Joseph to see how God wants us to respond at this particular moment—how He's hoping for our yes, our total generosity, our jumping off that cliff.

We will find that the loving arms of Our Lady will be waiting to embrace us, and she will give us the joy and peace that only can come from her and from God.

There might be a time in our life when she'll put us back on the edge of the cliff and say, ‘Jump again, show me again with your deeds that you really want to follow me, that you really love me. I want to see it in your actions.’

Mary, may you give me the courage and the grace and the fortitude and the faith to follow the divine pathway that God is calling me to.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

OLV