The Church is suffering from a commitment problem. Vocations to the priesthood, marriage, and religious life are all on a downward slide—like that of an avalanche—at this point. Young people are not interested in committing to a state in life; in fact, most do not know they have a vocation from God. Two generations of “no-fault divorce” have unsurprisingly resulted in a culture that is afraid of commitment. Decades of a Church that has reduced the spiritual life to personal fulfillment have meant that young people are unwilling to commit to the priesthood and religious life, and more recently, sacramental marriage.
There is an unfortunate trend within the Church in the West to reduce the spiritual life to self-help and self-fulfillment. This means that most people do not know how to discern a vocation or to understand what is required in the Christian life. I hear it time and again. So-and-so is happy and at peace with their decision. What always comes to my mind is, does this person know the difference between the peace of Christ, the false peace of the enemy acting as an angel of light, and the false peace of hidden egoism?
The vocation we are called to is the path to ultimate joy. It is the joy that only Christ can give to us, but it comes with a very high cost. I frequently tell my priest friends to jettison any illusion they have that the priesthood is easy or somehow better than marriage. I explain the same thing to young men who think that marriage is better than the priesthood. Every single vocation requires dying.
The danger in discernment is in thinking that God only wants us to be happy in a worldly sense. We reduce the spiritual life to a superficial happiness that requires very little from us. We think that God always wants us to be “happy.” The truth is, we are sinful, selfish, and egotistical. The Lord must strip us of all of that over the course of our lives. This process—often called the dark night—is essential to our spiritual growth.
This means that often the Lord asks us to do things that are deeply painful, uncomfortable, and against our own personal desires. Any person who thinks that God always wants what they want has reduced God to their own ego. They are not worshipping the true God; they are worshipping a God of their own making who is more of a vending machine to fulfill their own desires.
Unfortunately, we live in a culture that tells us we are made for worldly happiness and that suffering is the greatest evil. This same mentality has deeply infected the Church. When things get difficult, we assume it means this is not what God wants for us. We jettison the many passages of Sacred Scripture where the Lord tells us bluntly that we are called to the way of the Cross, to die like a grain of wheat, to embrace worldly hatred, and to be willing to die for others.
This mentality is creating a vocations crisis at every level. When a relationship becomes difficult and no longer “fulfills” us, we assume it is not what God wants for us. When young men in seminary come up against difficulties and the very real cross of priesthood, they leave, because they think that automatically means they are called to marriage. When religious life requires forsaking everything of the world, people leave, because it doesn’t meet worldly needs. We have jettisoned the cross because we think we get the resurrection always here and now in this life. We do in the sense that we know Christ has conquered sin and death and has risen. We can live in firm faith, hope, and charity, but we are still on the way home. And the way home is through the Cross.
The Church in the West will not be able to foster priestly and religious vocations and strong sacramental marriages until we stop believing that comfort is what God ultimately wants for each one of us. If I gave my daughter everything she wanted, then her soul would die. The Lord knows that if He only gave us what we desire, then we would spiritually atrophy; we’d cave inward towards a total reliance on selfish egoism.
The Lord has not stopped calling men to be priests. Unfortunately, the allures of the world, the flesh, and the devil are blinding many men to this calling. Priests are called to be crucified with the Eternal High Priest. It is a call to lay down one’s life for their Bride the Church. It requires great heroism, charity, and total surrender of self. Any man who thinks it is the flock’s job to provide him self-fulfillment has completely misunderstood his vocational call. Christ is His ultimate fulfillment. The priest is called to be poured out with Christ for others.
The same can be said of the vocation of marriage. Spouses are called to be crucified for one another and their children in order to lead one another to heaven. It is not about personal self-fulfillment or a “soul mate” who meets all our needs. This understanding of marriage is a false idol. I frequently tell people I minister to that my husband is not my “soul mate,” the Lord is, and no one else can be. Why? No other human being can ultimately complete or fulfill us. What an incredible amount of pressure to put on someone else! The one flesh union should never supersede Christ’s place within the relationship. Christ must come first. We often forget that marriage ends at death precisely because marriage is an eschatological sign of our ultimate marriage to Christ in heaven. If we place Christ first within our marriages, then we will be able to love our spouses and children in freedom rather than from a place of egoism.
The priesthood and marriage are both calls to die-to-self for others. The Lord Himself says: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn. 15:13). This dying is not only physical dying. It is the call to white martyrdom every single day, where we die to ourselves for the sake of others. This means that much of what is asked of us early on in the spiritual life is uncomfortable and doesn’t feel good. We may not “feel” happiness. This is because we must be deeply stripped of our selfishness. If we think that God wants us to have only good things and never do anything uncomfortable, it might be a good idea to poll the people around us to see if our blindness has caused great injury to them. The answer assuredly will be yes.
Religious life is the most complete eschatological sign within the Church, signaling the fact that we are made for heaven. This vocation is a total relinquishment of the things of this world for Christ. It is to be married to Christ here and now, through the evangelical counsels of celibacy, poverty, and obedience. The individual who goes to a religious community seeking self-fulfillment in others within the community will very quickly fall away. To join a religious community is to seek to relinquish everything, including false notions of happiness. The joy the Lord has in mind for us goes much deeper than the lies of our culture. To join a religious community is to die for Christ, the rest of the community, and the Church each day in order to seek the things of heaven now.
The vocations crisis points to a much deeper issue within the Church and the wider culture that we need to confront. We have misunderstood the Gospel message. Reducing the Good News to self-help and self-fulfillment strips it of its power and turns it into a counterfeit that is egoism in disguise. Our fulfillment can only be found through being configured to Christ within the vocation He calls us to.
This means maturing spiritually and moving away from false happiness. As Mother Angelica would say: “Holiness is not for wimps, and the cross isn’t negotiable, sweetheart—it’s a requirement.” If we think that our vocation should only provide us warm fuzzy feelings, then we aren’t truly seeking Christ or a vocation from Him.
We follow a Crucified Savior. Why do we keep thinking that our lives get to look different from His own?
Photo by Andrés Gómez on Unsplash
