Vocation and capacity to respond to it

Vocation: Called by God
Every seminarian, when the moment comes to make a decision, when he has to pass from one stage to the next in the formation process, is faced with this question: “What does God want from me?” which in other words could be said: “What is my vocation?”
Vocation is a word used a lot in the religious environment. The word comes from the latin “vocare” which means “to call”. God calls us and we should answer to him. But how to discern the will of God?
The will of God involves much more than the simple state of life (get married or not), or of a profession (to become a priest, a doctor, or a teacher). Furthermore we should not fall into the temptation of wanting a precise detailed plan as if God would have already decided for us regarding the hundred small things of everyday.
Vocation has to be seen in the broader concept of the plan of God. First and foremost we are called to be his children, to share the eternal life, the life of love of the Trinity. Since love is basically a relationship, we are called not only to accept this invitation but also to help others to obtain it. This is what we call more commonly “my vocation”. For this task God has equipped us with a full set of human, psychological and religious tools: our skills, our desires and our values. These he has given to make sure that we can attain our task. So a good instrument for the vocational discernment is the knowledge of ourselves and a sincere analysis of our potentialities, desires and motivations. God, who planted them in our life, reveals himself through them.
God can speak also through the events of life. Nothing is happening casually, and we can see God at work in any circumstance of life. The young Luigi Orione had clear in his heart that he would consecrate himself to God alone and to the Church, as he himself wrote in a short note: “after days of battle God has won. Farewell to the world … God alone”. But where this choice would bring him, he had to discover it in the daily happenings, starting with the meeting of Mario Ivaldi. This he did every day of his life. The Providence of God is at work and we have to trust it. Jesus himself promised: I will send you the Spirit of truth who will teach you everything”.
So if on one side we will have an inner certainty that we are on the right track, on the other side we will never be 100% sure of what we will do next.
There must have been in our life (maybe in our childhood or young age) a moment in which we have felt something different, special, a deep desire to do more or a special presence in us, an experience difficult to describe but which we felt real, strong. That could be considered the beginning of our vocation.
This special experience is sometimes caused by what we have seen in or heard from a charismatic person. Now it has to become something personal, something that gives me the courage to leave everything behind and follow Christ.  

Capacity of responding to the vocation.


What God plants in our hearts are seeds which need to grow in order to bear fruits. He gives all the skills necessary but those skills too need to improve, to be taken care of.
Vocation is something coming from eternity; the capacity of responding to it is something to be achieved.
During our life, due to the many experiences we had and the kind of formation we received, we developed certain impulses, a way of dealing with the reality, a way of handling our emotions and of protecting ourselves from whatever may hurt us.
All these things, work unconsciously in us, which means they come automatically without we apply to them any intention.
If on one side this helps us to avoid dangers, on the other side it reduces our inner freedom, especially when it is matter of making courageous or demanding choices.
Many people manage to go through all the steps of formation and even to become priests, but fail when inserted full time in the apostolate. What was the weak link that made their chain break? Were they mature enough to be ordained priests?
How to judge the maturity of a person?



The three levels of human life 

Not all the actions of a person are equal; the difference among them is not just at the objective level (the action in itself is good or bad), but also at the subjective level: The same action may be done by different people for different purposes, different desires and will.

Every human person acts basically at three levels:
The Psycho-physiological level
The Psycho-social level
The Spiritual-rational level
All the three levels are present in every person and influence every choice the person makes. The more a person is mature, the more capacity he has to recognize what is going on in him at each level, and handle it in a proper way.
Useless to say that a mature person acts mainly under the influence of the third level, while an immature person gets stuck mainly at the first and second level.
The first level is under the pressure of the physiological needs. Many of these needs are dictated by nature like the need of food, the need of rest, the need of good health etc. Those needs act in us through forces which are mostly unconscious, and so the person is unaware of them. They push the person to make choices so to be gratified. When the needs get out of control and the person exaggerates, he has the psychological tendency to justify his action with some other external reason. For example: A religious, in spite of the vow of poverty, has the tendency to spend a lot of money and buy ever new gadgets. He will justify himself saying that they are necessary for his apostolate, for the good results of his work.
In this level the emotions have a strong part and usually they are either wild or repressed.
In the second level we are in touch with the society and the people around us. Each relationship provokes in us reactions, emotions, and so again we are continuously under the pressure of forces which are often subconscious. Here the person is sometimes called to give up some of his personal desires in order to please the others or to make the relationships work. This process brings him to maturity. We learn the value of other people, appreciate ideas which are different, learn the importance of belonging to a group or a family, etc.
The third level is completely conscious and so here we can say that a person can express his freedom. Here we think, we judge, we make use of our intelligence, but also of our conscience and our faith. Of course, intelligence, conscience and faith need to be trained in order to work properly. A person who lives mostly at this level acknowledges the emotions going on in him, the needs pushing him and gives them answers according to what his intelligence sees best and his conscience believes best. This level should enable us to define ourselves in the light of God.
The three vows can be lived properly (as instruments of sanctification) only at the third level, when they are freely accepted with all the sacrifices they involve. When speaking of the different vows we will see better how it works.
The vows are not the only one to be influenced by the forces at the different levels. Community life, prayer, apostolate too, are under the influence of our inner forces. Our consecration, in order to be true, has to be a free answer to the call of God. It is not sufficient to say: “I am free because nobody is forcing me, it is my decision”. The stories of many religious and priests who left the vocation after years of commitment and apostolate, point out to the fact that maybe they were not completely free inside. They were slaves of some need or emotion though they were not aware of it.


Maturity and inner freedom

From what we said above we understand that a person can be considered mature only when he or she manages to handle properly all the three dimensions of his/her life, and lives mostly in the third dimension.
Freedom is the capacity of making choices without the influence of the instincts of the first and second level. Each level carries with it not only needs and instincts but also values which help the process of transcendence. We need to spend a few words to clarify this process:
Many psychological theories believe that a person cannot find peace unless he satisfies all his needs. They believe also that the person cannot address a need unless he has satisfied all those which are lower to it. It is the case for example of the Humanistic theory of Maslow.
We have instead another opinion more based on a christian vision of life. Many basic needs have to be satisfied, but only to a certain point. Others, instead, especially the psychological ones have to be transcended. Transcendence is a process in which we acknowledge the presence of such needs in us, we accept the fact that they influence us, but little by little we overcome them in the name of higher values. So, from our point of view, the key for achievement of maturity is in the values, not in the needs. Values are external to us and universal, but we can make them ours, while the needs are inside us and subjective. So our process brings us outside of ourselves and do not close us in ourselves.
To give an example: if a person is fearful, the humanistic process will bring him to accept the fact that he is fearful and just avoid the dangerous situations until fear will pass. (Humanistic therapists do not believe in the unconscious). We, instead, tell the person that after having accepted the fact that his fear influences him a lot, he should now focus on some values he can achieve while facing the difficult situations and in the name of those values he can overcome his fear.
Religious life and Consecration can be understood only if seen from the point of view of the values they carry, values which have to be sought with freedom.
What are the values proper of religious life?
First and foremost the two already mentioned: union with God and fellowship of Christ.
Then there are the instrumental values which help us to achieve those two. They are: the vows, the fraternal life, the service of the poor in apostolate, and the life of prayer.
Even the charism proper to each congregation can be considered a value at the service of any of the above.
So maturity is this capacity of opting freely for some values in spite of the many tendencies or drives which from the inside would bring us to the opposite direction.
Vows, community life, require many sacrifices, if lived according to their requirement, while our nature would settle down for a more comfortable life. We will see this better when we speak directly on each of the vows.
Sometimes we see religious who live a lukewarm life, without any enthusiasm or commitment. Why is that so? Maybe they chose religious life not in function of the values carried but for other reasons, conscious or unconscious. Some may choose apostolate for the service of the poor, or for the glory of God, others may do it for the feeling of being good, for the appreciation he would get from people for the opportunity of a career he would not get at home.
Some may accept chastity for fear of matrimony and fear of the requirements of a family life. Some may accept poverty because the life in the religious houses is more comfortable than that in his father's house. Some may accept obedience because he is afraid of making choices, of taking up responsibilities and prefers to hide himself in the number of the community and in the daily routine. Some may just join in a congregation to make his family happy.
All of us may have experienced sometimes any of these drives: If on one side these feelings are normal, they should never be the final reason for deciding.