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Why is it that we have so
relatively few vocations in the traditional movement?
Inspired by a May 24 letter on the subject of vocations
written by Fr. Troadec, Rector of the Society’s seminary in France (Flavigny), I
would like to investigate the six requirements for successful ecclesiastical
vocations, so rarely present simultaneously in our young men. It is this that
explains why we do not have the same number of vocations as existed in the
Church before Vatican II and what our families can do to encourage vocations.
1. Understanding Why God Made Us
The first reason why few seek
after a vocation is a false notion of what a vocation is.
Many of the faithful think that a vocation consists in a
very strong call felt in the depth of the soul that would persuade the young man
that he is called by God. Archbishop Lefebvre stood up against this opinion,
affirming that "a vocation is not the fact of a miraculous or extraordinary
call, but the development of a Catholic soul, attaching itself to its Creator
and Savior, Our Lord Jesus Christ, by an exclusive love, and sharing his thirst
for the salvation of souls." Two elements must coexist to awaken
vocations: the love of Our Lord and the love of souls. (Fr. Troadec).
Vocations consequently lie
principally not in a personal experience or subjective call, but in the
intelligence, in a more profound understanding of the reason why God made us —to
know, love and serve Him –and in the will, in the determination to put this into
practice regardless of the cost. Here lies the love of God and the love of souls
that inspires in a young man the ideal of imitating the Sacred Heart, and
serving the Church and souls through the priesthood. It is consequently a
possibility upon which every fervent young Catholic man should reflect, nor
should he exclude it because he does not "feel" any particular call.
Here is how Fr. Troadec puts it:
God has given us an
intelligence and a will, but He has also given us a heart. This heart is made,
above all else, to love Him, and this with a preferential love. Thus, young
men who enter the Seminary perceive everything that God has done for them more
deeply than others. Meditating on the life of Our Lord and His Passion,
considering His death on the Cross, they repeat with St. Paul that Christ
"loved me and delivered himself for me" (Gal. 2:20). Seeing how Our
Lord’s love was not an empty word pronounced in the air, but that it was
concrete, bringing about heroic acts and unspeakable sufferings, young men say
to themselves: No, I do not want to live as if God had not come on this earth;
I do not want to live as if Our Lord had not died for me. In response to that
love, I am not satisfied with living a simply honest life in the world. I want
to respond to His love by a love that is exclusive, total and perpetual, and
which embraces all my strength, all my energy, my entire life.
2. Divine Friendship
There is a second reason why our young men are afraid to
try a vocation. They have a narrow notion of friendship, one which is limited to
this world. The idea of giving up legitimate earthly friendships seems too much,
too difficult, too overwhelming, nor do they consider sufficiently the
incredible grace of the divine friendship, of the intimacy with our Divine
Savior, to which the priest is called, becoming the instrument for applying the
graces of the Passion to souls, offering the Holy Sacrifice, standing in His
place, in His very person. This is a friendship that surpasses every other
friendship as much as heaven surpasses the earth. They tend to ask themselves
whether or not they can do without the friendship of a woman, rather than the
much more fundamental question as to which friendship is going to change them,
as to which friendship they are going to give priority, which friendship it is
that "may give you power to attend upon the Lord without impediment" (I
Cor. 7:35).
There can be no doubt that the young families in our
traditional circles are very edifying by the sacrifices that they make to have
many children and to give them a Catholic education. However, there can
sometimes be found a certain romanticism of the married state, as if it were a
guarantee of the elusive earthly happiness that man in his old age realizes can
never be obtained on this earth. Indeed, if there could be any true lasting
happiness attainable on this earth, St. Paul would not have written: "The
time is short; it remaineth, that they also who have wives be as if they had
none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as if
they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they
that use this world, as if they used it not…" (I Cor. 7:29-31).
If there were any doubt as to the
penetration into our families of the world’s glorification of sentimental
attachments, it would immediately be dissipated by listening to the shamefully
superficial gossip concerning adult, or even teenage, boyfriends and girlfriends
that can be heard around any of our groups of young traditional Catholics, not
to mention the vain and trivial pastimes to which they devote themselves, not
counting the occasions of sin. Such peer-group pressure is an obstacle to any
young man seriously contemplating a vocation, closing his mind to the
possibility of an intimate divine friendship. The modern substitution of sweet
sentimentality in family life for virtue, discipline, obedience, and submission
cannot but play a major role in the unmanly closing of the mind to the greatness
of true friendship.
This is how Fr. Troadec explains the friendship that is
offered to the generous young men who consent to follow a divine call:
Once they pronounce their
generous, magnanimous, complete, and final yes, these young men are abundantly
recompensed. In effect, God does not wait for heaven to reward them, for He
gives Himself right away, especially to those who consecrate themselves to
Him. From that very moment He binds Himself to an exchange of friendship with
those who accept to live intimately with Him. For God is not an abstract
being, but a concrete one, the most concrete of all beings. We have sometimes
the tendency to believe that He is far removed from us, lost in the clouds,
whereas in fact He is very close to us. He is in fact in us when we are in the
state of grace, and He is in us above everything else as a faithful friend,
and not as an implacable judge.
Every person in the state of
grace is a friend of God. St. Ambrose said it; St. Thomas Aquinas
confirmed it. But there are degrees in friendship. Thus it is that God loves
all souls in the state of grace, but He loves more those who attach themselves
to Him by an exclusive, perpetual love. He promised, even in this early life,
a hundredfold to those who abandon all to follow Him. What is this hundredfold
if not the life of friendship in which the soul enjoys already the first
fruits of the happiness of heaven? Without a doubt, some very beautiful souls
live in the world, but oftentimes they are rather overwhelmed by their
preoccupation with material things, and by family and professional worries, so
that it is very difficult for them to enjoy the recollection and the intimacy
tasted by souls who live withdrawn from the world.
3. The Idealism of Love
There can be no getting around it. The consecration of
one’s life to God, and the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are
sacrifices to which no-one feels a natural attraction. There is only one
possible explanation for why a young man would be willing to do this. It is, as
St. Paul says, that "caritas Christi urget nos," —"for the charity
of Christ presseth us" (II Cor. 5:14), impels, drives, forces,
inspires even our rebellious wills. It is the infused virtue of charity,
directed primarily towards God, and secondarily towards souls, the two being
united together in the redeeming Passion of our Divine Savior, which calls us to
become "fishers of men." Crucial importance is here played by the mystery
of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Catholic Church, in which the mystery of the
Incarnation is continued, and for the sanctification of whose members the priest
gives himself whole and entire. He loves the Church as he loves Christ, and will
do no less for the Church than he does for Christ. Likewise essential to this
consecration to the Church is the young man’s love of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
from whom he will learn the nature of true self-giving, compassion for souls,
adoration of the divinity of Christ, and devotion to His Sacred Humanity in His
Passion.
If a young man really knew how to
love, how to yield his heart to the manly urge to offer himself for what is
truly good and beautiful, how could he hold himself back from serving the
Church? However, here also we see a frequent defect in our youth. Enamored with
the love of sport and practical skills so helpful for a boy’s growing up, they
nevertheless rarely develop the love and appreciation of the most sublime
realities —being, truth, goodness, and beauty —that is so necessary for a man.
How rarely do we find in our boys the aspiration for excellence in those
activities that most develop this appreciation —academic studies, languages,
history, music, art, and literature!
Would that our young men loved
knowledge for knowledge’s sake, that they appreciated philosophical and
theological truth for its very transcendence over day-to-day life, that they
admired the beauty of true music, art, and literature, that they had the
psychological intuition of the heroism of a life of virtue, prudence, fortitude
and self-control, and in particular of the sublime virtue of purity! How often
indifference, or a know-it-all cynicism, to these highest of values paralyzes
the idealism —ultimately the idealism of love —upon which every vocation is
built! How often innocence is lost, impediments to a vocation are formed, and
this by a failure of parents to train their children in the appreciation of true
beauty!
4. Spirit of Faith
Clearly we cannot love what we do
not know. There can be no response to a call to a life entirely penetrated by
the supernatural without the spirit of Faith. Much more is required for this
than simply having the Faith, or even saying our morning and night prayers
together. We only have the spirit of Faith when the principles of Faith
penetrate all our daily thoughts, activities, and recreations, when our family
life is penetrated by the desire to promote the Social Kingship of Our Lord
Jesus Christ, when we live in total dependence on Divine Providence and the
Blessed Virgin Mary. A much greater effort is to be made in our families. They
all teach the Faith, the truths of the catechism, but few are able to impart to
their children the spirit of Faith.
Allow me to quote once more from Fr. Troadec’s letter:
To encourage the growth of the
spirit of Faith amongst our youth, it is important that children feel, from a
very early age, that God occupies the first place in their family. They must
be aware that their parents’ important decisions are made in the presence of
God, that all trials are borne with a profoundly supernatural attitude, that
the critical spirit is banished from their home, especially with respect to
religious brothers and sisters, and priests. Breathing a supernatural perfume
from their earliest childhood, children acquire the supernatural spirit that
enables them to respond generously to God’s call…. And so, parents cannot
nourish the spirit of Faith in our youth if they are not themselves penetrated
by it…. In effect, whatever be our vocation, we are all made for God, and if
God does not occupy in our life all the place that is due to Him, it will be
the devil that will take over, for it is natural for a void to be filled in.
5. Spirit of Sacrifice
We are painfully aware of how self-centered our young
people have become, of how much their youthful energy and desires are directed
towards "fun," "pleasure," "having a good time," "experiencing life." While many
folks laugh about such attitudes, that they consider normal in youth, it seems
to me that we ought to be saddened at such superficiality, so far removed from
the ideals that youth ought to hold on to. When egocentrism has become a way of
life, it is practically impossible to break, such a young man wanting the
spiritual indeed, but counting the cost as carefully as if it were a dangerous
pill, holding back from giving up all his time, energy, health, abilities, life,
and his whole self. These are the souls that give up on a vocation when the
going gets tough. Such a frame of mind does not happen by chance. It happens due
to overindulgence, self will, lack of discipline, absence of mortification, not
being trained to go without, and loss of the spirit of poverty, none of which
were possible in large families a century ago, and all of which are
characteristic of our large and small families these days. Is it any wonder that
our boys are deaf to the invitation: "If any man will come after me,
let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For he that will
save his life, shall lose it; and he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall
find it." (Mt. 16:24, 25)?
Fr. Troadec has this to say:
The spirit of sacrifice must be joined to the spirit
of Faith. Paul Claudel wrote: "Youth is not made for pleasure, it is made for
heroism." Youth is not made for pleasure for pleasure is not an end in itself.
Pleasure ought not necessarily be rejected. However, it must not be sought
after for itself. If we seek it for itself, we desire to satisfy our ego, and
we fall little by little into narcissism. But we are not made for ourselves.
We are made for God. Youth is consequently not made for pleasure, but to
strive after a high ideal. Instead of feeding himself with earthly pleasures,
man ought to give himself to imitate the example of the Good Shepherd, who
gave His life for His sheep. This is why priests and seminarians who have been
faithful to their vocation are so complete in their personality.
But in order to have the strength
to leave all to follow Our Lord, we must be detached. It is here that the spirit
of sacrifice enters in…. Young men must have as early as possible the spirit of
sacrifice, in order to develop their generosity and to help them in responding
one day to God’s call, if they receive this grace. This spirit of sacrifice must
be present in families, and can also be nourished by meditation and by recourse
to a spiritual director.
6. Equilibrium
Balance is a rare jewel at any
time, but in particular in the instability of the modern, rapidly changing
world. However, a priest-to-be must have the supernatural balance established
among the virtues, especially those of humility, docility, obedience, and
fortitude, by infused prudence, completing in its turn a naturally balanced
character. Here lies the integrity that a priest must have, for he is
necessarily a leader, not by his own efforts, nor by his own knowledge, nor by
his own judgments, nor by his own temperament. He is a leader because he
represents Christ, stands in the place of God, in his teaching, governing, and
sanctifying of souls.
This precious equilibrium is,
more than anything else, the product of a balanced family environment. More
often than not it is undermined or destroyed, and this not only by mixed and
broken marriages, but also by families in which the father refuses to take
responsibility, the mother refuses docile submission, and both refuse to
discipline themselves and their children. When ongoing conflicts, surging
emotions, dysfunction, disorder, instability, unpredictability, and
sentimentality are the order of the day, it is very difficult for a young man to
have the integrated personality and spiritual life so necessary for the priestly
life. Families that neglect to consider that grace builds on nature, that omit
to cultivate natural virtue and emotional stability, who think that piety is a
remedy for everything (and God knows how numerous such families are in our
chapels) do not produce vocations.
Fr. Troadec remarks:
To enter the seminary, one
ought not to wait for a revelation from St. Michael the Archangel or the
Blessed Mother. It suffices that one has the desire and the disposition to
cooperate in the great work of the Redemption. A minimum of physical health, a
good psychological equilibrium, intellectual and spiritual aptitude, and
common sense must be joined to the desire of giving oneself to God. Finally
one must have a character that is neither too soft nor too violent. These are
the dispositions that must be acquired in order to be capable not only of
following the Seminary formation, but especially of becoming the holy priest
that the world needs so badly.
These, then, are the six aspects of a priestly vocation that are all
absolutely necessary, and that are little known and appreciated among our
faithful. The absence of any one of them will make it impossible for a young man
to persevere. May our families live their Catholic lives in such a way as to
promote all these qualities of true vocations.
[Answered by Fr. Peter R. Scott]
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