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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 4/15/2002 6:58 PM (GMT -6) |   | No. This is not about Bob Dylan.
(The below is specifically about celebacy and vocation. But don't let that stop you from reading it.)
Many of my friends are undergoing CAREER/JOB and life changes. This seems very useful for THAT part of life. Or RELATIONSHIP changes, etc.
It is about ANY change or challenge that you might and will, and maybe ARE facing in your life. And it is a pretty darn good guild for 'parcing' (love that word) through what is/could/might happen to you -- so as to have some understanding and get some wisdom.
Well, my short introduction is getting too long...
THE SACRAMENT OF LOVE, pp. 97-100, By Paul Evdokimov, SVP c.1985
The Royal Priesthood of the Believers
The empirical self is preoccupied only with itself and its blind desires; but the deeper, spiritual self, the one that assumes its destiny, runs ahead of the invitations, and hears and appropriates them. By responding to the call, or by accepting the present because of a lack of clarity, one finds oneself between specific present conditions and an inspiration. This may at any moment lead to an entirely new configuration; during this temporary pause between what is and will occur, I accept my vocation-destiny and somehow develop it from within. As an invitation to collaborate, the working of God embraces the working of man; the one is placed inside the other without ever forcing it. This is the profound dialectic, the perpetually virgin miracle of the human fiat, a dialectic that is not understood in terms of causality but in terms of creative participation. I am not the cause of my destiny, for it is a gift; but it lies within me to determine whether I am ruled by it or reject it or have dominion over it.
One should be informed and aware of the temptation to stubbornly multiply and magnify difficulties into the impossible. However, the unfeasible is the surest sign of an authentic vocation, since "the power of God is manifest in human weakness." Excessive worries and anxieties that lead to neuroses are an indication of an idolatry of one's own desires, of an exaggerated feeling of self-importance. There is a great difference between the call to the unknown and this totally un-motivated resolve that the empirical self creates without admitting it. The despair of an apparently failed life derives from the fact that one has assumed and decided beforehand that one will be a composer, a genius, an explorer, or a married man. Such an arbitrary resolution is a mortgage on the future; it does not take into account elements presently unknown but which in themselves are the best condition for an authentic destiny. The path that we guess and decide on in advance when we follow our passions and preferences, without screening them through an ascesis that reveals what is real, leads to the tragic dead ends of a ruined life.
Against all predetermined solutions one must discover the spiritual dimension of the free spaces in order to call forth creative reactions that transcend a given condition. All reduction of a destiny to an exterior determinism is illegitimate; one's vocation is found exactly on the crest between necessity and creative freedom, along the line of faith, which reveals the direction as its free and strong confession grows.
The one who is attentive awaits and already loves the event that is taking shape at the precise, mysterious junction where an unbeliever would see only nature and necessity. Ultimately, a vertical transcendence leaps up, even from a circle closed at the horizon.
When we think that we give up what we imagine to be ours, we only surrender that which restricts us. But this liberation occurs only at a time when the self ceases to take an interest in itself as an absolute end. We can add new ears to the sheaf of conditions, and then our whole, creative self shall bear fruit in every grain.
One's entire vocation is an option, an answer to a call that has been heard. It can simply be the present condition. It is never a voice that clarifies everything. The dimness inherent in faith never leaves us. There is one thing we can be sure of, that every vocation is always accompanied by a renunciation. One who is married renounces monastic heroism; a monk, the married life. The rich young man of the Gospel is not invited either to marry or to enter a monastery. He had to renounce his wealth, his "having," his preferences, in order to follow the Lord. Likewise, the "eunuchs" for the Kingdom—whatever meaning might be given to this expression—signal a deprivation, a renouncing, a sacrifice. However, in all the cases of deprivation Scripture speaks of, grace offers a gift; out of a negative renunciation it creates a positive vocation. To renounce one thing means to be totally consecrated to another that this very renunciation allows us to realize. It is not a mutilation at all, but a re-making of the "economy" of a being, put at the complete disposal of a new destiny already loved. All aridity of spirit results from sublimations that are badly assumed, from the forced maimings of a vocation that was poorly understood, from a disguised, paralyzing refusal. From these various modes of inauthenticity where life has no meaning, a passage to a world of true life opens up.
All men seek knowledge, power, Joy. Only joy is sufficient unto itself. It comprises and surpasses everything, because it is the symphony of Meaning found, of the "one thing needful" about which the Gospel speaks.
* * * * *
The call to be celibate is infinitely greater than celibacy as such. It is not celibacy that is central, but a life that for the time brings celibacy with it. For a priest of the Roman Church, celibacy is only a condition of his ministry and presents no specifically monastic appeal. If Canon Law changes, the priest will be able to marry without betraying his vocation as priest, as is the case in the Eastern Church. Likewise, for an unmarried man celibacy is only a temporary or qualifying condition of the ministry of his royal priesthood, with a view to the Kingdom. If a monk is preoccupied "with the things of God," the unmarried man lives in "these things of God" which every human being sets up; his ministry is at the service of a neighbor. He moves in the second person, a Thou for the world in which he lives. This is the love-compassion that seeks neither reciprocity nor anything for itself, but gives of itself and descends into the inferno of a world agonizing in darkness. He does not choose, but bends over all suffering and encounters the other, the neighbor, who has abandoned God.
Such a life centered on the neighbor is a very concrete vocation, for it is a sign of the Kingdom, of its presence in the world. If salvation is beyond the world, it is in the world that it is offered. A demand coming from the world summons one to remain there as a witness to the Gospel. It is to such witnesses that the words of Augustine are applicable^ "Give me someone who loves, and he will understand." It is a question here of cherishing one's destiny, of loving the cross formed by one's own "me." It is possible that the most ascetic act is not renunciation of self, but total self-acceptance. If I receive what befalls me as my own choice, everything becomes meaningful at that moment, profound, filled with a joyful and passionate interest. The human being is never alone; the hand of God is upon him. If he knows how to accept and feel it, his destiny is worked out, "oriented" toward the East. This is the experience of all the great spiritual masters.
I made bold the parts I thought you should notice.
(I was single until I was 29. And I might be on my fourth career.)
Edited by - PotOnWheel on 04/16/2002 6:24:02 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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