Showing posts with label Franciscans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Franciscans. Show all posts

Saturday, July 17, 2010

A Vocation Question

(just so the reader knows, I have broken up with my Episcopal girlfriend, and am now determined to either marry a Catholic girl who wants lots of babies / is faithful to Church teaching, or to enter religious life, or to be a single laymen in some sort of secular vocation).

After my whole reversion to Anglicanism and then return to Rome, and my time with the Toronto Jesuits, I think I am not called to be a priest. In any case, I am an exceptionally sinful human being, and don't really have a great holiness or personal witness. But deep within me there is this great desire and thirst for such a life. I saw this video today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEn3ngvXZhg&feature=related

I thought: man I wish I could live like that. There truly is no nobler life.

I guess my question is:

Is it possible to have a deep spiritual desire for a vocation like that, and have it not be your vocation?

Should I rather just pray for those religious orders, and people discerning and within them, rather than always wonder if I should be in them?

I remember the story of St. Therese of Lisieux's parents both wanting to enter religious life, and their priest told them rather that they were to have children, all of whom entered religious life and one of whom is a saint and doctor of the church. Perhaps the longing I feel is the same longing all Catholics feel for an opportunity to give everything for their faith.

I've also considered lay religious organizations, like the tertiary Franciscans / Secular Franciscan Order, that is composed of married and celibate, lay and clerical people living in the spirit of St. Francis.

Anyway, I'm going to Confession and Mass now.