What Shall I Be? A Chat With Young People

Excerpt

PREFACE

In this little book the writer has aimed to present, in brief and simple form, sound principles which may assist the young in deciding their future course of life. The subject of vocation, as it is called, has suffered much, during the last two or three centuries, at the hands of rigorist authors, who so hedged the approach to religious life with difficulties and restrictions, as to frighten or repel many aspiring hearts from it.

Great stress was laid by these writers on the special interior attraction, by which God was supposed always to manifest His call, so that no one might legitimately enter the state of perfection, unless he felt this unmistakable impulse from within. And on the other hand, given this evidence of the Divine predilection, to disregard it was a sinful preferring of one's own will to God's, which, in all likelihood, would be attended with grave consequences for this world and the next.

Spiritual writers of the last decade have been rereading the Fathers and great Theologians upon this subject, and as a result the cobwebs of misconception are being swept away. The Reverend A. Vermeersch, S.J., of Louvain, deserves the gratitude of all for his lucid and convincing treatment of religious vocation, in his "De Religiosis Institutis et Personis" (Vol. II, Supplement III; also Vol. I, P. 4, C. I), where he clearly shows from Scripture, the writings of the Fathers and leading theologians, the true nature of the invitation to the evangelical life. The reader is also referred to the article on "Vocation," by the same author, in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Another document throwing light on the subject, is the Decree of July 15, 1912, framed by a special commission of Cardinals appointed to examine the work of Canon Joseph Lahitton on "La Vocation Sacerdotale." This Decree, approved by the Holy Father, contains the following passage: Vocation to the priesthood "by no means consists, at least necessarily and according to the ordinary law, in a certain interior inclination of the person, or promptings of the Holy Spirit, to enter the priesthood. But on the contrary, nothing more is required of the person to be ordained, in order that he may be called by the bishop, than that he have a right intention, and such fitness of nature and grace, as evidenced in integrity of life and sufficiency of learning, which will give a well-founded hope of his rightly discharging the office and obligations of the priesthood." This Decree does away, at once, with the special spiritual attraction, always and essentially required by so many for vocation to the priesthood.

It may not be rash to conclude, in a similar way, of a religious vocation "that nothing more is required of the person who is a candidate for religious life, in order that he may be admitted to the novitiate by the lawful superior of an order, than that he have a right intention, and such fitness of nature and grace required by the order, as will give a well-founded hope of his rightly discharging the obligations of the religious life in that order."

The present treatise aims at no more than putting in form suitable to the young the sound conclusions of such reliable authors as Father Vermeersch, Canon Lahitton and Rev....