Day 3. Letting Go
Vocation Discernment Preliminary Novena
“Am I Ready for Discernment?”
The same night [Jacob] got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying,“For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”
Genesis 32:22-30 NRSV
Whoa, you really don't know anything about love, do you?
Olaf, Frozen,
Disney Productions, 2013
Jacob takes his wives and children across the river and then he remains behind. He puts some distance between himself and his family.
What does this have to do with you? In your case, the whole marriage and family question is still up for grabs. At this point, you haven’t got a family of your own. Even so, this detail from the story of Jacob and the angel can help you get to the very heart of what this preliminary novena is all about.
Do you want to embark on a journey of discernment? Well, you have to be willing to surrender to God all the plans you have for your life, yes, even including marriage and a family. So in today’s meditation you are invited to answer the question: Are you really open to hearing God’s will for your life?
Being genuinely open won’t be easy. Suppose your vocation does not include marriage? Most of us really want to meet “the right one,” the perfect someone who can fulfill our deepest needs for love and intimacy, for human affection and the comfort it brings. And let’s be honest. If God calls us to something else, we’re not sure we can live without the sex!
I’ve seen many people enter into discerning their vocation like they are cutting a deal with God: “I’ll do this discernment novena so I can settle my mind that you’re not calling me to this, God, and then I can get on with my plans for happiness.” They know they’re supposed to take a serious look at a vocation, some even have a gnawing sense that God might be calling them to a vocation other than marriage. But they really want what they want.
Sure, it can seem reasonable to approach discernment like that, but think about it. If you are not open to hearing God’s answer, is it worth spending 99 days pretending? I encourage you to be honest with yourself before going on with the Novena. I also extend an invitation: if you don’t have any desire to reach a point where you can surrender your own plans to God, couldn’t this be a good time to start? Ask for openness.
Uneasiness does not mean that you are not really open. A certain discomfort shows that you know what’s at stake. And the goal of the Novena is to assist you in reaching true openness. It is God who must fashion this openness in you. Surrender is a spiritual work, a work of grace, not something any of us do with our own strength. Remember, though, that God is very humble. He offers the grace, but he does not make us take it. He wants to help us to cooperate with grace, to allow Him to work openness within us. But he does not if we are not willing.
Honesty about our unwillingness is essential to discernment. St. Ignatius of Loyola, who was a master at helping people through a time of discernment, had some pretty strong words for people who asked for his help. “This is a way in which many are in error,” he wrote., “They take up a predisposed or bad choice and then regard it as a divine vocation” (Spiritual Exercises 172).
If you feel stuck at this point, it may help to know that many people benefited from taking some time for honest assessment of what is really going on in their hearts. So search your heart today with some honest questions. Picture the person you have picked out to be “the right one.” Imagine yourself marrying that perfect someone and having a beautiful family and a satisfying career. Ask yourself, what will make me happy in this relationship?
Then ask yourself honestly, “How realistic are my dreams?” For example, have you ever spoken to someone who has been married a while (say, more than 5 years)? Do they describe their relationship with their spouse and children in the same terms as your dreams? Is it all deep satisfaction and constant bliss? Is it much more work than they imagined?
This kind of meditation has helped many people to line up their exalted expectations of marriage with something much closer to reality. The truth is that a good many people go into discerning marriage with very unrealistic ideas and end up placing these expectations on their spouses, their “special someone.” Isn’t it unfair to expect a human being, even the best, to meet all your deepest needs, to fill the deep hole inside that yearns to be filled with love?
Our faith tells us that our deepest yearnings can only be filled by God. For most people, God works through a spouse and family to lead them to himself. The important thing to realize is that discerning a vocation is really about our relationship with God, the only one who can satisfy the desires of our hearts. God may want to satisfy your yearning by giving you a special someone. But for some people he wants to BE that special someone in her or his life. God wants an intimate, exclusive relationship with such a person. What an awesome gift! A celibate vocation means allowing God to be your “spouse” and discovering that God is “the right one” for you. It is not the absence of a wife or husband, it is the presence of Christ who meets the deepest needs of our hearts.
So which will it be? Do you want to be open to God’s will – come-what-may? Or do you prefer your own will, done your own way, with God along for the ride?
Of course it’s alright to be afraid! It’s alright if you don’t feel ready. Discernment is a work of grace, not something that comes from your own goodness, or strength, or merit, no matter how wonderful you are. It is a work of trust that God can give you the ability and the courage to be open – and then, at the right time, give you confident and joyful clarity about His perfect plan for you.
In the meanwhile, God needs something from you. He needs your permission. The Father awaits your permission to do whatever he wants with your life. So take some moments today to consider your openness to this Novena. Or, if you’re not sure, think about it for a while. Remember, God won’t force you. Are you willing to put a little space between yourself and your plans for bliss, however you have pictured it up until now?
You know, it may be the best decision you ever make. God has your happiness uppermost in his mind. He seeks to give you the surest possible route to salvation. But he leaves the next step up to you.
If you simply cannot, please discontinue this Novena, at least for now. You can come back to it when you’re ready.
But if you do wish to continue, then pray sincerely our Novena Prayer:
Novena Prayer
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
- Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, © Abbey of Gethsemani
Make it My Own
Daily Discernment Workbook
BRAIN STORM
1. Let me count the ways…
What of the following list are the most important things I hope to find in a lifelong, vowed, love relationship? I can use the list below to choose my top 10 or add what I don’t find below.
Affection
Attention
Always available
Care & tenderness
Physical intimacy
Good times together
Always understands me
Shared convictions
Shared interests
Satisfying sex
Unconditional love
Deep conversations from the heart
Cleanliness and good organization
Good cook
Sensible and savvy with money
Will let me do what I want to do
Doesn’t snore
Red Sox fan
Other…
Which of the things that I chose can God also provide in a celibate vocation?
Which things would I probably have to sacrifice in a celibate vocation?
A QUOTE TO NOTE
2. Romantic Illusions
Read and reflect on the following quote.
“We are still living with the old romantic illusion that the highest happiness, the greatest significance, the only romance in life, consists in our relationships with [the opposite sex]* and in the sensual satisfactions we derive from them. We forget only one thing: that the soul and the spirit are just as real and strong and demanding as the flesh – they are much more so! – and that if we allow the flesh everything it asks for, this is to the detriment of other joys, other marvelous realms, which will remain closed to us forever. We empty a glass of poor wine in a sleazy pub or saloon, and forget this virginal sea which others are contemplating under the rising sun.”
P. Claudel, Correspondence [1]
What are the “marvelous realms” that setting aside a romantic relationship might open up?
GOING DEEP
3. A Change of Heart.
Can I pray this prayer? If so, I pray it and then write in my journal my thoughts. If not, will I at least pray for the grace to pray this prayer? Either way, I write about it in my journal.
PRAYER:
Lord, if it is your will, make me willing to sacrifice my dreams of love and romance with a marriage partner. I know you can be everything to me that a human love can be – and much more. Whether or not it is your will for me, I ask for the grace to make a sincere offering of my life to you in this Novena. Please open my heart to this.
Conclude with
“Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be.
World without end, Amen.”
[0] lead quote - Frozen, Disney Productions, animated motion picture, 2013
[1] P. Claudel, Correspondence, J. Riviere, Paris 1926 - *originally “women” – Claudel was writing to a male friend