What to do about vocations?
Frank O’Loughlin, Parish Priest of Sandringham, Victoria, suggests we be aware when praying for or seeking vocations to the priesthood that it is only just and right to do so with a clear understanding of the church in the world approach of the Second Vatican Council.
Christian prayer as we know is about the ‘raising of our hearts and minds’ to God, to the God who is in no sense begrudging and does not have to be cajoled. Rather he leads us on in our prayer as he has been doing since the time of Abraham, our father in faith. This is the God who brings about change in the hearts and minds lifted up to him, just as he did with that same Abraham and all those biblical characters who followed in his wake.
Prayer for vocations like all prayer is about the opening up of ourselves to God, to the God who assures us that those who seek will find and that those who knock will have the door opened to them. But that God does not say what will be found on seeking or what will be walked into when the door is opened. The response to prayer, whatever our personal feelings may be, is left up to God. Even when it is something urgent that drives us to prayer and we really want what we are seeking, prayer remains always an exercise of the prayer of Jesus: ‘Into your hands I commend my spirit’. In prayer we seek to let that prayer of Jesus penetrate us.
When our prayer is not answered as we want it to be, we have to start reviewing what we are praying for in terms of what God’s ways may be and how different they may be to our ways. Prayer, by leading us into communion with God, gradually leads us into an ease with the reality that his ways are different from our own. In prayer, our prayer is changed, we are changed.
In praying for vocations we may need to look again at what we are praying for. Are we seeking to impose our solutions onto God? Are we indeed open to changing the way we see things in this case to the way we see priesthood?
The Priesthood and the Church
Aware of the need for ministry in the Church, and especially at this time the need for priestly ministry, one of the things we need to be clear about is what such ministry involves. In this article I will be concerned specifically with the priestly ministry.
If people feel drawn to be a carpenter, a doctor, a nurse, a teacher or whatever else, they have to have some idea of what that particular role involves, of what it will require of them. To be attracted to the particular way of life involved in these professions, people need to have at least some initial understanding of them.
In the case of the priesthood, we are speaking of a role that is essentially tied into the Church and its purpose and identity. The priesthood involves a particular kind of relationship with Christ of course, but that relationship is tied into the life of the Church. It is a ministry in and to the Church, the community of faith. This means that the identity of the Church is a crucial element in understanding the priesthood and so in the attraction of suitable people to fulfill that ministry. This point can raise all sorts of questions about the faults and failures of the Church and they are indeed relevant. But in this article I want to discuss another issue which is also crucial and unavoidable. And that issue is: what is the Church? what is it for? what is its identity?
For centuries before the movements that led up to the Second Vatican Council, there was a mentality in the Church which could be summed up in the old saying: Outside the Church, no salvation. It is quite some time since this saying has been taken literally but its influence was very strong and all-pervading in the Catholic mentality of those earlier times. In the course of the twentieth century it came down perhaps to something like: inside the Church we are assured of salvation, for those outside the Church that is not so clear.
I want to emphasize that this was not just a matter of theology but of a mentality within the Church. It was part of the mindset of the whole Church and was a major element in the make-up of the Church’s identity at that time.
In our days this mentality is no longer credible. Neither believers nor non-believers any longer accept that mentality as a viable way of looking at the world or the Church. One of the consequences of this new situation is that it can make the Church seem unimportant. The Church becomes just an added extra, rather than something integral to the mission of Christ in God’s world. Consequently ministry in the Church becomes a part of this added-extra.
Such a situation leaves the Church’s sense of identity in a rather confused state. A sense of the Church’s identity is crucial to its very being. Unless we can give meaning to the Church’s identity today, the number of those belonging to the Church will diminish and the number of people offering themselves for ministry – and for religious life – in that Church will diminish further both in quality and in quantity.
Stimulus to go Forward
Our point of departure for understanding the Church’s identity today has to be the Second Vatican Council and what flows from it. Not taking the stance of the Council into account or sidelining it
is to set one’s sails in such away as not to catch the wind.
The Second Vatican Council sets out the Church’s identity in the very first paragraph of its document on the Church (Lumen Gentium) where it states: Christ is the light of humanity; and it is accordingly, the heartfelt desire of this sacred Council, being gathered together in the Holy Spirit, that, by proclaiming his gospel to every creature, it may bring to all men (sic) that light of Christ which shines out visibly from the Church. Since the Church, in Christ, is in the nature of a sacrament – a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all men (sic) – she here proposes for the benefit of the faithful and for the whole world, to set forth as clearly as possible, and in the tradition laid down by earlier Councils, her own nature and universal mission.
From this statement the rest of the document unfolds. It is this vision of the Church which takes the place of the earlier vision of the Church summed up in the saying: outside the Church, no salvation. The above fundamental statement about the identity of the Church sees it as related to the rest of humankind not in contraposition to it, and as its servant, not its master. The Church is a sacrament of what God is at work seeking to do in the whole of humankind; it is the sign and instrument of that working of God seeking to bring all human beings into communion with him and with each other.
In the light of this vision of the Church, we are as all other human beings are – save that the light of Christ has shone upon us. What this light of Christ has enabled us to see and receive is not just ours but is God’s gift intended for all humankind. It is indeed given to the Church but given to the Church specifically as the first fruits of the whole harvest of humankind which is yet to be gathered in. In other words, given to the Church as the sign and instrument of God’s plan which is for the whole of humankind.
This vision turns the Church toward all that is human. It makes all that is human precious to us because it is humankind which is the object of God’s working to bring all to himself. This vision enables us to discern in the joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties of humankind the Spirit of God seeking to bring creation to its fulfillment, even in the midst of the groaning of its birth pangs.
What is specific to the Church is Christ. It is the light which he shines upon the human journey which it is the Church’s task to reflect. The Church’s identity is its relationship to Christ. This is no mean purpose to have as its source of identity. Both the good that is abundant in the whole of creation and the obvious presence of evil in our world require the light of Christ to be shone on them. In that light – the light of his gospel – the signs of God’s presence in the world can be discerned as can the signs of the destructiveness of evil.
We cannot afford to have a confused sense of the church’s identity; it disables our capacity to act and bear fruit in the societies of which we are an integral part. And this will have its effect on attracting people to ministry.
In calling for vocations to the priesthood – and the religious life – we are asking prospective candidates to put their lives on the line for a specific purpose, a purpose which is essentially tied into the meaning of the Church. To inspire people this needs to be clear. One cannot ask people to put their lives on the line for something which looks like an added extra. One cannot ask people who are genuinely part of the world of their time to step out of that world to take up a vocation which seems separated from it or even alien to it.
Thus the radical importance of our reception of the approaches of the Second Vatican Council. That Council sets the Church on a path which puts it firmly in the society and culture of the contemporary world, a contemporary world which has already undergone significant changes since the closure of that Council. In seeking leaders for the Church, we need people who are able to lead a Catholic people who by and large already belong to the contemporary world and who look for leadership which has a genuine albeit critical appreciation of that world.
The completion of this shift in the awareness of the Church’s identity begun by the Second Vatican Council is something which needs to happen throughout the Church and within the Church’s present leadership. The issue of vocations sharpens the need for its continuing implementation.[/s2If]
