Vocations: The Holy Adventure

"All of us can attain to Christian virtue and holiness, no matter in what condition of life we live and no matter what our life work may be."

 - Saint Francis de Sales


I'm pretty sure I'm called to be married, very, very quite sure. There was one summer where I thought I was called to the priesthood, but a very good friend of mine who knows me incredibly well told me that, though it'd be awesome if I became a priest, I shouldn't put marriage out of the question, especially because of my history of having problems with a fickle heart, or at least being prone to having crushes easily. I listened to her, and this 30th is me and Julie's first year anniversary, and she and I both are very sure that God wants us specifically with each other. There is still the possibility that He doesn't, but we've both prayed a lot about it so far, and we're always hopeful that He's calling us to marriage together someday.

Now, I know next to nothing about the priesthood and religious life and the single life (vocation-wise). I've read some of "Love and Responsibility" and the "Theology of the Body" talks, and I've always been fascinated by the vocation to marriage, even before I came into the Church. But I was thinking about vocations the other day at work because I had been thinking about ways to sanctify grounds-keeping for the Lord in ways other than trying to hear myself praying over a leaf-blower, and I kept getting an idea into my head:

More than anything, we are called to holiness, whatever we do and no matter where we are, no matter the situation we're in.

I don't mean holiness in the sense of the fantastic things you hear about in the lives of the saints. Some people may end up doing amazing, miraculous things like the saints, but often we're simply given our daily tasks, our responsibilities, our vocation. Our normal, often tedious, things we need to do are where most of us will be able to strive for holiness the most.

I had an English teacher once who, when we were discussing Graham Greene's book, "The Power and the Glory" (a book about a "whisky priest" who learns to get past despair), told us about three "levels" of vocations. The first is our vocation to Christ, that we are called to live out our whole lives as His disciples more and more fully as time passes, as we hopefully grow closer to Him. The second is our "state of life" vocation; marriage, priesthood, religious life, single-life. The third is our occupational vocation(s), whether its as a part-time student and grounds-keeper like myself, as a teacher, as a therapist, a physicist, however we work everyday. What's important is that the second and the third levels are supposed to help us with the first; that is, we grow in holiness by working hard and lovingly in our occupation and state of life for the sake of our life in Christ.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that no matter who we are, we all have the "universal call to holiness", and we all have our vocations that guide us along the path to holiness, and holiness is really, more than anything else, growing in love with Jesus more and more as we work, as we live with our spouse, as we live as a priest, in the religious life, as we live consecrated, no matter what.