Wandering in the Desert: Lent and Discernment
Speaking from experience, very few words are more likely to cause an existential crisis for a young Catholic man than, “Do you want to be a priest someday?” Not that it’s a bad question to ask — actually, just the opposite — just know that for many of us it’s a whoooole can of worms. Really, it’s a good thing when we’re confronted with possibilities and potential realities, but unfortunately, a lot of us (myself included) can often be scared by the idea of a call from God, or even worse, missing a call.
Generally, we refer to this call as a vocation, which, from Latin, quite literally means “to call with your voice.” In the strictest sense, we generally use the word vocation to refer to the call to marriage, religious life, single life, etc., but God definitely calls us at as well other times outside of this one major life decision, from things as big as career choice to things as small as interactions with family members or co-workers. We make a million choices every day, and in each one, we are called to follow the path of love.
In our Gospel reading this past Sunday, the First Sunday of Lent, we hear briefly about the time Jesus first faces his own special call from God: his forty-day sojourn in the desert after his baptism in the Jordan. I imagine Jesus certainly had a bit of apprehension and unease about his mission as well. While Mark’s account is rather short, Matthew’s account is a bit longer. Here, we hear that it is the Spirit who leads Jesus into the desert, precisely so that he might spend time in prayer trying to learn what the Father had in mind for him. While rather hungry in the desert, Jesus faces a variety of temptations — material comfort, assuredness of God’s protection, and temporal power. Eventually, as we find in Mark, Jesus leaves the desert, coming back to preach: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15, NABRE).
Said differently, Jesus spends dedicated time in prayer, uses his reason and the words of Scripture to sift through the choices in front of him, and emerges ready to do the will of God. Now, what do we call this process in our own lives? Discernment. If we go back to the Latin discernere, we find that it comes from a word meaning something like “to distinguish from,” or “to separate.” When we engage in discernment, we take our lives as they are, picking out God’s call to love in whichever circumstances we find ourselves.
One of the more commonly-used descriptions of vocation comes from Frederick Beuchner, which reads, “Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” While there are some good bits to this definition, such as the idea that the world has a deep need for each one of us — something absolutely true — it’s also problematic for its own reasons. Take the word gladness. If we are living our vocation, God’s calling for us, are we going to be perfectly glad? Probably not. You can be the best spouse and parent (or priest, or astronaut, or appliance saleswoman, for that matter), know you’re supposed to be exactly where you’re at, and still feel absolutely miserable in the moment. And that’s as it’s supposed to be. Even if we are doing God’s will for us, it definitely won’t be comfortable or easy or fun all the time. That’s a guarantee.
This definition also places a lot of emphasis on our own work — how do I know where my deepest gladness is? How do I find the world’s deep need? We don’t always know. The reality is, vocation isn’t so much about us as it is about our cooperation with God. We know that from before all time, God has a plan of salvation for the whole world. And in discernment, it’s not about finding a place for ourselves, but allowing us to see the place God already has in mind for us, letting ourselves be placed into God’s beautiful jigsaw puzzle. And even still, there is no one right place for each of us — there are many ways in which we can serve God. That’s what’s at the root of discernment: allowing God’s will to become ours and letting our deepest gladness be in serving God, whatever form that may take in the moment. In this way, it’s more about who we are to become than what we are to do. If we fully conform our hearts to God, in whatever we do, we will be living out our vocation.
And so for this reason, vocation isn’t something we can check off a list and say, “Yup, found it, done.” Vocation is a lifestyle. Jesus didn’t leave the desert and do nothing afterwards. His life was one of continual prayer and service, trying to find the will of the Father, even until the last days of his life; see especially the Agony in the Garden and Jesus’s words of obedience. As a model for our own practice of discernment, St. Ignatius of Loyola is really all about this, and I wish I could say more here, but it’d get a little long (maybe another day?). For him, the life of discernment is about persistent prayer to notice the presence of God, to see the things that push us toward and pull us away from God, and then to follow God’s voice in every choice we make. Ignatius’s Examen is often prayed by people to better notice God’s presence in their everyday life.
For me, someone who is very much in the middle of not just little vocational questions but big ones, Ignatian-style discernment is something very near and dear to my heart. At the moment, I have no honest idea if I’m supposed to pursue marriage or religious life, often feeling pulled in both directions. I can picture myself in both callings and see both the pros and cons of each option, but perhaps I see most of all my own fear of commitment and a deep suspicion of my own motives. Sometimes we just need to “live into” decisions a bit —to use a phrase from the First Letter of John, we can test the spirits — and see how we react to any decision, reevaluating and renewing. In my own life, I pray for the grace to be able to “distinguish” God’s call, that God’s Kingdom come and God’s will be done.
No matter what we’re facing in our own lives, be it great or small, let’s allow ourselves, like Jesus in the desert, to draw near to God the Father and to recognize the call of the Spirit in our own lives.
