WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
My first vocation!
A soul in need reaching for meaning to life – this led me from Nigeria to Australia. I am a young man trying to discern my vocation. The idea that a career change and an exchange of culture would give meaning to my life was questioned a year after I arrived.
One Sunday at Mass, I saw a priest celebrate the liturgy with great joy despite getting around with a cane, when a voice came to me, ‘What are you waiting for?’ Young, single, Catholic, I was unable to shrug off the constant questioning.
I spent some time in the Canali Discernment Program, hoping I could get the questioning off my mind. This period was captured succinctly by the ever-visible tagline, ‘Where are you going?’ Through spiritual talks and exercises, I began to formulate my response, but it was only during a recent online meeting that the book To Save a Thousand Souls turned my ideas around: HOLINESS IS MY FIRST VOCATION. Yes, I had been putting the cart before the horse. I thought that I would become holy when I became a priest. Without first finding rest (holiness) in God, my soul remained restless.
Holiness provides the spiritual compass to navigate the Christian journey, to respond to the question ‘Where are you going?’ with some clarity. I am coming to see holiness as perseverance in a way of life, continuously refined in the sacrament of reconciliation, refuelled in the Eucharist, and sanctified by the Paraclete.
The joy of this first vocation (holiness) will enable me to live out my secondary vocation – single life or marriage, holy orders or religious life – not as a burden, but as a sacrifice of thanksgiving.
For now, the practice of living my first vocation allows for the journey towards the second vocation to be clearer, more joyful and worthwhile.