Wednesday, January 5, 2011

A Higher vocation

Recently one of my students showed me a book that he had been reading to discern his vocation. When he pulled it out of his backpack I was amazed that I was reading the exact same book. If you have not read Fr. Brett Brannen's book entitled To Save a Thousand Souls it is a good read.

Our discussion that followed reviewed the fundamentals of the book. The concrete and personal experiences were certainly valuable throughout the text. Fr. Brannen makes one of the clearest explanations of religious life that I have heard from a diocesan priest. He writes the religious life:

"is a higher vocation than the priesthood or marriage. It is not a "better" vocation, because what is best for each person is precisely the God pre-determined vocation for that individual. But religious life is a more perfect life in the sense  that it is directed towards the Evangelical Counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience, which more perfectly reflect the eternal destiny of every person in Heaven. This life was lived, described, and recommended by Jesus Christ himself, so the Church calls this the perfect life."