“We need more crazy people in this world!”
The women on silent retreat burst into a symphony of laughter, and I wondered if all spiritual excercises were so jovial. I began to write down the words so true, and Father Pablo explained: “No — I am serious! Think about it — Christ was crazy!” More laughter, joined by heads nodding, because we were all women crazy for Christ!
And so it is that I try to remember just how crazy, how extraordinary and otherworldly, Christianity is. What other faith began with a man — the Word Incarnate – Who came into the world in order to die? What other faith says we must be poor in order to be rich, children in order to be wise, and die in order to live? What other faith is sustained by bread and wine, promised to be the very body and blood, soul and divinity of the Incarnate Word?
I am crazy for Christ, and the Church he founded. But I didn't get that way by intuiting the Faith or reading Holy Scripture in isolation. I was taught. By whom? Moral formation came from my parents, thanks be to God, but I wasn't converted. I wasn't crazy yet.
The craziness began as I, a cradle Catholic, transferred to a Protestant University my second year of college. Even then, I really didn't know what made a Protestant different than a Catholic, but earnest evangelicals soon questioned me on all sides. I didn't know the answers, so gradually I began searching.
The summer after my junior year the answer found me. Providentially, I was invited to Oxford, England for a weeklong student conference. I had several conversations with a young seminarian-to-be who had a very keen interest in my spiritual development. Little did I know he was crazy for Christ!
I began to see how crazy this seminarian was when, on the last night of the conference, he expressed concern that I was taking out extra student loans to come back to Oxford the coming fall. “It's perfectly normal,” I replied, “so why the concern?” “I think you may have a religious vocation,” he said — plain as potatoes. I had occasionally heard that term, “religious vocation,” usually associated with the words “nun” or “priest.” Was he implying the loans would make it harder for me to become a nun?? How utterly insane!
Crazy though it was, I began to discern my vocation that autumn in Oxford. It was mid September 2001, and the Americans in Oxford were still reeling from the attacks on the World Trade Center. God placed in my path zealous Christians who nourished my self-catechesis. I fell headlong back into the Church, and lost my worldly sanity.
I grew in zeal, and in April 2002 I found myself at the 3rd Continental Congress on Vocations in Montreal. Throughout the congress, my sense of vocation grew, and by the end, I was quite certain of my call. Fiat — Serviam!
There I became intrigued with nuns in fabulous blue habits. I found out towards the end of the congress that they were called the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matara, an Argentine missionary order whose apostolate is evangelization. I kept in touch with the Servants, but began to make plans. And boy, I'm sure God laughed as I plotted the way to pay off my student loans, systematically searched out an order, and began to make decisions. I must have seemed like a young child who, eager and enterprising, wants to make money by setting up my own feeble lemonade stand. I planned for my vocation as earnestly as a five year old would for the lemonade stand: seeking advice, setting up things, and attempting to force myself to do the job. Meanwhile, all I had to do was ask my Father for what I needed. Perhaps I needed the growing experience of trying to force myself to find my vocation before I could really know.
And so, just recently, I gave up my busywork, and let the Holy Spirit show me the way, providentially, to the door of the ladies in the fabulous blue habits. I soon enter the postulancy of the Servants of the Lord.
It seems like a unique story in the age of materialism and radical relativism, but funny enough, it's not. There are scores of mad young men and women, ready to offer their lives.
What about the vocation shortage, though? The plain fact is that it doesn't exist. God is calling us by name as He always has, but in this age of cultural gluttony and hyper individualism, who is responding?
The response of the Holy Father — a great gift of God to our hurting times — is that of hope. The devil raises up a great army against the soldiers of Light, yet the successor of St. Peter believes this is a New Springtime. Despite the encroaching weeds in the garden, our Gardener is hard at work. Watch the roses bloom! Fr. Albert DiIanni, SM, writing about the Springtime in the Review for Religious, says,
“Like you, I have thought of all the good reasons [for the vocations crisis], but they are all weak excuses in the face of the fact that in Rome one seminary of the Legionaries of Christ houses 290 young men who have issued from the skeptical, sophisticated, slick, secularized world…”
Despite the gathering darkness, the light is shining. We see it at every World Youth Day, in thriving dioceses, and especially in growing religious orders and lay movements.
One shining light in what I like to call vocations evangelization is the Laboure Foundation. Founded just a year and a half ago, it seeks to alleviate personal debt for those who are called to the priesthood or consecrated life. By doing so, this gives “young men and women the grace of responding quickly to God's voice.”
How will we respond quickly to God's voice? Lent is upon us, so it is the perfect time to “fall in love with Christ again,” as Oakland coadjutor Bishop Allen Vigneron recently exhorted. Let us pray, especially at Holy Mass, for our shepherds. Particularly in Eucharistic prayer, let us also ask God for the grace for more men and women to be generous in response to his call. Finally, let us pray the rosary with zeal, placing unwavering confidence in our Mother, the Help of Christians.
God be praised! Let us Love Him entirely, contemplating the face of Christ through the eyes of our Blessed Mother, especially at Holy Mass. And remember St. Teresa of Avila, the lunatic in love who said: “Love shows in deeds.” What will our deeds be in the New Springtime?
© Copyright 2003 Catholic Exchange
Jessica Harmon recently resigned her teaching job in order to pursue religious life with the Servants of the Lord. She enters on the vigil of the Annunciation.
If you are discerning a religious vocation, but feel material demands stand in your way, see the Laboure Foundation website.
