A Reader Writes:
I was wondering if you had any advice for young Catholic women who feel called to marriage and family but haven’t met the right person yet? Did you do anything during your single years to prepare for your vocation?
I answered some questions about singles in this post from … YIKES! … almost two years ago. Tonight I am running short on time and brain power, so I will turn things over to my ever-helpful, wise, and insightful readers. It is Your Turn, after all.
It has been a little while since my single days. Today is actually our 14th anniversary! However, I would wholeheartedly agree with Danielle’s recommendation of Life Giving Love by Kimberly Hahn (I haven’t read the other one) and I also really like Gregory Popcak’s book For Better…Forever!!! and Christopher West’s The Good News About Sex and Marriage. I *think* he specifically adresses being single in his book. The only other thing I would add, is to pray–not just for yourself in your vocation, but pray specifically for the partner God has chosen for you–even before you meet them. As parents, we are already praying for our children’s future spouses should they be called to the vocation of marriage.
I don’t think I qualify as a ‘young’ woman called to marriage and family life, since I’m over 40, still feel called, and yet have not been fulfilled in my vocation to marriage (and probably never will be).
The best advice I ever heard about this came by way of a comment Kimberley Hahn made on one of her tapes. I don’t remember exactly what she said, so this is my version: Don’t live waiting for ‘some day’ to come along. That is, get rid of the mindset that ‘one day, when I meet the right guy and get married, my vocation will start.’ Be the best daughter, sister, friend, employee, student or whatever NOW that you can be. Work NOW on becoming holy. Examine your conscience every night in terms of how you relate to other people in your life NOW. Learn to do your best at the little, thankless tasks NOW – in fact, embrace them and take them on silently NOW. Learn to share of yourself NOW. Learn patience when what you want isn’t possible; practice generosity and self-giving love NOW. Be pure and chaste and faithful to your future husband NOW.
If you died before you had a chance to fulfill your vocation as wife and mother, how holy would your life have been? Be a holy woman NOW, because in God’s eyes there is no ‘now’ and ‘later, when my vocation starts.’ The vocation to self-giving love is NOW, no matter what your current state of life.
Beware of meeting every man with the attitude, ‘Is this the one?’ as though you have to date everyone and try to find the man God wants for you. Yes, be open, but don’t be over-eager or in a rush to ‘hurry up and get on with’ your vocation. Consider this: God has known you from all eternity, and He has a plan for your life. God has known your future husband from all eternity, and God has a plan for HIS life. God will bring you together at the right time, in the right circumstances. GOD knows the time and place. YOU just need to be as open to fulfilling God’s will and being a holy woman NOW, so that when God places the person He has prepared for you on your path, you are ready to meet all challenges with love and the perseverence that comes from a close relationship with God.
Pray for your future husband. I don’t mean ‘pray to get one,’ I mean pray that he is holy and chaste, generous and self-sacrificing. Commend him to the Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph. Pray for him every day. If you are called to marriage and family, then your future husband is a real person who is in relation to God. He’s going about his business today; he may be tempted today. Pray for him as you’d pray for him after you were married.
Rejoice every time one of your friends or sisters gets married or has a child. Share in her joy. WORK at this as long as it takes you TRULY to feel joy in their joy without any thoughts of ‘what about me?’ and ‘why not me?’ and ‘how come her, but not me?’ Repent of every envious thought at another woman’s happiness and fulfilment in marriage and motherhood, until your heart TRULY rejoices in other women’s happiness. And whole-heartedly support your friends in their marriages and in their tasks as mothers; help them; pray for them; listen to them and encourage them. A woman who has not been blessed with a husband and children – if she casts out all envy and self-pity – can be a reminder to married women and mothers of their blessings. Pray that envy and competition and self-pity will never find a place in your heart. Work on this until you can rejoice even when a woman you don’t like or admire gets married or is blessed with a child.
Last – and hardest: accept that we live in a fallen world. The Church doesn’t teach that being single and in the world is a vocation (at least I can’t find any support for it in scripture or Church documents – and believe me, I’ve had plenty of time to look!). We are called to religious life or to marriage. But the fact is, not everyone can live out this vocation. There are many reasons – of health, of emotional damage, for example – which make it difficult or impossible for a person to live out his or her vocation. The person God planned for you to marry may have been aborted, injured, emotionally damaged or may have sinned and turned from God. In a fallen world, he may simply become ill and unable to live out marriage vows. The person may simply refuse his vocation to marriage – he has the freedom to do that. Be prepared for the possibility that as called as you may be, and as sincerely as you prepare yourself to live out that call, and as deeply as you long to fulfil yourself in your vocation, it’s possible that your cross in life may be a vocation thwarted. Even people who marry can have their vocations thwarted by a spouse who abandons them, by the intervention of a war or accident, and their spouse is taken from them.
There are no guarantees of happiness and fulfilment in a fallen world – and that means that there is no guarantee that you will be able to live out your vocation. As long as God allows us free will, this will be so.
BUT, God ‘makes all things new again.’ He always has a ‘Plan B’ (and C and D and E… until you die). Before you meet the man God has chosen for you from all eternity, prepare yourself by advancing as much as you can in holiness. If your vocation is thwarted – by the accidents of life or even by deliberate sin on the part of the one God planned for you – holiness will see you through. Even if your heart is shattered like a broken dish, trust in God who makes all things new again: He will turn your weeping into rejoicing.
No life – even one in which a clear vocation is thwarted – is ever wasted when it is placed in God’s hands.
My vocation is to be the best person that I can be. If that is in marriage, so be it. If that is in parenthood, so be it. If it is in religious life, so be it. If it is in living a Godly life in the secular world, so be it.
At this point, I’d say that your vocation is to live a Godly life in the secular world. Make the best of it. Learn everything that you can so that you can be best prepared for your next vocation – whatever it may be.
I say this, because as a young person, I thought I was called to religious life. Then I realized I wasn’t. I got married. I had 4 intelligent and beautiful girls. I knew in my heart of hearts that the man I married was brought to me by God. Ultimately though, I realized that he was abusive – mentally, emotionally and spiritually amoung others – as such for the safety and edification of my girls, I left with the girls and one overnight bag.
My vocation now is to be the best parent that I can be to these children. To love them and educate them about the ways of the Lord. To support them and cheer them on in their endeavours.
Let’s consider what the term vocation means:
vo·ca·tion /vo??ke???n/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[voh-key-shuhn] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun 1. a particular occupation, business, or profession; calling.
2. a strong impulse or inclination to follow a particular activity or career.
3. a divine call to God’s service or to the Christian life.
4. a function or station in life to which one is called by God: the religious vocation; the vocation of marriage.
[Origin: 1400–50; late ME vocacio(u)n < L voc?ti?n- (s. of voc?ti?) a call, summons, equiv. to voc?t(us) ptp. of voc?re to call (see -ate1) + -i?n- -ion]
—Synonyms 1. employment, pursuit.
(Dictionary.com)
So I say be the best that you can be today, this minute, because you are fulfilling you are on your way of fulfilling your vocation. This part of your life is to prepare you for the next. The biggest lesson that I’ve learned? Patience. I still don’t have enough, but it is primordially important!
I stopped looking. I stopped looking for a husband. One day I literally said "I am going to work on me for a while-I am going to stop wondering if Mr. Right is right around the corner." A weight was lifted from my shoulders and I started to enjoy my life. A week later I met my husband.
Well, while single and felt that God was calling me to find a husband in my mid-to-late thirties, I prayed (AND PRAYED) 30 day rosary novena (15 decades), one 90 day rosary novena (also 15 decades)and another 30 day rosary novena in honor of Good St. Joseph. I joined SCOL (Single Catholics OnLine) which is now known as AveMariaSingles.com and did not limit myself as to distance on where my spouse would come from….good thing, because we were 2273.6 driving miles apart. I ruled out dating per se and only corresponded with men that were who I considered to be my husband material, in my book, thus avoiding falling in love with the "wrong guy". Considered it all discernment of my vocation to marriage. We prayed together (sometimes at 3 a.m. my time) and corresponded for sometime before I ever revealed my phone number or address. (I knew better than to jump on the opportunity to "need" to meet every guy that wrote to me) I was open to who the Lord was bringing into my life and had to be supple with the Holy Spirit’s leading, I was prudent and learned patience along the path. God Bless you!
I have been happily married for almost 13 years. I met my husband a few years after I graduated from college and was working in Manhattan. I desperately wanted to get married and have children. I had some false starts and set backs, but I had faith that God would send somebody into my life. I tried to remain open minded and and worked very hard on having a social life. Eventually, a friend at work introduced me to a fraternity brother of his, and the rest is history.
My advice would be to take advantage of your youth, especially during the college years where there are lots of single people around. Go on dates, be open to meeting new people. Tell everyone you know that you want to meet someone special. Then pray and pray and pray. And don’t be afraid to be set up on a date, a good friend of mine is partially responsible for four marriages so far…
some great comments already and I would reiterate that the best thing is to "do what you are doing". in every vocation we are called to LOVE. no matter what our vocation is presently or what it will be in the future, learning to love with the heart of Jesus is the key.
i think danielle’s post encouraging you to be an idealist is wonderful, but i would advise you to enjoy the things you can do now that will be difficult (or impossible) with a family. i look back with fond remembrance at the time i had to go to daily Mass, sit and read a book, paint a picture, cultivate a garden, travel, help at the soup kitchen, visit elderly in the nursing home, etc… my idealism made me think I could continue all these things WITH my kids, teaching them along the way, but married life with kids is different – beautiful, but different.
As a teen, I felt drawn to marriage and motherhood. My sophomore year of college, I opened myself up to the possibility of religious life and discerned that God was, indeed, calling me to marriage and motherhood! Not having dated previously, I entered my first Catholic courtship at age 21. We shared faith, life, and love…chastely…and discerned after 11 months that God was NOT calling us to marry one another. As a college graduation present to myself, I joined AveMariaSingles.com. I met a young man who lived across the country from me and, after months of emails and phone conversations, we met and began my second Catholic courtship. Similar story: we shared faith and friendship, but 14 months later we discerned a NO to our thoughts towards marriage and ended our courtship. The following year I returned to AveMariaSingles and "made myself available" but did not pursue anyone. Well, along came David and friendship ensued, followed by a long-distance (NJ to FL) courtship, a double move to NC, continued discernment, an accepted proposal, a busy engagement, and, in just over 3 months, a wedding! 6 years after God confirmed that He made me for marriage, I will be given in marriage. It has been a long time coming, but the patience, risk-taking, and time for developing my relationship with God have all been worth it.
My advice: try not to get settled in your ways lest it become very difficult to adapt them to the preferences and ways of another in the future. Make yourself available (I highly recommend AveMariaSingles.com) but, as Cris noted, do not look for your spouse so intentionally. Enrich yourself with good books (I enjoyed Joshua Harris’s _Say Hello to Courtship_, even though it is not specifically Catholic). Enjoy your relationship with God (He’s the One Who will always be with you, loving you more than any man possibly could). Open yourself to the Holy Spirit and, when prompted, take risks (trust in God!). And, as the anonymous poster below said, practice virtue NOW – self-giving love, patience, and hope.
Some good girl talk with positive, encouraging sisters in Christ helps, too! 😉
PS I invite everyone to visit our wedding website (address above) and share any marriage prayers you’ve found particularly encouraging/fruitful. Thanks!
Wow. I love the anonymous response by the over 40 single woman! The only thing I’d like to add is a suggestion for single women – be of help our "sisters" who have been blessed with large families. There is no better preparation to be a wife and mother than to help out those living the vocation. No, I’m not a mom of many advertising for help; rather, the mother of an only child.
Talk about on the job preparation! There haven’t been many things that have arisen with my son with which I haven’t already dealt – thanks to my friends’ kids. Plus, even though he is a singleton, he has multiple pseudo-siblings because of my relationships with these children. There are many advantages that cannot easily be communicated – until you have experienced the knowledge that a child felt you were the first person they HAD to tell that they lost a tooth, you can’t appreciate the love wrapped in that knowledge, but it is wonderful. Until I married and had my son, I had thought those kids were going to be the only kids I had. That wasn’t a sad thought though. I invested myself in them and my return on that investment has always been much more than I could have imagined.
To Cris,
Okay,so funny.Same exact thing happened to me. Stopped looking and met my husband a week later. Even funnier,I wasn’t even catholic.I converted later.
Hilarious that I’m commenting on this since I could have written the question myself.
Find some great friends, that’s what I say! and BE a great friend. Learn how to let them be themselves and love them and let them see you. If you happen to work for a man (as I do) learn to do things the way he likes them to be done rather than your own way. Be patient with the somewhat foreign way his mind works.
I think the greatest thing I’ve ever been told is to truly trust the Holy Spirit, and that preference (for this man, that man) always matters, and if it’s true and manifests itself as a passion for his destiny [God] it can always be a way for God to speak to you.
We should be friends, whoever you are! God bless you!
In reply to the 40 something single woman who writes
"The Church doesn’t teach that being single and in the world is a vocation (at least I can’t find any support for it in scripture or Church documents – and believe me, I’ve had plenty of time to look!). We are called to religious life or to marriage."
You may be write that you can’t find any supporting documents, but in our Parish each week we pray a "Vocations Prayer". Originally, this prayer was only for vocations to the religious life, but it was recently revised to include religious life, married life "and those chosen to live as single persons in the world." I just wanted you to know that your, too, are called, and we are praying for you.
FYI: The entire text of our Prayer is:
Heavenly Father,
Bless your Church with an abundance of holy and zealous priests,
deacons,brothers, and sisters. Give those you have called to the
married state and those you have chosen to live as single persons
in the world, the special graces that their lives require.
Through Christ our Lord, and the intercession of Mary, form us all in the
likeness of your Son,so that in him, with him, and through him,we may love
you more deeply and serve you more faithfully, always and everywhere.
Amen.
I knew I was called to marriage when I was young. There were three things I did.
1)I had a prayer that I said everyday for God to lead me to the right man.
2)I prayed and offered my sufferings for my future husband and children.
3) I went to Catholic groups where I might meet Catholic men but also tried to enjoy those groups even if I didn’t meet anyone.
What I didn’t do which might have been helpful to prepare for my vocation was learn more about cooking organizing and children. But there is a fast on the job learning curve when you get married and have children so if you haven’t done those things don’t worry you’ll learn when it happens.
For Brenda,
There’s a lot of confusion, I think, about people called to the single life. I think that it’s ‘nice’ that people pray for it, but it’s unrealistic, unhelpful (if well-intentioned) and not taking into consideration Church teaching. If your church can find a Church teaching or any scripture that says ANYONE is ever called to single life in the world, it would be very interesting to read it. (Off the top of your head, can you think of any figure from scripture who was not married or living a life consecrated to God? I’ll hum a tune while you think.)
We can’t pretend away the facts of life. To say that someone is ‘called’ to the single life is to pretend away something that is, in fact, a painful cross. It doesn’t do a single bit of good to pretend that someone is called to the single life in the world: we’re not.
It’s not a good analogy, but it’s like saying that someone is called to be a homosexual, just because that’s how the person’s life has turned out. Or that someone is ‘called’ to be paralyzed because that’s how things have worked out. No, no: that was NOT part of God’s plan for us. God did not ‘choose’ me for the vocation of being single (there is no such thing) any more than He ‘chose’ me for the ‘vocation’ of being paralyzed from the waist down or
chose someone to be abandoned by her fiance or ‘chose’ someone to be abandoned by an alcoholic father who chose drink over the needs of his family. Those things happen because the world is fallen, because of free will.
I am NOT called to single life. No one is. I am in this situation for very real reasons that have nothing to do with God’s plan. It has to do with the fallen world, with human volition, with reality.
It’s a false kind of compassion that tries to tell people they are ‘called’ to the single life in the world when they are not. I know that people mean well when they say this or pray for people and say they are ‘called’ to it, but it doesn’t help us deal with the reality that this IS a cross and it IS painful and we DO have to live the mystery of this cross.
It’s a false compassion to pretend that a situation is a calling when it’s not. It’s like praying for married couples who are ‘called’ to childlessness, or praying for women who are ‘called’ to be married to husbands who cheat on them, or praying for people who are called to have an illness that will kill them by age 30. We are not called to these things; these things are crosses we have to endure because the world is fallen.
As well-intentioned as it is to try to pretend that being single and in the world is a calling, in fact what it does is tell someone, ‘God said, "It’s not good for a man to be alone," but He didn’t mean YOU. God WANTS you to be alone.’ It’s like telling a homosexual person, ‘God made them male and female, and told them to be fruitful and multiply, but in fact, He called you to be excluded from that.’ No – He didn’t. And pretending that being excluded from God’s call to fulfillment in marriage – because of someone else’s sin (like the poster who had to leave an abusive husband) or for some other reason – is clueless and hurtful, even if you mean well.
Please don’t do that to me and other single people who are called to married life and suffering the very real cross of having to live alone. Please don’t do that, either, to people who are called to religious life and have had to leave the cloister or been driven out of seminary because of others’ sins. Don’t do that to good priests who have been falsely accused and now cannot practice their vocations to the full (would you say they were ‘chosen’ for that ‘vocation’?). Don’t do that to women who can’t have children (are they ‘chosen’ for the vocation of barenness?). Don’t do that to men and women who have lost their spouses (‘chosen’ for the vocation of widowhood?). Please don’t pretend that a thwarted vocation is a vocation. It’s a cross. It hurts.
If you want to pray for single people, better to pray for us to live as well as we can with the circumstances we are in. This is true compassion.
I suggest you read Mary Beth Bonacci about the difficulties that single people face when we are in parishes that treat us as invisible (everything is about families), or when we hear ourselves being prayed for as ‘called by God’ to live out our lives alone. I’ve heard that prayer before, and it makes me want to cry out in protest – if I weren’t crying inside at how I am being dismissed. When you pray for me in my ‘calling,’ you are dismissing my cross and compounding my loneliness and my feeling of being outcast from God’s favor, because you make it impossible for me and others like me even to share the pain of the cross of loneliness, to have it acknowledged as a real cross. Instead you pretend we aren’t suffering and have no cross.
A thwarted vocation – whether to religious life or to marriage – is a painful cross, no matter why a person has to live with a thwarted vocation. Please don’t dismiss it in the name of ‘compassion.’ It means you don’t understand and aren’t listening.
No one is ‘chosen [by God] to live as single persons in the world’ even if some people reject their vocations and choose to live as single people in the world. I do wish your parish would recognize the facts and that priests would recognize that single people have very real pastoral needs that they are completely ignoring and dismissing when they urge people to pray this way.
I wish my parish – and my priest – would recognize the facts. But being treated as though I’m living a fulfilling vocation – when my vocation was thwarted – is just part of the cross, I guess.
Wow – the comments are tremendously encouraging in "a fallen world" as one responded. However, 43 years, 4 children and 9 granchildren in my life doesn’t give me any authority on singleness. Our families do have 4 single adult women who truly all enjoy being part of our family and who all have been successful in their single lives.
And what about the single men? – as I read some of the comments I could not help but want to copy some of them to share with my 25 year old son who just left a relationship that he thought would probably be a life partner. Now we, as parents, continue to pray for his vocation too. (p.s. – I did pray for a good husband through my teen years by attending a catholic service every Friday night – it worked, he’s been a God-send, godly, spiritual man. We are blessed. )
Wow! Great comments below. What helped me while I was single…turning my life over to God. I was totally in love with God. So much that I wanted to enter religious life. I started attending daily Mass regularly, and some friends and I prayed that if it be God’s will that I might find a "nice orthodox Catholic man." And within the month, I did…at daily Mass! The Blessed Mother works fast, but not for everyone.
I found that the best preparation I had besides the sacraments, was reading Church documents on family, womanhood and marraige. ‘Familiarus Consortio’ is a good one to start with; also, ‘On the Dignity and Vocation of Woman.’ Another thing is to spend time with strong faithful and fruitful married couples.
Also remember as a single person you have the opportunity to serve the Church in a way that many couples that are married with children cannot do. Embrace that. And who knows, you might find that Godly man along side you serving our Lord.
For Anon:
Please forgive me if I have added to your struggles…that was truly not my intention.
I wouldn’t like you to think we are praying for those who are thwarted in their vocation…but I certainly believe there are people who do choose to live as single persons in the world, and that this is no less a vocation than marriage.
My Goodness,
The only posts I’ve had time to read so far in this thread have been Danielle’s (from about 2 years ago) and Anon’s, to which Danielle also linked.
I am 53 years old & am a lifelong single person, heterosexual. 🙂 The only things I’ve ever felt ‘Called To’, have been to love Jesus Christ & to be an artist. 😉 That isn’t to say that I would or would not want to be married – sometimes I do. However, in no way does that eclipse the enjoyment I have of being a single person.
There are many benefits to being single, just as there are many to being married or in consecrated religious life. I had 10 years of Catholic school & can tell you that, back in the 60’s, when I was there, the Sisters of Mercy taught us that religious life, married life and single life are all legitimate vocations, sanctioned by God and honored by the Church. I don’t believe they told us this just because they had to seem ‘accepting of everyone’. There simply was never a mandate that each person marry or become a priest or nun.
Anyway, helped by this, I’ve felt free to just be myself & to contribute as I believe God asks me to do. Being an artist, I’m more contemplative than most people; yet am not called to Religious Life.
I personally don’t think any one person has the final answer to the question of what another ‘should’ do or be. To me, it’s all about listening to God, being kind to others & self, enjoying life, contributing one’s love, time & talents, & being grateful for each day.
Anon, I’d like to offer some prayers for you ~ you seem in such pain. Gosh, that is hard. God bless you – you have my sympathy! I hope things will improve for you in future.
I am 40 years old. I was married when I was 37. Amen to you Anon. Your comments are right on the money. It is blatantly obvious that you have the guidance of the Holy Spirit and Jesus is truly an intimate friend of yours. You speak of the single life with such emotion and clarity. As I was reading both of your comments I could really connect with you on both of them. I could feel and knew exactly what you were saying because I had lived it.
I came back to the church in my mid-20’s and began then praying for my future husband. I asked God for a man like St. Joseph. I even wrote a list of the top 10 qualities that I wanted in a spouse and prioritized them. It took 12 years for me to find him, but I did.
I wouldn’t give up. Do you know how I met my huband? We met through Ave Maria singles (on the internet.) Can you believe? I was not the kind of woman who would want to meet a man on the internet. However, I was in adoration one day talking to Jesus. I had gone through periods in my life where I fervently prayed for my husband and them I would casually pray for a while. This particular time, I was asking Jesus, (for what seemed like the millionsth time) What is it you want for my life? I feel called to the married vocation, but if you want me to be a religious let me know. If married life if my calling you are going to have to be creative with getting us together. (at the time I only hung out with my married friends and their husbands and my family) I remember saying, "Hey, you are GOd, you can do anything." That night a friend of mine heard about Ave Maria Singles on EwTN, called me right away to tell me about it and encourage me to join. It took me about 1 1/2 years to meet my husband. He is truly my St. Joseph that I prayed for all those years.
I also want to say that during my 12 years of CAtholic singleness, I worked on myself. I tried to draw closer to Jesus and through that I received tremendous healing, which I believe prepared me for my married vocation. (Interestingly enough, my husband began praying for my healing right about the time I began seeking healing, although we wouldn’t meet for another 8 years)
I would say to women who are single, but feel called to the married life:
1st – READ ANON’s first comment regarding KImberly Hahn. EXCELLENT!!!!!
2nd – make your first priority drawing in to a closer relationship with Jesus, not finding a husband.
3rd – I would reiterate what Anon said about not getting caught up into thinking every guy is "the one". Don’t idealize marriage so much that you want to be married just to be married. I guess what I am saying is I have been on both sides of this and I will tell you that marriage can be just as much of a cross as single life, just in very different ways. If you don’t enter into marriage with the right person, you might as well take up the single cross. To be honest, the single cross, although lonely,less joyful and far fewer rewards, in many ways is so much easier.
Anon, I will be praying for you and other single women that you are able to stay close to Jesus and be joyful while bearing this single cross for as long as it may be.
To Anon:
I was taught as a child that one could be called to the single life as a Catholic. Your mention was the first I had ever heard of it not being a possibility. I have searched around and found a few links I thought I would share. I think there is a difference between being called married life, but currently single, and being called to the single life. Hopefully you will find these links helpful.
This site from The Archdiocese of Brisbane describes the different callings a Catholic can have. http://www.bne.catholic.net.au/asp/index.asp?pgid=10725
So far from "commanding" marriage in 1 Corinthians 7, in that very chapter Paul actually endorses celibacy for those capable of it: "To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion" (7:8-9)…….Notice that this sort of celibacy "for the sake of the kingdom" is a gift, a call that is not granted to all, or even most people, but is granted to some. Other people are called to marriage. It is true that too often individuals in both vocations fall short of the requirements of their state, but this does not diminish either vocation, nor does it mean that the individuals in question were "not really called" to that vocation. The sin of a priest doesn’t necessarily prove that he never should have taken a vow of celibacy, any more than the sin of a married man or woman proves that he or she never should have gotten married. It is possible for us to fall short of our own true calling.
http://www.catholic.com/library/Celibacy_and_the_Priesthood.asp
Dear Brenda,
I know you mean no harm. But look at your language – it’s contradictory. You’ve said that you know people who CHOOSE to live a single life. Then you call it a ‘vocation.’ But no – a ‘vocation’ is a ‘calling out.’ A vocation isn’t a choice WE make, it’s God ‘calling us out’ of ourselves to the station in life He created us for. And He simply didn’t create anybody to live the single life in the world.
It’s a VERY modern idea (within my lifetime, in fact) to pretend that there’s such a thing as a ‘calling to be single in the world’ when there isn’t. You can’t find it in scripture; you can’t find it in Church teachings. The Church is 2,000 years old, and has had plenty of time to deal with the ‘fact’ that some people are ‘called’ to single life in the world. And in 2,000 years, the Church has never said that some people are called by God to live a single life in the world, nor has she ever bothered to work out a pastoral response to this ‘fact.’ Because it isn’t part of God’s plan. It’s part of our cultural conditioning since the ‘feel-good’ generation of the 1960s, when ‘do your own thing’ became the cry at the heart of our culture.
Yes, people can CHOOSE to be single – and they do, for many reasons. Some people CHOOSE to be single ‘for a while’ or while they get established in a career or because of wounds they aren’t ready to acknowlege (I could tell you stories…). But THEY CHOOSE, and that’s not the same as a vocation (a calling from God). In fact, while they are busy ‘choosing’ to be single in the world, they may simply miss hearing God’s call to marriage or religious life, because they’ve deafened themselves to it for their own reasons.
It is precisely BECAUSE some people ‘choose’ to live a single life (and even cloak it in terms of vocation) that some others have their vocations thwarted. Just as it is precisely BECAUSE some people ‘chose’ to enter the priesthood with an agenda to changing the Church that some others found themselves thwarted in their vocation to enter the priesthood (I’m thinking of the scandal of seminaries that would not accept heterosexual men who upheld Church teachings).
If you read the posts, you’ll notice how often a married person says, ‘I prayed for God to show me my vocation’ or ‘I prayed for a husband’ or ‘I thought I had a calling to religious life, but ended up married.’ In every case, you see someone who opened herself up to being ‘called out’ by God to a true vocation – not someone who said, ‘I want this – this is my choice’ and then grabbed it. (Again, search scripture; search the lives of the saints: Where can you find someone who said, ‘I choose this vocation’? You can’t because it’s a contradiction in terms. The closest you may come is someone like Saul who seems to have ‘chosen’ to persecute the early Church – and notice what happened to him when God paid him a call! THERE’S an example of a ‘calling out,’ a vocation!)
We don’t CHOOSE a vocation – not to marriage, not to the priesthood (if we could, women’s ordination would make sense), not to religious life. Neither do we have a ‘right’ to these things. God calls us out of ourselves, our life devoted to me and my choices, and calls us into religious or married life. (Remember what He said to Peter: once you girded yourself and went where you pleased, but now I’m calling you to feed my lambs – and a time will come when others will gird you and lead you where you do NOT choose to go. That’s how a vocation works: God calls, and we find ourselves led in directions we would never have chosen ourselves. Vocation requires an abandonment to God’s will, not a choice of our own will.)
We can choose to be deaf; we can choose our own path; we can choose to defy God and refuse His call; we can choose to rush into marriage with the first person we meet because we so much WANT to be called to marriage, right now. We can choose to abort the child that God destined from all eternity to be the husband or wife of your son or daughter. We can choose many things, but we don’t choose our vocations.
God calls; we answer. And sometimes, we answer and are thwarted despite all our willingness to live out the vocation God is calling us to.
This is a modern problem – very modern. There is a ‘marriage vocations crisis’ in our culture as much as their is a ‘priestly vocations’ crisis in our culture. God is calling – He calls EVERYONE to some vocation. But some people aren’t answering the call to Catholic marriage even as some aren’t answering the call to Catholic priesthood. And that means that some people will suffer the consequences of those people choosing their own paths instead of opening themselves up to God’s call.
When we’ve been so conditioned to call ‘choice’ the highest value for humans that we can pretend that ‘choice’ is the same as God’s call, we are worryingly out of touch with reality, I think.
I appreciate your good intentions. I just think that this is an issue that’s almost totally ignored in the Church because it IS such a modern phenomenon. When we call something a ‘choice’ we somehow make it morally neutral or automatically good. It’s like the people who say that abortion is a choice for women, and who consequently cannot or will not acknowledge that it’s a very bad, painful, destructive choice for women. Their pain simply doesn’t exist because they ‘chose.’ But choices have consequences – for us and for others. And the victims of others’ choices have pastoral needs, whether the vocation thwarted was a religious vocation or a vocation to marriage.
I know many, many people who claim to be ‘happy’ in their ‘chosen lifestyle.’ But you see, God made us free – and that includes being free to close our ears to His call. When we want what we want more than we want what God wants for us, God lets us have it. He doesn’t force a vocation on us. He lets us have the false ‘happiness’ that comes with being masters of our own lives. But there are consequences – for those who choose their own way, and for those who are affected by their choices. That’s how it works in a fallen world.
There are many reasons why a person can choose to live a single life in the world, besides a failure to open themselves to God’s will. I don’t want to imply that there’s necessarily sin in it – it may be a matter of cultural conditioning and no particular encouragement to think in terms of vocation at all. I know of cases of people so damaged by abuse, for example, that they are simply too hurt to open themselves to the possibility of marriage. I know of one case of a man who thought he had a vocation to the priesthood, but was so ridiculed by his family that his sensitive soul just gave up before he really had time to consider or explore the vocation (his parents didn’t help and in fact hindered his sense of a budding vocation). These people need pastoral help. I personally think that they need to hear again and again and again that EVERYONE is called either to marriage or to religious life, and it’s a rare case that someone is simply unfit to live out a vocation to one or the other.
Perhaps if we spoke realistically about what vocations are, instead of speaking of choices, then those people who need help and encouragement to embrace a vocation, or who need healing so they can embrace a vocation, will get that. But if we just talk about everyone ‘choosing’ his ‘vocation’ – then the real needs of such people will never be addressed because we aren’t speaking realistically.
For Catherine – no, there’s no ‘mandate’ that everyone be married or be in religious life. The Church can’t mandate something like that, because it’s impossible to enforce. We have free will in these things. It’s also interesting that you were taught that the single life is a Church-honored state of life in the 1960s (lots of interesting innovative ideas popped up in the 1960s…). Of course, the Church honors people who are single. The Church wouldn’t think of ‘dishonoring’ or treating as a second-class citizen someone who could not marry because, say, the Vietnam War killed off many of the marriageable men in her generation (as happened to a number of my mother’s generation), or who have disabilities, etc. that make it impossible for them to live out the vocation to marriage or religious life.
But I don’t think that ‘honoring’ single people is the same as teaching that God calls people to a vocation of being single and in the world. It happens to people, but it’s not part of God’s plan for people. (Death isn’t part of God’s plan for people, originally, but it happens!)
I’m not omniscient and I don’t know why you never felt called to anything more than loving Christ and being an artist. As another poster said, though, and as I said in my first post, God always has a plan B, until you die. He can reconfigure anything, even if our vocations are thwarted. I once read of a priest who was in his eighties, and aflame with a passionate love of Christ. Someone said he must have had a wonderful life as a priest to have such a lively faith and to be so joyful sharing his love of Christ with others. The priest replied that he had only ‘fallen in love’ with Christ about two years before! It’s never too late to be called – that priest was retired before he felt really alive to his vocation!
God can do anything. We aren’t all called to marriage or religious life at age 20. And God gives us crosses we can bear, too. It’s possible that someone could have no sense of loss or a thwarted vocation simply because that’s not a cross that person could bear. In His mercy, it’s perfectly possible that if a person couldn’t bear the pain of being called to marriage and then losing a spouse, God wouldn’t give that person that cross. Who knows? Life’s a mystery.
For those kind people who offered helpful words, thank you! (One meets the nicest people in Danielle’s ‘house’!). I’m beginning to wonder if God is calling me to speak up about the problem of thwarted vocations, though, after this conversation! It’s really so many other people that I know who concern me… the man whose feeling of being drawn to the priesthood was nipped in the bud; the dear friend I’ve known since babyhood who has longed all her life to be like her mother – happy ‘earth-mother’ to a dozen kids – but who has simply never met any men who wanted to take on the burdens of a wife and children, because of the way they were conditioned by our modern culture; friends who don’t trust marriage because they come from broken homes; friends who suffered sexual abuse… And these are people from my street and my parish (and my family). There must be more out there. But it seems to be an almost invisible problem.
Back when Danielle was asking about how large families worked one person came to my mind, Betty, may she rest in peace.
Betty was a single woman who made our big family, growing up, feel like a treasure. Every October she showed up with the biggest pumpkin ever. Sometimes we’d get home from a Sunday drive to a phone call that she’d dropped by with something for us– go look in the grill. We’d find donuts or some other treat. She taught us Girl Scout camp cooking, took out just 1 or 2 of us for a treat.
The best was showing up before Easter with a giant white Pillar candle called a Christ Candle. It was covered in Easter symbols. We lit it every dinner before grace.
Her twin was in Religious life. Others siblings were married. She was content.
At her wake I found out there was a large family in each neighborhood of the city that she treated this way. It was her way of supporting the Culture of Life before anyone heard of a culture of death.
At her funeral I was sure I could heaar her laughter. We were crying but she was with her Jesus.
Did she have a vocation to life as a Single Woman? Only the Spirit knows. But she lived each day as if it was her vocation. She did His Will as she saw it. And it was Good.
I totally relate to Anon’s comments, and I find myself very willing to believe in their truth. So much of her post is true and very good advice. However, I find myself questioning her statement that the single life is not a vocation. Like her, I always felt called to marriage, but knew that I must accept the path of life to which God called me, even if that meant being single. I had been taught that the single life was a vocation. And, although now married, I have continued to believe that the single state is a vocation just like marriage and the religious life. Since we all seem to be lay people putting in our two cents, I think it would be good for Danielle to obtain for us the correct teaching on this matter. While the comments are thought-provoking, we don’t want to use our own feelings and musings to arrive at a definitive answer to some of these deeper questions…(Is the single state a vocation? How are we called? Can a vocation really be thwarted by a fallen world? Or do some receive vocations that they do in fact reject? There may be a straightforward answer to this…or perhaps it’s a mystery like the Trinity; something we aren’t meant to comprehend.) Danielle, I’m sure you have more than enough to keep you busy, but perhaps Father Augustine or any priest well-grounded in theology and Church teachings could help set our minds on the right path.
With that said, this is a very emotional topic. I’ve been there, Anon, and I feel for you so very much…I was not as kind as you are regarding trying to not be envious of others who were getting married, having children, etc. I met my husband on AMSCOL (Ave Maria Single Catholics On-Line). And I’m not the on-line dating type…but God used this medium to bring my husband and me together. Maybe you would like to visit the website. God Bless.
I see the hurt and confusion that is written here and my heart goes out to all those who feel their true vocations are being ripped from them by our fallen world. When I was in high school and boyfriends were non-existent and I was the only one of my friends alone and dateless on prom night, I felt with the fatalism of my teens that there might never be someone for me out in the world. I was doing what everyone was telling me to do, be myself and not compromise my ideals or faith and well, no one was interested. This continued for a while in my life. At the time a concerned older friend (one of my mother’s friends before she became mine) told my mother that, "Kristen should feel truly blessed. God has something special planned for her." I don’t care what age you are, when you feeled called to the married life and it just doesn’t seem to be happening, words like that sting more than they provide you with hope. I felt lonely and misunderstood. I had an active prayer life, but God realized when he created Adam that Adam needed more than just the animals to have dominion over and a loving God, or why else would he have created Eve.
Similarly, when my husband and I married four years ago, we began trying to get pregnant right away and endured infertility, miscarriages and a surgery to correct a birth defect before being blessed with our daughter (and in September we will have a son as well). It was frustrating to feel so called to be a mother and it wasn’t happening, especially as we watched friends and family members become parents effortlessly. I often thought, why would God create this desire in my heart to fulfill His word, but not allow it to come to fruition? It was even more painful when a few complained about their pregnancies to us or the "burden" of having a child. I never once complained about a sleepless night of nursing a baby because there was a time we were not sure we would even endure one.
The original question asked to Danielle was about advice for young (or not so young) Catholic women who feel called to marriage and family and have not met the right person and also any type of preparations in the single years for this vocation. Through my above experiences I learned something that has served me well now that I am a wife and mother, listen. When so many people would ask my why I didn’t have a boyfriend (and yes, people do come right out and ask that), I often found that most of them were not listening to my answers or the pain I was going through. The ones who did (for example, my confirmation sponsor who did not become a wife until her late 40’s despite desparately wanting to be one)gave me a beautiful gift. They did not write me off but communicated, because they were listening to me, that they could hear the pain in my voice and see it in my face.
By using that same active listening in my marriage, my husband I communicate more effectively and have a better marriage as a result.
When you having conversations with friends and family, don’t just hear the words they are saying but listen to the emotion and history behind them. By practicing this as a single person, you will have a big leg up when you get married.
I don’t have any advice as to where is the best place to meet people, I met my husband because of a wrong number, so you never know. I remember this comedian I saw once whose grandmother told him that church was a nice place to meet nice girls. His response wat that he didn’t think God would take a liking to him going to church with the intent to pick up women. That being said, my daughter’s Godmother met her late husband unintentionally at the sign of peace. I like the idea of going to Catholic social groups and the like so you meet someone with similar values, but if you are not a "mixer" type person (I’m not) this might put you out of your comfort zone and make it more difficult to meet someone. Keep the lines of prayer open for a fulfillment to your vocation and have one or two good friends whom you can call on when you need to just get the frustration of the situation out. Hopefully, like mine was, yours will be a temporary cross to bear.
Growing up I heard it said, "When eating a donut are you focusing on the donut or are you focusing on the hole? Enjoy what God has given you, enjoy where God has placed you, thank him for everything and everyone around you. You’ll never notice the holes in life. He has filled them for you."
My advice for a single person is remember no matter our station in life we are never alone. God is always with us. He is listening and in His time according to His will your prayer will be answered. During my single years I dated some questionable men. Finally I just said, "Okay God, whatever you will for me so be it. All I want is what you want for me. You know me best. Direct me even if I need a poke or two when I veer off course.And I may even need a huge sign or two along the way reminding me of all this. And don’t forget to be my strength. You know how weak I am." I set about focusing on God first in my life. It wasn’t long in my case and there God put my husband right in front of me, literally.
So I guess I prepared myself by putting God first. Still do. It isn’t always easy but I find it the best way for all the crosses in life.
I have been reading the comments about the single life whether it is a vocation or a suffering (akin to infertility). I think that both opinions are correct.
1. The vocation of the laity encompasses both the single and married state: The Catechism states:
897 "The term ‘laity’ is here understood to mean all the faithful except those in Holy Orders and those who belong to a religious state approved by the Church. That is, the faithful, who by Baptism are incorporated into Christ and integrated into the People of God, are made sharers in their particular way in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly office of Christ, and have their own part to play in the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the World."
This is definitely a high calling for all of us – thence a Vocation. But the Cathechism also states in particular about the single state:
1658 We must also remember the great number of single persons who, because of the particular circumstances in which they have to live – often not of their choosing – are especially close to Jesus’ heart and therefore deserve the special affection and active solicitude of the Church, especially of pastors. Many remain without a human family often due to conditions of poverty. Some live their situation in the spirit of the Beatitudes, serving God and neighbor in exemplary fashion. The doors of homes, the "domestic churches," and of the great family which is the Church must be open to all of them. "No one is without a family in this world: the Church is a home and family for everyone, especially those who ‘labor and are heavy laden.’"
Since I’m not sure how to link posts, I copied (sorry!) this from Amy Wellborn’s blog about St. Catherine of Siena, who was a single, lay person. I thought it was interesting and is appropriate to this topic.
"First an intro post by Sherry Weddell on the saint’s life:
Catherine’s life was so remarkable that we are tempted to feel as if she has nothing to say to those of us whose faith and gifts seem all too ordinary by comparison. Remarkable as her gifts were, more remarkable was her sense of personal responsibility and authority to tackle the urgent issues of her day. She had no credentials of note in medieval society except that she was a disciple of Jesus Christ, a faithful daughter of the Church, and a woman of great spiritual depth and giftedness. Few lay Christians have had a clearer sense of standing in Jesus’ place than Catherine. Her influence was based upon her personal holiness and charisms, not her position. The most staggering thing about Catherine of Siena is that she did it all as a laywoman. Precisely on this account, there is much about Catherine’s ministry common to all of us who are called to live out our faith as lay Christians."
ok, I have a response. "Uh..What??" Is this person really comparing being single to being gay, paralyzed, or maimed? Did I read it wrong? You are who you are. If you are single, meaning not married..then that doesn’t mean you are alone. I have more friends, company and love in my life than most of my married friends. THEY are the ones who feel alone and isolated. So I am confused. If you are married, but you are not in love with your husband..is that what God wants?
I was always taught that there were 3 vocations in the church: single, married and religious. I have known many holy single people living out there vocation and since we have examples in the saints, it would be hard to deny that "single" is not a vocation ordained by God. Some examples are: St Catherine of Siena, St Rose of Lima, St Crispin, St. Barbara, St Catherine and many of the early martyrs. Sorry to be heavy on the women and Dominicans, but I am a Lay Dominican as St Catherine of Siena and St Rose were (although I am married)so those are the ones I come up with off the top of my head. This is of course, not counting all the saints who were widows and widowers.
I just remembered! There is a rite for the consecration of virgins (celebrated by a bishop), which is specifically for single people not called to religious life who feel called to serve in the world (part of the requirement is that you be self supporting).
Interestingly, saying that single is not a state God could call you to is actually a Protestant phenomenon, dating from Luther and his demand that everyone should get married (he married a nun). Sadly, I have a Baptist friend who is considered an unholy failure because she is unmarried and in her late 30s.
Lastly, you are right that people don’t CHOOSE their vocations, but certainly God speaks in the way He inclines your heart. I am sure you didn’t mean to come off as condemning those not called to religious life or marriage, but I know if I were called to the single state, I would have been hurt.
I would have to disagree with Anon’s second post. Her comments reveal great pain and suffering, and a wound or wounds that need healing – not through a spouse or children, but through the love of our Lord. For only in loving Him and trusting in His plan for us will we find happiness on Earth, which is His greatest desire for us until we can spend eternity with Him. And when there are bumps along the way, when our "fallen world" gets the best of us, we must trust even more that through our suffering, His glory will be revealed in ways we never imagined — not dwell on how the evil one, free will, or any other aspect of our fallenness is somehow "messing up" His plan. We must never forgot the power of God. He most desires us to be close to him, and for some of us, it takes illnesses, hardships, and other unpleasant things to draw us into deeper communion with Him.
I commend Anon for desiring marriage and family, for our culture does not hold it in high esteem these days. At the core of the cultural decay we see all around us is individualisn, self-centeredness, and the desire for all things that bring us instant pleasure and gratification. Being married and having children is often portrayed as a burden and roadblock to happiness.
And while our Catholic faith teaches that marriage and children are gifts and blessings from our Father, nowhere that I am aware of, is it taught that this is what God intends for ALL of us. Think about it. God himself, as Jesus, was a SINGLE man!! And he was conceived in the womb of an UNMARRIED Virgin!!! God could have choosen a multitude of other ways to reveal himself to us, to reveal his love for us, and to teach us about our earthly vocations, our salvation. But he didn’t. And during His ministry, he called upon His disciples to leave their families and follow him – to trust in Him alone….
And I definately do not believe that everyone who is single is bearing some kind of "cross" just because they are single. That would mean that all of us who are now married bore the "single" cross until we were no longer single. I certainly did not feel that way prior to getting married. In fact, despite my VERY strong desire to be a mother (from a very young age), there was a time when I beleived that I was (and was content with being) "called" to the single life. In that contentedness, I met my husband.
I think this is a good summary of the idea of vocations in the Church:
"What is vocation? The word ‘vocation’ often intimidates, frightens, or even repels if considered as just a “religious calling.” Vocation, which comes from the Latin word vocare, to call, vox, voice, is God’s unique invitation to individuals to freely respond to the way of the Gospel. This responding is a life-long process; we discover how we “are” our vocation as we journey through life led by the Spirit of the Gospel, for we do not “have” a vocation—we “are” a vocation, be it married, single, or religious. Incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ, all the baptized are called to holiness in their particular vocation. The best way to fulfill our purpose in life, after having been created out of love is to love and be loved." (The rest of this short article can be read here: http://www.catholic.org/prwire/headline.php?ID=1751)
What God’s desires most is for us to be close to him, and for us to share His love with one another. What all of us are called to is self-giving love, to servanthood – being other-centered, not self-centered. Yes, married life, and especially parenthood, provides us with more direct opportunities to be other-centered, and might I even go so far as to say, "forces" us to deny our own selfish desires – especially with each addition to the family. But that’s not to say that single persons can’t practice the same kind of self-giving love, for there are so many people in our world who need that love.
We need priests and others who enter the religious life to be single, for they cannot faithfully carry out both their priestly vocation and a vocation to marriage simultaneously. Likewise, we also need other single persons (whether temporary or for their Earthly life) who can give more of themselves to others because they are not married, or do not have children.
I’m a planner, a dreamer, a thinker. I’m often not as content as I should be with what God’s plan is for me at any given moment. I’ve missed many opportunities (as a single person AND as a wife and mother) to love more deeply and be loved more deeply because of my discontent. But it is during those times when I turn all my pain, suffering, worry, and regret over to the Lord, that His peace and love fills my heart, and I’m able to more easily and fully share that love with others.
I also would recommend AveMariaSingles.com. I met my husband on that site when it was SingleCatholicsOnline.com and what a wonderful site it is. My story is that I was in my early thirties and having a wonderful time being single, and knew that I needed to get serious about what I believed God was calling me to – a vocation to Marriage and Motherhood. I met several men on the site, some local and some distant, and every person I met was a devout Catholic and a very honorable man. The man I ended up marrying had three beautiful children and we added one more to our family after we were married. The Good Lord has not blessed us with any more children, but I am so thankful for the three that I "inherited" and the one we have additionally.
I had dated a lot of men, but decided that I needed to find a practicing Catholic man, someone who was looking for marriage as well, and this was a great place to go.
A warm thanks to those who have posted from the Catechism – you are helping me remember exactly what the Sisters were teaching us in Catholic school long ago. It is beautiful to read it again now.
I agree with what has been said about how the vocation of a single adult is to see where we might be of support, & then offer what we can. It becomes easier, over time & with prayer & openness, to see when God asking something ~ & then to respond.
I have very close friends who are Protestants, the woman being my best friend. She was feeling sorry for me, or as if she would be ‘pressured’, were she to be in my shoes, being single. Well, it turns out that she has had significant marital troubles. As a single Christian adult, my role is to shore her up – and her husband – which means to listen, abosrb, love, take them out to eat – whatever will bring Love to them in a healing way. Anytime the Church asks the congregation something like, "And will you support this person/this couple?" – whether in baptism, confirmation, marriage or ordination – I see my obligation & my vocation very clearly. They answer is: Yes, I Shall – Gladly. 😀
One year there was a woman at our church who has 5 daughters, was divorced from an alcoholic & she wanted to be a Catholic. She asked me to sponsor her & so I spent time with her, listening to her faith-story, sharing my own, & helping her by being kind to her children – supporting her as a single parent – as well. Her entry into the Church at Easter that year was a joy to both of us, and an honor to be a part of – and I consider my contribution to that as very much my Vocation as a single adult.
As an artist, I have presented, during Holy Week, a prayerful & meditative experience at the Church, using the parable of God as the Potter, who forms us and delights in us – and who calls us to be co-creators too – in whatever ways that may manifest individually. People at this presentation (I did it twice) found it to be spiritually lovely – they thanked me, and that was lovely. I know my single state is what allowed me to have the contemplative time to formulate this presentation, & to give it its power. For this, I am very grateful. However, this ability really was from Christ. As Mother Teresa would say of her own singular efforts, that they "Come through me, as if I am God’s pencil". I can relate to this, via my single vocation in life.
When I see a Mom or Dad struggling, I do what I can to shore them up, give them encouragement. The Sisters taught us that the single vocation involves ‘sacrifices’ of this sort, and I’m glad to offer them. To "Build up the Body of Christ" does, I think, require people who are just a bit more available, to fill in & respond as necessary. I can relate to Mary B., who wrote about the single woman who just showed up with this or that gift or need. Yes. That is the single vocation. 😉
I do think that when God gives a ‘charism’ or ‘gift’, God "gifts the called". My experience is that this is true of the single vocation, in a different way, but it is just as real as with the vocations to religious life or marriage.
Art, by the way, can be a very spiritually uplifting Gift to be given, or Vocation/Calling, in its own right. Think of all of the beautiful stained glass windows in any church, that have given us all peace & brought us closer to our core, & to God. Those were all done by ‘only’ Artists. 😉
Anon, I think the reason the phrase "vocation to the single life" is that this can be a permanent or temporary vocation; it can be something one embraces, or something one feels considerable anguish over. In fact, all of us at one time or another lived the single vocation, and many men and women live it again if they lose their spouse.
However, I think some people can be, and are, called to the single state. They have considered religious life, perhaps, and have dated, but they have always been happiest and most content when alone. Many of these people truly do become pillars of their communities, and no one who meets them feels that there is anything missing in their lives.
In your case, though, I think you feel a strong calling to the married state, but have not met the person with whom you could live out this vocation. I know that God works in His own time and His own way; there may be reasons why He has asked you to wait for this vocation, which you will learn in due course. But I firmly believe that if you are truly called to the married state then God will lead you to that vocation when He is ready. (In the meantime, I’m beginning a novena to St. Anne on your behalf.)
When I read this post this morning I really didn’t feel that I had anything to say, however after reading " This thought provoking comment" I feel that I do wish to comment. I do confess that due to storms ( power loss)in my area I have not read all of the comments. This being said I pray that I do not offend anyone.
This reader adamantly states that nobody is called to be single. I have to respectably disagree with this commenter. First off what about Jesus? I am not the strongest at Bible study but I am pretty sure that if The father had intended for The son to marry it would be so. Also Priests and Nuns, though married to Jesus, are not called to the married life as many of us think of it.Is it so far fetched to believe that God may be able to use a single person for something that a married person would not be able to do ? I have a single friend at church who truly believes that she is called to be single. being single she is able to do so many things that married women such as myself are too tied down with their family to do. Just a thought.
Our daughter is 36 and so upset about not being able to be married and have a family. She wonders what her purpose is in life. She is lost in a Church that tends to give so much attention to families. Just where do the single people fit in?
To Cindy~
As a lifelong single person, & happy in the Church, perhaps I may have a couple of helpful thoughts for your daughter.
One is: a way to be happy with any ‘state in life’ is, first of all, to embrace it. This can take a long time, in the case of singlehood! 😉 However, once a person can do that, & accept it as God’s Will for *right now*, then I think 2 things happen:
First is that the individual gets a certain inner peace, & through that peace, God is present within – and others can sense a wonderful difference, too, on the inside & outside of the person. Second is that the individual then becomes ‘attractive’, in the best sense of the word, & in basically all ways, to others.
Once a 37 year old woman has accepted & embraced singlehood, then she is more likely to attract a good man than she was before, by far. She is no longer driven by fear of lack or need; rather, a good man senses the peace & spirituality within her. And I have known several women who, within a rather short time, have found themselves in love ~ and then happily married – and this is what they said about how it happened!
On the question of how to fit, as a single person, into the Church: it comes back to that spiritual acceptance of one’s ‘state’ in life, which brings peace & a sense of loving spiritual understanding. From that, comes the KNOWLEDGE that one is connected to ALL people in the Church. At this point, one is no longer looking at the Church & asking, "What can it/they do for me?" One changes, & is then able to ask, "How do my particular gifts fit here? How can I respond to my prayer life so as to share it with others in the Church?"
Then, what the single person often does is to look around; see people or things that are meaningful personally, & offer to assist.
In this way, singlehood is no longer lonely, sad or forlorn. One no longer (most of the time, lol 😉 pines for another state in life, or covets what others who are married or in religious life have, or do, so much. I think that with maturity, too, one sees that "the grass is not always greener on the other side", despite one’s own crosses.
Rather, one focuses on God’s gifts that *you* have, as a single person. And those are beyond measure, to be shared with all. It is a very connected feeling &, although it has crosses just as marriage & religious life do, it is a very rich & alive, connected state.
Hope that helps a little bit. 😉 Very best wishes to your daughter!
Anon:
I understand that you have a calling to marriage that you feel has been thwarted. You could say that my vocation to marriage was also thwarted, by my ex-husband’s weakness. You could, but I don’t. Why? I’m not sure that I can easily explain it.
Certainly, I mourn the marriage that I had. For better or for worse, I was married to a man I know that I was meant to marry. I loved him deeply. I carried 4 of his children. Until the hour I left him, I would have gladly given my life for his. I mourn the fact that we will not see our children grow in God together. I mourn that we will not enjoy our grand-children together. I mourn that we won’t be rocking on the front porch together, enjoying the sunset of the day and of our lives.
My marriage was not thwarted. My marriage was. It died. By God’s grace, I got out alive to care for our children. By God’s grace, I’m given the strength to be a single parent to 4 active young children. By God’s grace, I am only slightly perturbed when I am asked for the ‘I’ve-lost-countth time’- "Don’t you have a boyfriend yet?"
Some of the most blessed and God-lead people that I have ever met were Roman Catholic and single. All have said that they felt called to be single. I can’t take that away from them. It is who they are, and I am better and closer to God because of them.
So I say that you can’t make your equation so blythely. Each way of life has its sacrifices and its freedoms.
I will pray that you find fulfillement in your vocation soon.
Catherine, I have to say, I think you are "bang-on". I certainly could not have said it better.
Thank you so much Danielle for opening up this discussion!
For those who dispute Anon’s explanation of Church teaching, I would urge you to read Mulieris Dignitatem. It is the constant teaching of the Church that there are only two vocations for men and women – marriage and consecrated life. Remember, a vocation means living a *vowed* state of life – giving away my freedom by making the gift of myself, totally and completely, to another! Single life is fundamentally different because it means retaining our freedom (hopefully in an unselfish and loving way!) until God calls us to make vows as married people or consecrated people.
The theology of the body reminds us that we are created for marriage. Our bodies are a gift, to be made in love – either to God directly or to the spouse He gives to us. As single people, deep down we know this truth with the very core of our being, and we yearn to give ourselves away.
As Anon explained so well, because we live in a fallen world, the vocation to marriage or to consecrated life may never be able to be fulfilled in this life (I say "in this life" because our earthly vocations are a prefiguring of our ultimate, heavenly vocation to union with God). This is a cross and we need to cry with and support and love and honour those who carry it.
We all know beautiful single men and women in our families and our lives who have demonstrated that this cross can be carried with courage, and, although they grieve for the dear spouses and children they never had, they make the best of life and give strength and consolation and love to others. If God doesn’t bless me with a spouse, for whatever reason, this is the kind of single person I want to be! But pretending that they "chose" the single life or had a positive vocation to it is contrary to the Church’s teaching and trivializes their courage and faithfulness to God in accepting this heavy cross and carrying it with joy and love throughout their lives.
Hello, Everyone.
I don’t have much time, but I’ll clarify a few things.
First, I don’t think that being single is like being maimed, etc. Try not to oversimplify. In context, I’m talking about the fallen world. A person may discern that his or her calling is to married life, and then ‘something happens’ and keeps that person from being able to live a fulfilled life in the vocation the person is called to.
The world is fallen. It means that there are diseases and accidents. It means that people sin. It means we are sinned against. It means a thousand thousand ways that we can be thwarted along the way to fulfillment in our vocations.
I think it safe to say that God did not call anyone to be alone. Jesus wasn’t a ‘single man’ – he was rather special, the God-man. The first Catholic priest, if you will, married to the Church. He’s a special case. Mary was betrothed to Joseph, which from what I’ve been taught, meant ‘as good as married, but not living together.’ She wasn’t a woman called to the single life. (Before her son died, he gave her John to take care of her – even in her widowhood she wasn’t left alone.)
As for saints who were single, I don’t have time to look up all of them, but it would be very interesting to see if they were widows (called to married life, but whose spouses died) or people who for whatever reason were deemed unfit for religious life (not intellectual enough, perhaps, in a time when literacy was considered vital to being a monk) or whose families forbade them to enter the convent, or who lived in a time of religious suppression when convents were closed, etc. Any number of things can thwart a vocation – including social and personal conditions.
The Catechism doesn’t explicitly teach that people are ‘called’ to the vocation of being single in the world, just acknowledges the fact that some people are (often not by choice) and that the Church needs to be open to them.
The lovely stories of single people who have done beautiful things either in service to the Church proper (through their other gifts such as art) or through service to families only goes to illustrate what I said in my original post: be holy NOW and leave the ‘when’ of your vocation to married life or religious life to God. It’s just possible – in a fallen world – that there will be no moment of getting married or being accepted in a cloister, because we live in a fallen world. And so be holy NOW.
I’ve also said a couple of times that God has a plan B and plan C, etc. until you die. By this I mean that if a person doesn’t end up being fulfilled in married or religious life, God can and will – if we cooperate with his grace – give us all sorts of opportunities to serve and love and live a grace-filled life bringing grace to others. Certain saints mentioned (whether canonized or more anonymous ones known to posters) illustrate this. This is also true of people whose marriages failed through no fault of their own, and who carried on in the vocation of mother or father. But we can’t say that God WILLED or CALLED them to be in an abusive marriage, though he called them to marriage. Abusive marriages happen because the world is fallen, and people sin. And if the marriage is not all God wills for it to be, still, it was a vocation to marriage – one that was thwarted by sin from being all that God envisions and longs for married people to have.
As I said before, when you trust your life to God, no life is wasted, even if a vocation to the married or religious life is thwarted or impossible. God doesn’t waste any life and we mustn’t judge any soul. We have no idea why someone is in this or that state of life; unlike the Baptist mentioned before, and unlike Luther, I have no sense whatsoever that if someone doesn’t marry or enter religious life, that person is a failure.
It’s a great grace if a person is single and happy and it’s a greater one if that person is able to live a life of generous self-giving and never reveal to anyone else that he or she may suffer from having had a vocation thwarted. It’s a grace if you never feel that your vocation was thwarted.
It’s all grace.
I don’t quite agree that a vocation is a cross. Every life will have crosses – I suspect, from people I know who consciously rejected clear vocations, that we invite some ‘self-fashioned’ crosses when we try to avoid the cross.
We have crosses because the world is fallen, not because we’ve heard a call and are living out a vocation. Every vocation involves the cross because in the fallen world, the cross is inescapable. It’s whether you embrace the cross or not that makes the difference.
Running out of time (I’m at work, where yes, I put all the love and self-giving that I’m not able to put into marriage or a religious vocation). For those who are praying for me, thank you. For those who think I’m miserable – I’m not actually miserable. I’m living God’s plan B, and it’s quite fulfilling in its way, even if I know that I was formed and fashioned for something else. What would be really helpful, I think, for so many, many people I know in similar circumstances to mine, is that people don’t tell them something they know is not true, that just because they sublimate all the the love that would have gone into marriage and family into their friends, or work or parish, etc. that they are obviously ‘called’ to that. Rather listen to them.
A woman wrote about a single woman who blessed so many families with her care and involvement may have missed the other side: that letting her care and be involved in your families may have been YOUR gift to her, YOUR part in God’s ‘plan B’ for her life – and that any suffering she may have endured in singleness might have been offered up in love for you without you knowing it.
There just seems to be a whole lot more to this state of life (and a ‘state of life’ is not the same as a ‘vocation’ – those terms are also muddled sometimes here) than most people think of, with all the attention on ‘when are you going to get married?’
My work break is long since over!
To J:
Thank you for your kindness! It is very nice to know that I have a kindred spirit!
I admire your Courage! Having known quite a few people of faith, whose marriages nevertheless were impossible – and certainly not spiritually nourishing, to say the least – I’d like to tell you that I am so glad you got out alive. I know it does come to that sometimes, either physically or spiritually.
God Bless You, and I truly mean this, in your Vocation with your 4 children. We all have our crosses, as others have said. I can tell you that the woman I sponsored, the one with 5 children, who truly had to get out of her marriage to save her sanity, is one of the most spiritually rich people I have ever met.
This all makes me think, tonight: maybe this type of thing is one reason that Christ talked about "The rock that has been rejected is now the cornerstone of the building", or something very close to that. He loves each of us. Truly, it is up to us to see how we might return that love.
God bless you, J!
Just adding a link to the Apostolic Letter from JPII that Kate refers to: Mulieris Dignitatem
God bless you all!
I wanted to respond to two things Anon said below. When she mentioned the subject of single saints who were not religious, Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati came to my mind. He did die as a young man, but I believe he was unmarried and a third order Dominican (not a vowed religious).
So he is a great encouragement because he was not thwarted in his "vocation" I do not think but rather fulfilled what God called him to be, which was neither religious nor married.
Hypothetically, if he had lived longer, perhaps God would have had either marriage or religious life planned for him, but he did not, and so he lived his life, and he is in Heaven and considered Blessed!
Christ be with you!
Regarding the "single vocation", there is much food for thought at Catholic Exchange in the "Dating & Singles" archive. "Being single" is not a vocation because a vocation involves the complete giving of oneself. However, a person can become a "consecrated lay person" or "consecrated virgin" and these are legitimate Catholic vocations because they involve a complete committed gift of self. There is not a sacrament associated with these vocations, but the vows that nuns, religious sisters, monks or religious brothers make are not sacramental, either. We don’t say that they don’t have a vocation. Still, it appears that the distinction between "consecrated" and "unconsecrated" singles needs to be clarified so that we can minister to the unconsecrated singles appropriately.
Anon wrote: "We have crosses because the world is fallen, not because we’ve heard a call and are living out a vocation. Every vocation involves the cross because in the fallen world, the cross is inescapable. It’s whether you embrace the cross or not that makes the difference. "
I must take issue with that. The cross is a vocation. it is the vocation of all Christians. Christ calls all of us: "Take up your cross and follow me."
To dismiss the crosses each of us bears as merely a result of living in a fallen world is to diminish the mystery of God’s salvific plan. The cross is our vocation. Our state in life is the means by which we live out that vocation to the cross.
It seems to me Anon. has too narrow a definition of vocation, limiting vocation to only two possibilities: consecrated virginity or the married life. But the Church does not limit the idea of "vocation" to only those two states and never has. Vocation simply means "call" and the Church uses it in many ways.
Consider that John Paul II in his "Letter to artists" referred to "the vocation of the artist" and in 1990 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the "Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian". Artists can be married or single, theologians can be married or single. Obviously "vocation" in this sense refers not to the married or single state but to another sense: how we are called to serve God in a particular way at a particular moment in time.
Why must single life be plan B and not plan A? Why assume all singles must be living with thwarted vocation? That seems to presume to know how God works and I think we simply do not understand His ways. I’m not saying that thwarted vocations don’t exist, but I question whether all single people are necessarily putting up with second best. Anon. dismisses examples of single Saints, saying they must have had a thwarted vocation either to the married or religious life; but there is no way to prove that claim one way or another. How do we know St. Catherine of Siena was not called to lead exactly the life she led? Anon. dismisses evidence offered by people who say that they feel called neither to marriage or religious life; but are content to be single and in the world. So I have to ask, how do we know whether we are living in plan A or plan B and does it really matter? The only life I have to live is the one I have in front of me. Thinking about the roads not taken can only bring misery. God calls us to live in the now, not in the past or the future.
Just a thought — are we not all "called" to the single life before we either marry or enter religious life? Perhaps you feel that you are called to one of those, but the time is not yet right. Rather than being frustrated that you are not where you think you should be, you should accept that this single state is where you should be now. Obviously you cannot force anyone to marry you, nor can you force a religious order to accept you, therefore, where God wants you is single now. Maybe it will be your whole life, maybe you will marry or become a nun at some point. But don’t blame our fallen world; God is bigger than that.
In Catholic school, the Sisters spoke of Vocations as being ‘vertical’ and/or ‘horizontal’. In the former, we have a person who is called to do one thing, in depth. Marriage is such a Vocation, they said, because the Called individual is being asked to focus their efforts on 1 person & their own family. The Church, per se, & others out in the world are important; but the person is really being Called to Depth in a certain area – not so much to ‘horizontally’ reaching out to everyone.
This is also true, they told us, of Religious Life; it is a ‘depth’ Vocation, in that the person is primarily Called to a Vocation of loving response to God, & their service is primarily to, & within, the Church. However, at the same time, depending on the contemplative or active ‘nature’ of the Religious person’s specific work, theirs can also be a ‘horizontal’ Calling. As examples: a cloistered Religious has a ‘depth’ Vocation – depth via prayer – with God. Someone like Mother Teresa, who is actively out in the world, has an ‘horizontal’ Vocation within her Call to the Religious, vowed life.
For Single people, the Sisters told us, our Vocation is unique, in that we are able to serve not so much 1 person or a family; & not so much the Church per se. Our Calling is to serve the World. Thus, the single life is a ‘horizontal’ Vocation. One is called to reach out far beyond the home & the Church, if asked.
I can see my single Vocation as being both ‘depth’ and ‘horizontality’. Though not vowed as in Religious Life or Marriage, I absolutely am answerable through the Church, & directly to Christ. There is no one person or entity that would be betrayed, were I to mess up badly; thus it makes sense that there is no vow, per se. However, the ‘depth’ aspect of prayer & love for God (as well as the answerability) is absolutely there – in a way that the Sisters didn’t mention. 😉
As a single adult, too, I often get to know or am exposed to individuals that a friend who is a priest, or a married friend, especially one with a family, would be much less likely to encounter. Agnostics, atheists, people who are alienated from "religion" for whatever reasons: these individuals are found everyday, everywhere.
I have come in contact, often very meaningful contact, with such persons. Some have said, "What is it that you have? I want what you have." Several have asked "how to get whatever this is". What the Single Vocation has, I think, is a love of Christ lived in the World – availability to anyone. Thus one reaches people who would never see a priest, & for whom married people with children especially, have very little time.
This is quite a different Calling than Marriage or Religious Life; yet it is be a very rich & blessed Vocation indeed. Even with its crosses, it is an Honor.
The awfully big adventure isn’t necessarily in finding the man/woman to share our life with, but the journey to being ready to meet him/her.
My advice would be to get on with living. Get on with preparing to be the best wife that you can be to your husband if it is God’s will for you to be blessed with one.
I don’t necessarily mean that a woman need take advanced courses in cuisine, but rather, these months, years, decades of being single…can be used for the good…by working on her relationship with the Lord…and on those stumbling blocks in her life which may prevent her from living as Christ centred life as possible.
As an unmarried catholic woman myself I have asked God to show me if it is His will for me to marry and all I can say is, though I believe it is, I will probably only know for sure when I meet the man that God has (in mind) for me.
It is now my feeling that one or both of us (I refer here to myself and my potential future spouse)are not ready to be together yet. No matter. God has it all in hand.
Prior to my conversion to Christianity I lived a very worldly life in which I believed that being single was the worst state to be in…I really wasn’t very choosy about the men I dated, I simply didn’t want to be alone and ‘unloved’.
The fact of the matter, however, is that shallow relationships/one night stands, provided me with only fleeting feelings of a kind of ‘plasticised’, artificial love. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. God had no place in it.
I’ve lived a chaste life for 8 years now and am happier than I ever have been before. Being single is a blessing rather than a curse,even though years ago I would have seen this as the worst kind of humiliation!
God Bless you!
This discussion is so thought-provoking…great topic. Some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten, as a single person longing to meet Mr. Right and get married and have a family, was this: if you aren’t happy with your life right NOW, you won’t be happy when you’re married. Period. There will always be something more you’re unsatisfied with…kids, work, your relationship, etc. We are called to be holy ALL the time. God is our perfect Lover, calling us to an intimate union with Him that has effects in our lives now and throughout all eternity. Give Him your heart, and trust in His love.
Don’t believe that God gives anyone a "plan B". It’s not true. God only has ONE plan for each of our lives, one that He has known throughout eternity; His death and resurrection are far greater than even the greatest sin of our fallen humanity. Just think about it… a perfect lover would never give his beloved "second best", "plan B" or anything of the sort. He only wants the best for our lives, and if we live FULLY for Him in whatever state/vocation we are in, He will satisfy us.