Our Vocation is to Die

Last updated on: July 6, 2014 at 12:40 pm by Kate Cousino

Our Vocation is to Die 2014-07-06T12:40:00-04:00 Kate Cousino

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Friday, in my quick takes, I sat down to write something about the evil in men’s hearts…

(Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!)

…and wound up spilling forth in one of those fervent acts of writing in which the words fall out, tumble over each other, spill over from an overfull heart until you surprise yourself with the result. Apparently, what I really wanted to write about was dying to self:

It will feel like throwing your own heart on the fire, when you do it. It will seem like the world must be forever artificial, colorless, dull, unfair. And then, like turning off a flickering fluorescent light and opening a window shade, all of creation will come crowding in, carrying Christ like a crowdsurfing Messiah, to set the husk of your heart to rights and fill it with living, green, sprouting vitality.

And then, in a little while—hours, days, weeks, maybe months or years—you will find that your heart has been again invaded and turned against you while your guard was down, and you will have to do it all again, or so has been my experience. Like a cancer, though, the sooner you catch it, the easier it is to excise.

So, this is what was at the forefront of my mind when I read this Catholic Exchange piece entitled “Your Vocation is Not About You” by Benjamin Mann. In it, Mann reflects on how poorly prepared we are for the true purpose of a vocation–which is not about life making sense or coming together into a harmonious whole, but is really “a school of charity and a means of crucifixion. Your vocation is the means by which your self-serving ego will die in order to be resurrected as the servant and lover of God.”

…Many people fail in their vocation – perhaps especially in the vocation of marriage – because they expect their life’s calling to satisfy, or at least take away, the impossible and inexpressible longing that lies within them: that strange mix of awe and desire and sadness before the mystery of existence.

But your vocation, whatever it may be, cannot do that either. That longing is ours as long as we are in this world. We must bear it, and let it become a “vacancy for God.”

Mann argues that by looking for the vocation that will fulfill us, we ask the wrong questions. We ask “where can I do the most good” or “what suits my talents and personality,” and we fret and worry because we fear that we might misinterpret God’s will and wind up both miserable and unable to fully serve Him as a result. But vocation is both more and less than that. It is more, in that the end is so much greater than finding something ‘well-suited’ or ‘doing good.’ It is less, in that our primary vocation is always before us, no matter what specific path we discern–you cannot choose a vocation that prevents you from fulfilling God’s will for you. His will is always that you be called into greater union with Him in preparation for eternity. To that end,

…The central question in discernment is: How shall I die with Christ, to rise with him? How will I lose my life to find it? What will bring me to the point where I can say, with St. Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”?

There is a kind of peace and freedom to following Christ. In a mysterious way, His yoke IS easy, his burden IS light. The kind of inner freedom Mann describes is not dependent on circumstances, but on self-avowal so complete that we are finally freed to love even ourselves as a reflection of Christ, as a good Creation of the Creator. Mann quotes a line from my favorite Hopkins poem; I shall close with the poem in its entirety:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

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