Vocations
I remember talking to a well-learned priest who had written Biblical Commentaries and Greek Grammar books. We started a conversation about a collection of writings from Gregory Palamas, a Greek monk and Theologian. After talking for a while about the book, he said the most curious thing, “Be careful when reading this book, it was written for the monastic, not for you and me.” He went on to describe a spiritual danger in entering the subject unprepared. Looking back, I grasped his statements only to a degree. I understood that in order to properly comprehend what was being talked about, the reader had to enter prayerfully and sit and contemplate what was being said.
This past week, however, I was reading an article on vocation that brought to mind this past interaction that shed new light on what was meant by the professors' heeding. The article was written by a fellow Anglican priest, Brandon LeTournaeu, titled “Don’t be Tozer.” The Substack article looks at the life of A.W. Tozer, the self-taught theologian who gained much of his knowledge by reading the mystics and spiritual writings of the Church. He is well known for his books The Knowledge of the Holy, The Pursuit of God, and The Cloud of Unknowing. While he was known for his spiritual works, the article notes his negligence as a husband. After his death, his late wife famously remarked: “Aiden loved Jesus Christ, but Leonard Odam [her second husband] loves me.”
Tozer does not stand alone as an example of someone who was devoted to the love of God and neighbor, but neglected his wife. John Wesley’s frequent travels (250,000 miles on horseback in his career) often left his wife at home. Upon his wife leaving him for a period of time, he remarked, “I did not ask her to leave, but I will not ask her to return.” They were married for 20 tumultuous years and separated for 10. He returned from one of his preaching missions to learn that his wife, Molly, had died and was buried. Clearly, a vocation of preaching and deepening people's knowledge of God does not safeguard against personal failings.
We are all given our vocations in this life, some to the monastic life, some to the secular. These vocations are not the same. As the English Mystic, St. Walter Hilton, tells us: “They [laymen] in their worldly business flee many sins which thou [monks] if thou wert in their state shouldest fall in, and they do many good deeds which thou couldest not do.” God has given to each their vocation, and with it comes its own struggles. There is a danger in pretending that you have been given a different vocation than what God has given you. The monastic cannot emulate the secular, nor should the secular pretend they are monks. The article points out, “One life is not a greater life; it is a different life. There is a divergence in vocation, and therefore a divergence in duty; it is spiritually detrimental to think that you can swap one for the other. The monk rises at midnight to chant the Office; the mother rises at midnight to comfort the crying child –and both meet God.”
I am not saying, don’t read the mystics or the spiritual writings of the Church. I am saying that they should be read prayerfully and that you should not confuse their vocation with yours. Wherever God has you right now, whatever he has called you to this moment is where he will meet you. That is your vocation, whether you are married or single, ordained or firmly planted in your secular calling; if you are parents or have no children, God has called you and given you this moment. Learn to be faithful in the vocation you have, and he will meet you. If we pretend to have a different vocation, or consider the vocation we have been given as deficient, then we will fail to receive the means by which God seeks to form us and give himself. Your spouse, your children, where you live, and your jobs have been given to you for your spiritual life.
Of course, as we get older, life situations progress, a late calling to a different vocation arises, doors close, and others open. These are to be expected, and the way forward should be discerned with much prayer. But in all of this, we are called to be faithful to what God is doing in our lives, not neglecting the duties he has given us, but knowing that God has been preparing you, he is with you, and has gone before you. Seek God in all things, for he is there, or as the hymn St. Patrick’s Breastplate says, “Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.”
God's Peace,
Fr. Aaron