April 29th, 2024
I have a friend who has been training to become a Catholic priest. I met him several years ago when he was staying at our parish and studying as a novice. The journey to the priesthood is long and arduous. The formation process can take nearly a decade. Not many men are called to follow this path, especially in our times. It entails a lifelong commitment to the service of others, and that sort of thing is not very popular in our culture. There is a reason that there is a shortage of priests.
My friend wrote to me a few days ago. He informed me that, after eight years, he is leaving formation. He discerned, after much prayer and thought, that he is not meant to be a priest. It is not his vocation.
Wow.
I thought to myself, “Eight years? That’s a long time to be working toward a goal, and then to just let it all go.”
Then I thought some more, “Well, I was in the Army, if you count West Point, for ten years, and I left all that behind.”
My friend and I have a lot in common.
He is thirty years old. He has spent nearly a third of his life in highly structured and insular environment. It’s true that he has interacted with “civilians” at times. He has had contact with lay Catholics and his family members, but most of his adult life has been spent with priests and brothers from the Augustinian order of the Church. He has been indoctrinated into a certain way of thinking, and a certain manner of living. He is not the same young man her was when he signed up at the age of twenty-two.
I was twenty-eight when I resigned my commission. I had gone straight from high school to USMA, and from there to the regular Army for six years. I had literally no experience as a civilian. Ten years changed me into a person who was very different from most of my contemporaries.
I wrote back to my friend and told him that I understand his current situation. He is going through a change in life similar to what I did nearly forty years ago. I explained to him that he’ll be okay, but it is going to be a bitch to adapt to a strange new world. He has been subject to a specific type of discipline for a long time. It’s made him who he is now. He might never be ordained by the Church, but he will always be a priest in his interaction with others, just like I am always in some respects still a soldier.
He may leave his vocation and perhaps think sometimes that it was all a waste. I told him that it’s not. No experience is ever a waste, unless a person refuses to learn from it. He has a perspective and a wisdom that few people have. He has a gift to share in the new chapter in his life.
My friend will do well.
Frank is Emptiness 