SMU Catholic Weekly Blogs

Go Ahead, Ask the Dreaded Question

At this time of year, a question that will annoy almost any senior is “So, what are you doing next year?” With “next year” about to start in about a month, the question brings to the surface all sorts of anxiety about the future and one’s direction in life , not to mention saying goodbye to the good life of college. But Seniors aren’t the only ones that experience anxiety when questioned about the future. All of us to some degree and at different points in our life are unsettled about the basic questions of identity and purpose that underlie our choices about career and our discernment about vocation.

I believe much of our anxiety is rooted in confusion about what it means to have a vocation. As Catholics, we hear the term “vocation” and we automatically think “priest” or “nun”. We all understand what a career is. It’s often the answer to the “What do you do?” question we get from a stranger on an airplane. Career is related to identity. It helps define who we are. But vocation is something else. It’s related to our purpose. It does not so much describe what we do, but why we do it. But it is even more than finding a cause to motivate our work. Vocation is connecting our God-given talents and passions with God’s mission in the world. Frederick Buechner famously put it this way, “The place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

Sometimes our vocation can be what we do at our “day job”, but often it transcends it and manifests itself in our relationships, family life and religious practice. A vocation is discerned not chosen. To discern a vocation we need to pray, read the stories of our faith found in Scripture and in the lives of the saints, reflect on our daily lives, and seek the advice of people we trust. A vocation is a calling that we listen for in the everyday rhythms of our life. Our awareness of it evolves and deepens over time, with every step we take to live it out.

Below are some web resources designed to be helpful for any of us asking questions about the interplay between career and vocation and how to discern both.

So go ahead and ask the question: What are you doing next year?

www.practicingourfaith.org Click on “Discernment”. A great resource from the folks that fund our Vickery Meadow efforts. This project understands that our faith is something we live out, not just believe in. The Discernment section is rich with additional materials including a “Ways to Practice” the practice of discernment.

www.exploreministry.org For anyone considering a vocation in ministry, ordained or lay, this site offers helpful tools and guidance.

www.opportunityknocks.org If you’ve already discerned what you’re passionate about and want to see if you can make a living doing it, check out this job search site. It’s the Monster.com of the non-profit world. Type in a cause you are passionate about and find out who’s hiring.

Clare of Assisi

After refusing an arranged marriage, Clare of Assisi turned her back on the affluence into she was born and sought out Francis of Assisi for spiritual direction. In 1212 Francis agreed to cooperate with Clare in the creation of the Poor Clares, a religious community for women structured according to the Franciscan rule. Together with several of her family members as well as the women in her community, Clare redefined medieval Italy's vertical society by shunning material wealth and power in favor of a more horizontal, fraternal acceptance of humanity and creation. The Poor Clares fought to maintain the Franciscan emphasis on rigorous poverty even as the friars where accepting modifications to their original rule. Clare died in 1253 and was canonized in 1255.

Sources: McBrien, Richard P., ed. The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1995. P 322.

Redefining Security and Freedom

“It could have happened here.” That’s what many of us have been saying to each other on campus ever since the horror of Monday’s shootings began unfolding. While our hearts ache for the victims and their families, and for the entire Virginia Tech community, the unsettling thing is that we can relate too easily to the types of places and people and relationships associated with the tragic events. Our thoughts turn toward our own dorm rooms and classrooms, toward the people we know who are like the victims, and even like the shooter. Much of our anxiety is rooted in that sobering thought, “It could have happened here.”

The conversation naturally turns toward protection and safety. What can we do to make sure it doesn’t happen here, we ask. So we review emergency procedures. We commit to being more vigilant. We beef up security. All are reasonable things to do. Each helps.

We also try to make sense of the senseless, as if finding the “cause” of what went wrong there will better prepare us to avoid the same mistake here. We look for what broke, so we can fix it. Part of this process involves laying blame: on the system, on the administration, on the parents, on a violent society and even on ourselves. Again, all of these impulses are normal and each raises valid points that shed light on the particulars of the events.

But, ultimately, and this is the hard part for me to swallow, there is no such thing as a foolproof system of protection. There is no way to be 100% safe. Things like this, lamentably, just happen. The confluence of factors and reasons prove too complicated in each instance, turning any hope of prevention into a fleeting prospect. And so we are left with a vulnerability that makes most of us very uncomfortable. Our very freedom seems to be threatened when we admit to this vulnerability. But I believe if we linger on this sobering realization, we have an opportunity to learn something from our sadness – something about the true meaning of a freedom and security that comes as a direct result of our vulnerability, not despite it.

As people of faith, we believe that we are ultimately free when we are bound by nothing and we are secure when we are living as the person God created us to be with and for others. To find a definition of freedom and security that accounts for our inherent vulnerability, then, we need to look to Jesus. If the Incarnation – God becoming flesh; the Infinite becoming finite – is not an example of embracing vulnerability, then I don’t know what is.

Too often we confuse freedom with autonomy. We equate being in control with security. The great paradox at the center of life in Christ is that freedom and security come, not from independence, but from interdependence. One of the first steps we take toward truly being secure and experiencing freedom comes when we realize how much we need one another. Withdrawing from others in fear, in the name of safety, is a step away from freedom and security. In the Mystery of the Incarnation, we encounter God as the embodiment of freedom through total self-giving vulnerability.

Martin of Tours

Christianity was a minority religion in fourth-century Europe, where the Roman empire's wide array of mystery cults competed with animism and Mediterranean variations of Gnosticism, Christianity, and Judaism. At the center of this diverse imaginative landscape was Martin of Tours, an officer in the Roman garrison at Amiens, France. One cold winter day Martin noticed his soldiers passing by a starving beggar shivering at the gates of Amiens. Using his sword, Martin cut his richly-embroidered officer's cloak in two, covering the emaciated man with one half. That night Martin dreamed that Jesus appeared surrounded by a multitude of angels, wearing the beggar's half cloak and saying to the angels, "Martin clothed me with his robe." Martin was baptized, became bishop of Tours, and increased the church's influence in France.

Sources: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09732b.htm

Domingo de Guzmán

A popular story tells how the Virgin Mary appeared to Dominic of Guzmán and taught him to pray the rosary. St. Dominic was born in Spain around 1170 CE, when cities were growing as people left behind farming for more lucrative urban economies. Dominic recognized the need for a more effective church ministry in the cities, and during the 1220s he traveled on foot throughout France, Italy, and Spain establishing communities of men and women devoted to this new venture. Dominicans, also known as the Order of Preachers, combined intensive study of the liturgy and scriptures with enthusiastic evangelization in the cities. Emphasis on sanctification by study is a special contribution Dominic made to the religious life.

Sources: McBrien, Richard P. ed. The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1995. Pp 428-431.

Easter: More than one day

Easter is not just one day on the calendar. With last night's Easter Vigil, the Church began "the great Sunday" that lasts for 50 days. It is a 50-day celebration that starts today and lasts until Pentecost Sunday. Although, it would seem natural for Easter to feel more like an end to Lent, the time of repentance and conversion that prepares us to fully enter into Easter, it is, in fact, the celebration of new beginnings, of our salvation renewed, and of humankind reconciled to God.
It used to be that the Church's calendar used the term "after" to name the Sundays following Easter, as in the "the Second Sunday after Easter". Now, since the reforms that emerged from the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, those Sundays are "of" Easter, indicating that Easter is one unified feast lifting up Jesus' victory over death. The Ascension is on the 40th day of Easter (except when it is transferred to the Seventh Sunday of Easter) and begins a time of preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Pentecost Sunday – when we celebrate the giving of the Holy Spirit to the People of God – marks the end of the Easter season.
The changes to the Church calendar place the great feast of Easter, lasting fifty days, at the center of the Christian year. Throughout the Easter season, the Easter candle, lit for the first time last night at the Easter Vigil from a fire outside the Catholic Center, will be placed in a prominent place in the sanctuary and will be lighted at every liturgical service between Easter and Pentecost. White is the main liturgical color of the Easter season. The vestments of the celebrants at Mass will be white throughout Easter and return to the green of Ordinary Time only after Pentecost.
Easter is about new life. The Risen Jesus', fulfilled by his total self-gift, following God's call fearlessly even unto the cross. And it is about our new life, offered by God through the perfect sign of Divine Love, Jesus, and sustained forever by the Holy Spirit. The new life begins now, it not something waiting for us in the afterlife. It is to be made manifest in us daily by the turning of our hearts toward God and the expressions of authentic compa ssion for friend and stranger, making the Easter Miracle, the Resurrection, both a life-changing gift and continuous challenge that lasts far longer than this day or the 49 that follow.

Felicity and Perpetua

The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas is one of the earliest records of the experience of Christian women. According to the Latin and Greek texts, Perpetua belonged to the Roman aristocracy in Carthage, North Africa. Together with her slave Felicity (or "Felicitas"), Perpetua became a catechumen in defiance of emperor Lucius Septimius Severus's sanctions prohibiting conversion to Christianity. The two women were baptized before their arrest, and while in prison Felicity gave birth to a child. Perpetua nursed her own newborn infant while in prison, and eventually both young women gave their newborns to surrogate mothers in Carthage's Christian community. The Romans executed Felicity and Perpetua in 203 CE.

Sources: McBrien, Richard P. ed. The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1995. Pp 523, 986.

 

Refugees

By now, you’ve probably read or heard us talking about how refugees live just down the street from us in Vickery Meadow. But what exactly is a refugee, and how is being a refugee different from being an immigrant?

A refugee is a person who comes to a new country (not always the U.S.) to escape persecution, war, or other extreme hardship. Refugees are granted asylum in their new country, which is different from simply immigrating, either legally or illegally. They are given aid from their new government, and helped in getting to their country of asylum. The end goal of asylum is to return refugees to their country of origin when it is safe for them to return, but this isn’t always a realizable goal.

Even though refugees receive aid from the government, their lives are still extremely difficult. Most of them have spent around ten years living in a refugee camp, a place of temporary resettlement where refugees live in hopes that they can return soon to their home country, or because there is no third country available for them to go. Many of the refugee children were born in these camps, and never knew their home country or life outside of a camp before coming to the U.S.The U.S. is also a completely different place from the countries refugees arrive from. Imagine moving to a new home where a different language is spoken, where using things that you’ve never seen before are considered second nature, like indoor plumbing, washing machines, stoves and ovens. If you had a rough time adjusting to college, or were ever homesick for some reason, this is just the very tip of what refugees experience when trying to assimilate.

How can we help, then? By befriending our refugee neighbors and being compassionate towards their difficulties in coming to a new country. By trying to understand, but knowing that unless we experience what they have gone through, we never fully will. And by praying for peace throughout the world, especially in places like Sudan and the Middle East, so that “refugee” will no longer  be a term needed for anyone.

The Social Justice Spot is written by Laura Arellano-Weddleton ‘10, Student minister of Social Justice