When DominicanPhilosophy said

something struck a chord with me...

In hindsight, I first had a hunch waaaay back when. Maybe even in primary school. I'd read all the stuff about "leave everything and follow Me", and thought, well, that makes sense! Being not very sensitive to the minds of other people I assumed everybody thought that, and this was just one of those things we Don't Do Anymore! Hey, it sounded very logical to me

So, I've heard that some people only knew their call was marriage when their future husband walked into the street, and that others said they'd be a priest while still in kindergarten and stuck with it... what was your very very first hunch?

When I was in high school(Mary Immaculate Academy) I met a sister(Sr.Immaculata) who lit the flame in my heart.
Over the years my flame in my heart has flickered from wane to bright, its has only been about a month that I can honestly say it has set me afire with God's love, it burns so bright now I can only see my life with our Lord.
There were times in my life that I thought my flame went out, however I now know it never went out, God held on to it so I would never loose it.
I feel so deeply on fire for Jesus's Sacred Heart of Love!

I'm not very eloquent about personal things, but I'll try.

I think it first started when I was little,... I remember putting blue towels on my head and pretending I was Mary. I would soak up the *little* Catechises I received in Sunday School, and was the first one to learn all of the prayers.

When my parents stopped taking us to Mass in 5th grade, I knew that something was missing. I would ask when we'd be going again, and receive a "maybe soon" answer, but I knew better than to nag. I didn't know what to do, and since I didn't know with my head that not going to Mass was wrong, I didn't worry about it. But there was a hole in my heart, and it was only at peace when I was able to go to Mass, or when I'd sit next to my grandma as she prayed the Rosary.

My grandma died when I was twelve, but her intercession is probably why I had the courage to come back to full communion with the Church. When I was fifteen, I was invited to a Steubenville Conference with my Youth Group, and was able to go. It was there that I met my first religious sisters (Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus) and it was there when I first truly felt the Call.

I was open to the Holy Spirit that weekend, and He infected me with Zeal for the faith. I had never stopped believing, I just hadn't been able to question my parents-something I was taught not to do. I felt God's love, and even though I felt dirty, unworthy, I knew that I wanted to serve Him, to Know Him and to bring that Love to other people. The Holy Spirit changed my life in just a few days, a few hours, and I never have wanted to go back.

Seeing the religious sisters there, so full of joy and happiness, Brides of Christ, kindled a fire in my soul. I wanted to be like them, to be a Handmaid, little and unworthy, but Serving the Lord with heart and soul. I wanted to bring others to Him by example, by the Holy Spirit shining forth on my face.

I returned home and faced opposition from my parents. They thought I had been brainwashed, and were reluctant to let me return to Church. But I remembered my grandmother's devotion to the rosary, and began praying it daily. With Mary's intercession, I was able to return to the Mass and Full Communion with the Church.

Since then, my relationship with God has matured from an emotional one, as first felt at Steubie, to a personal one. There are high times, and there are low times. There are moments where praying is the last thing I want to do. I fail a lot, but I try to do it anyway.

I know God is calling me. I am Happiest when I speak of Him to others, when practicing apologetics, in the Adoration Chapel, at Mass. Those are the times when I feel complete.

I am still discerning, and I will always be discerning, but if God wills, I will someday be a Bride of Christ.


This got a little long... I'm sorry. I guess I've been needing to write something like this for awhile. I even omitted some things!

edit for spelling.

I did that too!

DtA, that is very beautiful, thanks for sharing! Your story is very personal, and moving. Your witness will help others who may be in similar situations. There is a very delicate beauty in the way Jesus calls each and every single one of us to fall deeply in love with Him...

Amazing, DtA! And I couldn't help but laugh about the towel thing and acting like Mary: that's so cute!

As for me, I'm sure it all started back when I was 7 at the end of my second grade year. My grandparents were visiting from FL and celebrating their 55th wedding anniversary, and in honor of that we had a Mass at my grade school (a small one for family and friends). My cousin and I were going to sing, but the priest, Fr. Boniface (may he rest in peace) said he needed servers, so my cousin and I served. Fr. then invited me to come to daily Mass in the morning if I wanted to learn how to serve, and me, being the literal little inquisitive boy, took him up on his offer and had my mom drive me to the next town to serve Mass in the summer. I was later dubbed the "illegal altar server" since we weren't supposed to become servers until 4th grade. I've been a server ever since.

I know that the thought of the priesthood crossed my mind sometime in 7th grade, but I don't know why, and that didn't last too long, but the time when I really started to really think this is my call was the end of 8th grade. My parish is run by Marians of the Immaculate Conception, and along with that came a great devotion to the Divine Mercy message. In April of my 8th grade year, a person came and gave a presentation on the Divine Mercy message, and I went (it helps living two blocks from church ). I don't quite remember everything that happened there, but I have loved the Divine Mercy ever since. After the presentation was over, I stayed a prayed a bit in the pew, and I went to Confession, said my penance, and was about to go when a lady I had never seen before came up to me. Now, the church is dark except for candles shining in front of the Divine Mercy image, Gregorian Chant was playing was playing over the speaker system, and it was just a very prayerful environment in a very prayerful environment, and this lady said to me, "Excuse me, I don't know you and you don't know me, but I have been praying for you for the past five years, and will continue to do so, because that is what the Virgin Mary wants me to do." I told her thanks, she walked away, and except for her winking at me in the Narthex after I finally left, I haven't seen her since. So yeah, I really got down on my knees and prayed then, the hardest I had ever prayed before, and I really thought that maybe God was calling me to the priesthood. After four years of discernment, I'm pretty confident that this is what God wants me to do with my life. So yeah, that's how I began my discernment in a nutshell: the Mass, Divine Mercy, and Mary.

So did I, esp. after our public school class visited the local historical proto-cathedral. I was a Baptist, too.

I remembered seeing habited sisters around town when growing up, and I wanted to be with them. I also saw Jesus (literally--for only a few seconds) at their motherhouse when we were attending a wedding reception being held there. Then, the VatII changes hit. Years later, after becoming Catholic, I was deemed too headstrong to be a good candidate by one of the sisters. I couldn't believe some of the stuff they used which passed as their Liturgy of the Hours. Literally made me ill.

I'm still drawn to their campus for the sake of recollection. How I wish I could get back there even now.

Blessings,
Gemma

For as long as I can remember I have always had the desire in my heart to do mission work, especially in South America, I love the language and the culture. But growing up, while I was exposed to sisters and priests, vocations to the religious life was never really talked about as a life option. I lived in Florida for some years and did actually speak to some sisters down there but it just didn't fit.

I fell away from the Church for quite awhile. But that all changed when my Dad died. I just saw the strength and courage my two sisters got from prayer and believing and wanted that. So I made an appointment to speak with a priest that my sister knew to start my way back into the church and I think it was the first visit I had with him that I "admitted" that I wanted to be a sister. That was three years ago and now I will be entering The Servants of the Lord and Virgin of Matara on June 17.

Christine

Mine has been an interesting and joyous journey...

When I was in elementary school, I had to walk past a Catholic Church/School on the way to my school. I used to see the nuns outside and was very curious about them. I was a shy child and though I really wanted to know more about their lives, I was too embarrassed to ask.

My family were Methodists and after about Grade 3, we shopped going to church all together. I knew I was feeling a void in my life...but couldn't pin-point what it was. Little did I know that it was Jesus that I was missing!

Time passes (a lot of time to be precise) and one day over 30 years later...I was flipping around on cable and came across EWTN. I was instantly mesmerized and watched it almost non-stop for a week...it was as if I couldn't take enough in. I watched everything! It was at that moment that I decided that I had to become a Catholic! I called the parish closest to me (coincidentally across the street from where I live...the Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways!) and started RCIA. It was while I was in RCIA that I felt the call to enter religious life and I knew it was to enter a cloistered order. It has been six years since that then...and it looks like I will be entering hopefully by the end of the year.

I guess it's never to late to feel a call or act on it. I thank God everyday for this wonderful grace.

Oh my! That's only a few days away!! Congratulations!!!

At the back of a Catholic church when i was 15, i picked up a light blue rosary and knew with a certainty that if i had been Catholic i would be a nun - but the next thought was, well i'm not so i can't be and it took me another 15 years before i did anything about the niggle that wouldn't go away, and came into the church. Several people since - including my family - have found it difficult to accept that God would even dream of calling someone who wasn't Catholic, had never been around reilgious or gone to religious schools - but He seems to have done, He can do anything after all. The thing was, my mom had remarried, my step-father is Catholic and they wanted the younger children baptised and brought up Catholic so we started going to church - God only needs a tiny opening and that's it. I also bought the rosary, learned all the prayers in the Simple Prayer book and still have it, it is very precious to me and has been with me ever since. My family have still not accepted my faith sadly. pax sr marie-therese.

Hey there! Replying to your response to my response, lol:

Reflecting on my childhood, as early as I can remember, I've liked things plain and simple. I never enjoyed the frills of life, be it with clothes, food, anything. It's hard to express just how much of an "indication," I suppose you could say, this was to me. I had never looked back upon my life until one night at a retreat called Destination Jesus. There was a vocations booth set up and I asked one sister who actually drove us up and was "working" under the booth if I could talk to her. We took a walk and found an empty room and sat in desks next to each other and she asked me questions and I basically poured out my soul to her without having previously thought about what I was going to say. I just felt like I was meant to tell her. It turns out that she was the assistant vocations director for the congregation that runs my school, the congregation that I feel a most ardent desire to enter, and even though I had eaten lunch with her at Panera with our school group on the way up to the retreat, I didn't know that about her and really didn't give any hints to her that I was considering religious life. But back to my childhood - ever since I was very little, I've been one to jump into something and give myself whole-heartedly. I had never been a bad kid, but I was raised in a family where spoiling took place, even though it was against my will, and religion was disregarded. I had absolutely no reason to behave or anything, but for some reason I always felt the need and the obligation to be what I now recognize as being "morally upright." I can say with confidence that it is only by the grace of God that I rejected being spoiled and that I stayed morally upright when even kids with religious households and morally-upright families chose to be disobedient and uncontrollable. Another small sign that I find kind of funny is that my first serious crush [other than Robin from Batman & Robin] was when I was about six on a soccer player named Dominic that, though much older than me, gave me private soccer lessons. A few years later, we got a dog and his name is Dominic. To see how my life played out, me now at a Dominican school and feeling called to a Dominican vocation, I see the truth in the statement, "God has a sense of humor!" I don't think that people understand His sense of humor until they actually experience it firsthand; I know I didn't. I never even knew what a religious was until this schoolyear; as I like to say, I knew The Sound of Music, and that's it. It's past 4 AM and I can't keep my thoughts straight, but until I really focused on the way the sisters carried themselves, the joy and holiness they lit up rooms with, I had been distant from God. When I went on my first retreat, one that was held at our school, I first heard the calling from Christ during Adoration. It shook me up to the point of tears, and a sister talked to me and shared her story until she, too, became teary-eyed. Every day, I marvel at the sisters and at the beauty of each "type" of vocation when they are truly lived out as they were intended to be. I marvel at my own vocation, even though I haven't fully discerned what it is yet; one can never truly know his or her vocation, for discernment is a life-long process undertaken by us imperfect humans. I'll close in saying that my vocation story has many, many parts to it - a lot of which even I haven't noticed yet - and I've tried to condense it here. Closing with a famous and really enlightening line, the one thing that I do know about my general vocation as a human, "My vocation is LOVE."

I want to comment on this more later, but for now, I first felt called in the 8th Grade. I really didn't have the most inspirational Sisters as examples, so at first (for the first 8 years), it was very scary to me. Then, God in His goodness and with His powerful grace, helped me to overcome my fears and to embrace and want my vocation more than anything!

More later....

I love this thread

Thank you all. (Really, everyone personally.)

How did your vocation start?

When I was born.

Don't you mean conceived?
And that's when. When totally doesn't count.

When did my vocation start?

Actually, when I was baptized!!! Yea!

But now that I think of it (adding on to what I wrote earlier), I began thinking about it when my mom mentioned it to me that she had been praying that one of her children would be a Sister or a priest. I began asking myself if that was what God wanted of me.... (I first discarded it at once, but God has His ways......... :>:>:>)

Well. I'm still discerning. But, leaning towards religious life.

Hm. Well, I remember when I was a freshman in high school saying to my friends, "I can't see myself getting married. I mean. I want to. I want to have a family and raise children. But I can't see it. I've never been able to."

This was when I was still an atheist. I didn't believe in God and I certainly had no idea what a religious sister was.

I had an experience my sophomore year that led me to conclude beyond any doubt that God truly did exist. But it wasn't until my senior year that I was baptized and received into the Church. Anywho, still, before I knew the beauty of religious life, I had been struck especially by passages in the Bible that spoke about celibacy for the Kingdom and "those who can bear it, should bear it."

But more than anything it seemed to me that if God existed, then I had to take His Gospel literally. Leave everything to follow Him. To follow all of the hard teachings that Jesus taught. To truly live my life in accordance to Christ in the most radical way: because God exists.

I can't explain it anymore than that. For me, if God exists, then I have to respond. There is no living as a nominal Christian. Doesn't make sense to me.

Anyways, ever since my baptism just over a year ago, I have been filled with this great desire for holiness, to give myself completely and totally over to God to be transformed by His grace. Whether I have a vocation to the religious life, I'm not yet sure. I just want to do whatever God asks of me.

Yay! That's exactly what I had! Thank you for sharing that (This must mean I'm not crazy after all. Or we both are, but then at least we're crazy with company )

My vocation began because I trusted God as a little girl, aged nine or thereabouts. I have told this story before on PM and I don't have the time to retell it now - I'm on my way out. To cut it very short, my grandma (and my Very Best Friend) was so ill in hospital that my mum and I had to fly home from Saudi with just a few hours' notice. It didn't occur to me that Grandma could die. The change in my routine had bamboozled me, and all I could think about was what was happening around me at the present moment.

When we got to the hospital I found that she was going to have a big operation on her aorta and that she might not get better. I overheard the consultant telling my mum that if she did recover she would need to be in a special nursing home for the remainder of her life. Grandma only had one leg and was ill in other ways too, so independence wouldn't be possible.

I took my chocolate-and-sweets money and went to the hospital chapel and dropped the money in the collection box. As I prayed, I was flooded with the marvellous knowledge that Grandma was going to get better. A sister was there, too. She smiled at me and asked if I was praying for anybody special. I told her that it was my grandma, and that God was going to make her better. He'd just said so.

She smiled and said, "Oh, He's wonderful like that."

That night my mum tried to prepare me very gently for grandma's death. With great firmness, I kept rebutting her. I know now that my mum was worried about me - she thought that I was trying to hide from the prospect of bereavement, and that Grandma's death would be too much for me to bear.

Three weeks after the operation, Grandma was back at home and living with the independence that she'd had before the surgery. The consultant was astonished and my mum was so incredibly happy and relieved. I was happy, too. Then again, I'd known it all along.

It came to me then that the only person who had believed me when I said that Grandma would get better was the nun. I immediately resolved to become one. The fact that you couldn't really have Muslim nuns was a minor detail to my nine-year-old mind. Nuns knew how to listen to God, and other grown-ups didn't. Obviously. I would be a nun. Simple.

Since then my approach has been refined a little, but this was the beginning.

I went to a vacations retreat. I didn't have a clue about what I was going to do with the rest of my life. It is sometimes great to be able to turn things over to a professional.

I'm not even sure its possible, but I think mine started before i was baptised. (I'm a convert) Before I even had a concept for God I had a desire and thirst for Truth, which has now become a passion. After my baptism, I was strongly influenced by EWTN and time spent with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

I've never posted on this phorum before.

I really don't know what my vocation is right now, and I have no idea how I'm supposed to start discerning since I don't quite know what it is I'm supposed to be discerning, but I do know that God is trying to tell me something. I have had three separate pulls - towards marriage, towards religious life, and towards the single life - so of course I'm confused.

This one instance does stand out in my mind, though, and I never told anyone about it. It was one summer, a couple of years ago, and one evening during prayer I felt an impression that I was being called to religious life. The very next day I was going into the city with my family (for fun, to take one of those ferry tours down the river) and I asked God that if it was my call to be a sister, to see at least one sister in the city that day. I know this is a huge sign, I was only 14 or 15 or 16 (poor memory!) when I asked for it. Needless to say, when we were waiting to purchase our tickets I saw a sister but immediately dismissed it - my humanity trying to rationalize - because hey, it's a huge city and it's not rare to see a slew of different people in the same place. We get on board the ferry, and while the adults are finding seats, my brothers and I are hanging by the rails to watch us leave. It was a small ferry so we were allowed to wander a bit. When I found my family, who was sitting in the row of seats right behind the ones my family picked? One nun (it may have been two) with an elderly priest in his wheelchair. I almost died!

Since then I have dated, but after my last relationship (which was really, really bad), I've just felt so turned off from marriage and having children of my own. I don't know if this is of God or of myself due to my experience. However, I do know that as part of my personality, I enjoy my privacy and my "me time" and I did poorly living in dorms, so I wonder if God gave me this part of my personality because He knows I can live without being married (not to say that others can't), so that suggests more single than religious life (since religious life I'd be surrounded by sisters and will have little alone time, or so I've always thought). To continue on this possible call to the single life, I am very career-centered. That is, I look forward to graduating school and starting my career over getting married and having children, which a lot of people look forward to after finishing school.

If anyone has any advice, I'd appreciate it. I'm going to spend this summer as a single woman and see where my prayer life leads me. I'm thinking of praying the rosary every day, because my prayer life is pretty basic and I need something new, which I think will spark some sort of direction.

My advice is: Pray! And then pray some more!

@ HisChildForever - have you ever thought of this vocation?

I think that my vocation started when I was born. However, I did not realize my vocation until my senior year of high school. My grandmother had just been diagnosed with cancer. went to the hospital to visit her. I skipped school to see her, and my mom was at the hospital when I arrived. I was busted for skipping before I knew I was busted.
My mother was talking to the chaplain there. I hadn't said a word when the priest turned to me and said, "If you don't become a priest, your mother is going to hell. Then the priest, and my mother started laughing. So I figured they must have known eachother, because, noone jokes like that.
That same night while busing tables at a local restaurant, a retired bishop came in for dinner. With out me saying anything more than ‘hello’ to him, he said "Son, I feel a strong vibe coming from you, have you ever given the priesthood a thought?" I told him that he was the second priest to say something to me that very day.
Around that time, the Vocations Director for my diocese came to my parish for a vocations talk. After he finished his talk, I wanted to know more. The mystery of it all was astounding. I set a date to visit the seminary.
The Vocations Director and I met for lunch. I visited the seminary. I began the application process for the Diocese of Providence, in Rhode Island. I had almost finished with the application process when reality set in - I come from a big family; I have 3 biological brothers (4 if you include me) and two stepsisters. If I became a diocesan priest, I would be alone in the rectory. I wanted something a little more communal.
So, I put my name in to a religious order database on the internet. Over the next couple of weeks I began getting informational packets from the Franciscans, the Benedictines, and of course the Salesians. They had all given me a form letter welcoming me to the discernment process. They all said that they would like me to come and visit their community of seminarians. The Salesian letter stood out though. It was hand written. It was a personal letter. I gave it more interest than the others because someone took the time to write it rather than just inserting my name into a blank line.
So, I visited the Community in New Jersey. I loved it. From the time that I had walked in the door I felt like I was home. The people there were very nice and welcoming. They made my visit very enjoyable. I got to partake in a retreat to high school aged persons. I also got to play soccer with the Brothers. I made another trip in February. It was just as good as the first. I decided to take the application home with me to pray about. But I filled it out that night and handed it in the next morning before I left to go back to my house.
Now it was a waiting game. They told me I would know by Easter if the Provincial would accept me or not. So on Holy Saturday, I got my acceptance phone call. It came from the Vocations Director.
The part of that phone call is the most vivid memory forever for the fact that I was visiting my grandfather. It was through him and my grandmother that I discerned I had a vocation. So it was bitter sweet to find out in front of him. He was the first one to know.

I don't have time to look at this website now, but it looks interesting and I bookmarked it for later

Doesn't it make sense for a CV to eventually turn to religious life, though? Even though it wasn't her initial intention, surely she would grow so close to God that feeling the Call there would make sense...but then does that imply that her true Calling is the sisterhood and not CV? Ahhh confusion.

Yes, I'm sure the religious life is full of--or will be full of--CVs who became religious. A vocation within a vocation. I've discussed this with CVs, and those discerning CV. Even if the religious community you enter ends up not being what you thought you were called to, you're still consecrated, and that's what matters.

The Carthusian nuns had the option of consecrated virgin even after making perpetual vows, if that tells you anything.

If anyone objects to what I'm saying, please start a new thread, and let's not hijack this one.

Blessings,
Gemma

I have a friend who is a CV and lives in Dallas and she lives as a CV much differently from other CVs I've met in the way that she wears all white and a colored sash that corresponds with the time of liturgical year . Consecrated virginity dates back even before the formation of monasteries. It's a vocation within itself apart from the sisterhood in that it's like living single in the world yet you are consecrated while as a religious you are living apart from the world. A CV has her own profession ceremony or a wedding I guess you could also say and makes the vow of chastity. A CV is also is obedient to the Bishop of her diocese, but she doesn't make a vow of poverty because she has to support herself because she lives in the world and not in a religious community. My friend also has a little chapel in her house and so like other religious, she lives with her Spouse. I've read that as a CV a woman is the image of Christ's Bride to the world. At the same time I've felt like religious could be called that as well but I think it goes back to the notion of living within the world vs. living apart from the world.

I know the person you're speaking of. I love her name... She's a very sweet and holy woman.


There is actually an organization of consecrated virgins... The Consecrated women of Regnum Christi. (They are the female counterpart to the Legionaries of Christ).

I have literally combed through the CV website and it has touched me. I will be doing a lot of praying.

There's also a rite for CV's at Regina Laudis Monastery OSB in Bethlehem, CT--they've been discussed on this forum on a number of occasions. They sing the DO in Latin, Gregorian Chant and have some CDs out.