TheresaThoma Posted April 9, 2014 Share Posted April 9, 2014 Under a month until I visit the Sisters! I'm super excited! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
petitpèlerin Posted April 13, 2014 Share Posted April 13, 2014 I'm excited for you, TT! Two of the sisters who are new there this year I knew in France last year! They're both wonderful. My discernment has taken some unexpected twists and turns. It feels like it's been a journey deeper and deeper into my own heart, which is something I haven't known very well most of my life. Right now I feel like I'm nearly to the bottom of it, but I'm having a hard time determining what is my deepest desire: to love God alone or to love him in a man. I don't know what way to go. I feel confident that if religious life is for me then it's with this one particular community. I have an open door with them, they've been absolutely wonderful to me, I love them dearly, and the prioress/novice mistress is the coolest woman I've ever met in my life and she totally gets me. But I'm not ready to enter. I'm very confused because I'm dealing with a strong desire for marriage, something I haven't experienced in a long time. I don't know if it's a call or if it's just a natural desire that all human beings have. (There's a little more to the story than I'm willing to post on a public forum. And yes, this is all in the care of my spiritual director who is helping me out but doesn't give me the answers, of course.) Right now I'm just working and waiting and struggling to believe that God's providence extends all the way to my little heart, that he will lead me to the life that will bring me the most joy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhuturePriest Posted April 13, 2014 Share Posted April 13, 2014 Discernment status: Applying for seminary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hemma Posted April 13, 2014 Share Posted April 13, 2014 I'm just thinking whether I love God already enough in matters of discernment. For me at the moment it's very much the question how strict the monastery should be. Too strict makes me obviously unhappy, but not strict enough perhaps too. Maybe I haven't reached the measure of love for God necessary for the place I'm called to - wherever this may be. Am I ready to decide yet? I hope I'll just feel it when the right place is found, and then I'll strive for it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cartermia Posted April 13, 2014 Share Posted April 13, 2014 Discernment status: on the path to going nowhere... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
petitpèlerin Posted April 13, 2014 Share Posted April 13, 2014 Discernment status: on the path to going nowhere... Yep, that's what it feels like to me, too. I think that's where faith is supposed to come in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cartermia Posted April 13, 2014 Share Posted April 13, 2014 Well right now I cannot do anything since I am to young (I am 14, a freshman in high school) but pray. I am someone who likes to act upon things but I cannot really do that right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
domenica_therese Posted April 14, 2014 Share Posted April 14, 2014 I'm just thinking whether I love God already enough in matters of discernment. For me at the moment it's very much the question how strict the monastery should be. Too strict makes me obviously unhappy, but not strict enough perhaps too. Maybe I haven't reached the measure of love for God necessary for the place I'm called to - wherever this may be. Am I ready to decide yet? I hope I'll just feel it when the right place is found, and then I'll strive for it... The only thing necessary to love God enough is simply to realize how much He loves you, and let Him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
petitpèlerin Posted April 14, 2014 Share Posted April 14, 2014 The only thing necessary to love God enough is simply to realize how much He loves you, and let Him. That's exactly what I wanted to say, domenica_therese, because I had the same question recently and a wise sister told me exactly the same thing, that in the convent it's not about loving God but letting God love you. She also said that if I imagined that the sisters were all going around feeling all lovey-dovey about Him all the time I was very much mistaken. I also found that very reassuring. Well right now I cannot do anything since I am to young (I am 14, a freshman in high school) but pray. I am someone who likes to act upon things but I cannot really do that right now. I hear you. I'm the same way: sometimes it takes me a while to know what I want or what I should do, but the moment I do, I act on it. That must be a hard situation, to be young and feel called long before you are able to respond to the call. I pray God gives you the grace to get through the waiting. Talking again about my own discernment, it's just a long waiting period for me - and it's one that I chose myself, I had an open door to enter but I didn't feel ready at that moment, for good reasons, and so I decided to go back to the world and to work for a while. Sometimes I feel like I'm just marking time, marching in place, but I feel good this morning because a little ray of light came through the clouds, by way of an e-mail from someone who's been a part of my whole discernment these last couple years, and I just sense that grace is working behind the scenes, beyond what I can see, and that God is going to work out my vocation soon. Actually, I received an invitation to a major event with my community back in France this spring. I really want to go, I have the means, and I think it would be really good, and who knows what grace will flow from the Sacred Heart of Jesus (in Paray-le-Monial!) on Pentecost weekend, right? :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benedictus Posted April 14, 2014 Share Posted April 14, 2014 How exciting Futurepriest :bounce: Keep us all posted on how the process goes ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhuturePriest Posted April 14, 2014 Share Posted April 14, 2014 (edited) Well right now I cannot do anything since I am to young (I am 14, a freshman in high school) but pray. I am someone who likes to act upon things but I cannot really do that right now. Ooh, I remember when I was fourteen and discerning. Talk about a time for a lot of growth. :P I was also a person that liked to act immediately, and I found it incredibly frustrating that I couldn't do anything for another four years. "Saint Padre Pio was fifteen when he entered the Capuchins, and that was less than a century ago!" I remember complaining to a spiritual director. But here's the thing: there were so many things I needed to learn that I didn't realize I needed to. I had to grow in a thousand different ways. I thought I was already grown-up and ready to go for seminary or religious life. There was no doubt in my mind that if I were 18 at the time, I would have been accepted. Now, however, I assure you that if I had been 18 at the time, vocation directors would have told me no within minutes. I was in no way ready for the seminary or religious life. I was impatient, impulsive, cocky, and immature. When I spoke to religious and priests in-depth about my discernment, their eyes were filled with uncertainty, and a billion things to say to me. Now, however, thanks be to God, it's a completely different situation. Now, as a girl, you are a bit more ahead than I was in the maturity spectrum, but I can assure you that even though you're more mature than I was at that age, that doesn't mean you are in any way ready for religious life. In fact, saying that you're more mature than I was at that age isn't even saying much. :P Religious life has a lot of waiting in it, and it requires a level of both character and spiritual maturity that no fourteen year old possesses. I don't care if you've been praying five hours every day at adoration since you were four, and you spend the rest of your time helping the poor and elderly, you're not anywhere near ready for religious life The beautiful thing is, not only is God calling you to something right now, but in that calling, you're going to grow in every way you need to in preparation for your main vocation. I do want to stress what two priests have stressed to me when I was 14 and again when I was 16: enjoy being a kid. There is nothing on earth that's going to get you into religious life right now, so why spend all of your time bemoaning that fact? You are in a position where you have tons of freedom and youth, and that is a wonderful combination to make some of the best times of your life. Hangout with your friends, watch that movie you've been waiting for all year at the theater, and be 14. No matter your age, don't act like you're 10 years older, because you're not. Enjoy yourself. Be a kid. Because if you don't, you'll look back and regret that you didn't enjoy yourself as much as you should have because you spent every day in the future and not in the present. And that above paragraph goes for even when you are in the convent. Trust me, the seminarians at Conception are acting their age. When I visited last week, while we were having dinner before we left, all of the seminarians in our diocese had a special meal just with us. Before we ate, we did the Divine Office. We all went to our spiritual places. Then, when it was over, we began eating, talking, laughing, and then a seminarian had a brilliant idea to get an empty one gallon milk jug, put it on his chair, and then sit down on it. This caused the lid to fly clear across the room. Everyone laughed and applauded, and we then made it a mission to make everyone drink tons of milk, and it wasn't long before we had five more empty milk bottles for him to sit down on. :P Edited April 14, 2014 by FuturePriest387 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhuturePriest Posted April 14, 2014 Share Posted April 14, 2014 How exciting Futurepriest :bounce: Keep us all posted on how the process goes ;) First meeting is May 6th. If I can get him half as excited as I got my parish priest when I spoke to him about it a few nights ago, there's nothing stopping me from getting in. :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheresaThoma Posted April 14, 2014 Share Posted April 14, 2014 Actually, I received an invitation to a major event with my community back in France this spring. I really want to go, I have the means, and I think it would be really good, and who knows what grace will flow from the Sacred Heart of Jesus (in Paray-le-Monial!) on Pentecost weekend, right? :) So excited for you! That sounds like an amazing opportunity, (if it is what I think it is). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cartermia Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 FP: I love your profile picture :p trust me, I am being a kid. Today I canoed around my aunt's pond trying to chase a goose. I think that goose wanted to be my Easter dinner! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
young_and_faithful_ Posted April 24, 2014 Share Posted April 24, 2014 Trust me, the seminarians at Conception are acting their age. When I visited last week, while we were having dinner before we left, all of the seminarians in our diocese had a special meal just with us. Before we ate, we did the Divine Office. We all went to our spiritual places. You went to the retreat at Conception Seminary College? The seminarians from my diocese go there, I'm sure you got to meet them! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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