Vocation to Love. Vocation to Celibacy
It’s moving to see a young passionate person. Even more if what they are passionate about is finding true love. Jesus met a young man like that. so much did he search for this true love that he ran and knelt before Jesus. What he asked is what he wanted with his whole heart. “ What must I do to obtain eternal life?”
Table of Contents
- To Be a Person Means to Be Invited to Love
- Why Do We Need a Vocation?
- God chooses me and I choose Him
- The Vocation to Celibacy: One Path with Different Travelers
- Celibacy: A Way to Be Free to Love God Exclusively
- Vocation to Love and Celibacy: A Path Proposed by God to Be Happy
To Be a Person Means to Be Invited to Love
Jesus’ response goes beyond. He does not simply explain how someone should behave who, after death, will resurrect and live eternally. The Lord delves deeper into the heart. He shows how to live -here and now, in this world- a kind of life so complete that no one would desire another. A definitive lifestyle. This is what God desires when proposing a vocation. Every vocation -including celibacy, of course- is an invitation to exist loving.
We were created to be happy. Happiness is attainable for man if he receives love and corresponds to it. To be a person means essentially to be called to unfold one’s vocation to love. Saint John Paul II said that “the man cannot live without love. He remains to himself an enigma. His life is meaningless if love is not revealed to him; if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own; if he does not fully participate in it.”[1]
To freely follow a vocation to love and celibacy
This divine project is made possible through our freedom. If the vocation of every person is to love, we also understand that love cannot exist without freedom. Without freedom, there is no love; without love, there is no happiness. Therefore, we can also say that one becomes happy freely.
Each person can be happy freely, but because we are limited beings, no creature can achieve happiness on its own. This is not so obvious and is further obscured by today’s culture. Perhaps this answer may leave someone perplexed or disillusioned. But it is the fundamental truth of our existence when illuminated by faith.
We are creatures and are not capable of fulfilling for ourselves, happiness we to which we aspire. This is something that becomes evident when great and ambitious desires for fulfillment, goodness, beauty, and transcendence arise within the heart. Aspirations that one could not reach on one’s own. The human heart has desires that are, in a way, infinite. And it is impossible for him alone, as a limited creature, to satisfy them.
Our Father God perfectly knows these infinite desires: He not only knows them, but He placed them in our hearts as an essential force that drives us. Because we are human, we have a call to the infinite. The only Infinite is God, who loves us unconditionally. We open the doors of our littleness to Him when we love Him freely. Then, we receive the infinite fullness of His intimacy. This will be definitive in Heaven, although with a good foretaste already on this earth.
Why Do We Need a Vocation?
Why does God have to give me a vocation? What do I need it for? These questions are all related to the vocation of happiness which is discovered in love. A vocation -whatever it may be- is the way of living life that God proposes to us and that will more fully fulfill those boundless desires that we have in our hearts.
Accepting that we need a vocation given by God, comes from faith and gives us freedom. A faith that leads to trust, because it discovers God as a Father and in His plans we see Someone Good and Almighty. That same faith makes us capable of waiting until Heaven to see the complete fulfillment of our happiness.
This allows us to assume this earthly life exists to prepare us for the definitive one, and not situate ourselves here, seeking to feel good at any price. It makes us free because to be free is to be able to write our biography: to be masters of our own lives with meaning.
We should not be afraid if it is difficult for us to understand and accept this truth. Culturally, it is not easy for us to admit that the best option for our life is to leave it in the hands of another and hope to receive happiness from them. Whoever that other may be, even if it is God. It seems contrary to our being to depend on another, even when that other is a Father, the source of all Goodness and an absolutely unselfish Love.
We are free children to love
It is difficult to recognize that we are essentially children: in our origin, we depend on someone other than ourselves. That is why it is also so difficult for us to understand happiness as something that must be given to us. We carry in our DNA the idea that if we do not make our lives what we want, in an autonomous way, we are sabotaging our happiness.
To be free is precisely not to be bound by our own limits. That is why the same freedom that we longed for as a slave is the same we enjoyed as a child. To be free means one overcomes his condition of slavery.
Freedom is strengthened and expanded when we live as a son. Being loved by God and loving Him freely are the two oars that lead us to happiness. A vocation is a path through which, for each one, the gift of self is realized in the best way, which gives meaning to one’s own life.
God chooses me and I choose Him
As we delve into the supernatural reality of vocation, we may ask ourselves: what is more important, God’s call or the person’s free choice? They are not two opposing dimensions, they are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary: God’s proposal that arises from his paternal love and the person’s free response, who surrenders himself as a son.
Passivity in perceiving and accepting God’s love is a conflicting attitude: one cannot feel loved by someone who does not pay proactive, interested attention, not intellectually but with the heart. One cannot live by love if one goes through life looking at the offers behind the windows, to see if something attracts me or just waiting for God to make me experience things that attract me.
Emotional maturity that allows us to live in love leads us to be attentive and eager to discover God’s love present in our lives, which manifests itself in a thousand ways in everyday things. Opening our hearts to God and keeping them sensitive to his affection is a fundamental part of the vitality of celibacy. The intimacy of piety, contemplating Jesus’ gaze in prayer, the gift of making us participate in His fruitfulness in other souls through our lives, the history of our existence in which God has been discreetly lavishing his love… All this can be seen with great luminosity as well as ignored in complete darkness: seeing and recognizing God’s love does not depend on God alone. It depends to a great extent on whether we let ourselves be seduced.
Is it possible to live celibacy in love?
After all that we have considered, we recognize -as Nietzsche says- that “there is always something of madness in love. But there is always something of reason in madness too.” Above all, in the madness of God who has been enthusiastic with the exclusivity of the love of a poor human heart.
“There is a plan of God for each one, but we are not ‘programmed’: it would be to lower God to our poor level. We can only program things without free will, and it does not always work out well for us; God, on the other hand, is capable of boosting our freedom without violating it. God governs human history down to the smallest detail, but history also depends on human freedom. (…) Also, personal vocation, God’s plan for each one, counts on our freedom. Each one has to discover it by putting their resources into play. God does not impose himself: he gives some clues, insinuates a path, makes an invitation.”
“The human response to vocation is not reduced to the simple acceptance of a divine plan, which is always presented in an unequivocal and evident way; I think that the free response to vocation is in a certain way is essential to the vocation itself [2].
Complementarity and harmony in the vocation to love, and to celibacy
That is why we can conclude: “There is a complementarity and a harmony between the Lord’s choice -‘It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you’ (Jn 15:16) – and the free choice of the person, to whom God has given freedom so that he or she may use it, choosing the greatest good possible. Therefore, it can be said that God in some way subordinates his choice and his call to the person’s choice of Him. This is as if we say that God chooses the one who chooses Him“[3].
What God desires with vocation is at the opposite pole of imposition. It is a proposal that, like a good seed, waits to fall on the good soil of the heart of a son of God, trusting and freely desirous of joining the illusion of his Father. “God wants man to participate actively in his own vocation, without reducing Himself to passively waiting for God to make them ‘see’ it”[4].
That is the project that Jesus proposed to the young man who, kneeling before Him, was not able to grasp. The Gospel says that he was very rich (cf. Lk 18, 23). However, no wealth satisfies if one does not live with great love. The Lord wanted to propose to him the way to make that desire for great love come true in his life.
Vocation to Celibacy: One Path with Different Travelers
The Lord grants the gift of celibacy for the Kingdom of Heaven to people of different situations within his Church. It is the same gift that is lived in a common way essentially, although the functions or services that God asks to each one are quite diverse. Celibacy can be lived in the lay state, in the priestly ministry, and in the religious state.
For many centuries it was understood as something reserved for priests and religious, but since it is a gift of God and not a requirement attached to a particular state of life, laymen can also enjoy it.[5]
The most manifest way of celibacy in the Church[6] is presented in ordained ministers: the priestly celibacy that is lived by bishops, priests, and laymen (who are in preparation for the priesthood).
Another way of living celibacy is found in religious men, whose vocation calls them to publicly profess the evangelical counsels (obedience, chastity, and poverty), giving public testimony to the definitive path of man: to live exclusively united to God for eternity. Celibacy has a testimonial and eschatological character on this path.
The layman, on the other hand, lives his celibacy for the Kingdom of Heaven as a personal relationship of exclusive love for Jesus Christ, as a response to a gift received from God. It does not have a public meaning as in the case of religious men. The layman is the one who essentially sanctifies himself by occupying himself with temporal affairs, uniting them to God, on an equal footing with other ordinary people, from whom they are neither distinguished nor separated[7].
The vocation to love and celibacy in the laity
It is about the same path with different ways of walking it. What is common on this path traveled by laymen, priests and religious is that it is traveled as a response to a divine initiative -‘It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you’ [8]-, destined to make personal vocation to love a reality and which brings with it a particular force of spiritual fecundity, constituting a way of embodying and satisfying human desires for motherhood or fatherhood.
Celibacy: A Way to Be Free to Love God Exclusively
The Incarnation marked a great novelty in the ways of living the vocational path. It could be said that Jesus Christ inaugurated celibacy “for the Kingdom of Heaven.” Before he came, virginity was considered a misfortune or, at least, an undesirable situation.
The birth of the Messiah was expected and, therefore, each fertile marriage opened a possibility for that arrival to take place[9]. There were some other forms of celibate life. Outside the Jewish tradition, these were mainly based on Stoic principles, as a way of life that granted greater independence from the influence of passions.
Among the Jews themselves, there were forms of celibacy such as that of the Essenes[10], and a particular form of consecration called the Nazarite vow[11]. Priests, on the other hand, had to abstain from relations before offering sacrifices[12]. However, these modalities of celibacy had a different foundation from that inaugurated in the New Covenant by Jesus himself.
The vocation to love and celibacy with the incarnation of Jesus Christ
The novelty of the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary is great. It also opens up a different meaning to virginity and celibacy. Jesus begins a new way of living on earth, both divine and human, precisely because He is the God-Man. And from the newness that Jesus brings, first the Apostles and then many Christians from the early times will live celibacy as a gift full of meaning.
Jesus’ celibacy is not defined by any functional motive, such as having more time available to travel to cities preaching, or not having the commitment to care for a home. Nor is it due to a ministerial requirement, since He is before any ministry of the New Covenant and the very origin of the new priesthood.
Similarly, his celibacy is not based on separation from the world, since Jesus came to the world to save it from within, being one more among men, assuming all that is noble in human nature to recapitulate it by bringing it back to the Heart of God.
Celibacy is rooted in a particular way of living out that filial relationship with God. The image of Son that Jesus revealed in his incarnation is the ideal to which every man is called, the foundation for which he was created, and the model of the definitive relationship we will have with God in Heaven.
Therefore, celibacy, in any of its forms (lay, ministerial, or consecrated), finds its deep reason in being chosen for a particular relationship of children who love their Father God with special freedom, without going through other exclusive loves.
Vocation to love and celibacy in full freedom
Celibate comes from ceibe, which means free. It does not mean that marriage is slavery, nor that celibacy is synonymous with a lack of commitment. We could say that celibate is one to whom God has given the gift of loving Him directly, free of intermediaries.
Since the Incarnation, God loves and wants to be loved also in a human way, with his Heart of Man and with our human heart. For this reason, since God has become Man, one of the human paths of the vocation to love is to love Him directly and receive His Love directly.
“Virginity -says Pope Francis- has the symbolic value of love that does not need to possess the other, and thus reflects the freedom of the Kingdom of Heaven”[13]. Celibacy gives the freedom to be able to offer one’s energies with a universal sense, first to God and then to all the people that Providence puts in our path in some way.
This way of seeing celibacy as a peculiar imitation of Jesus’ sonship is one that the Church has assumed from the first centuries. Among the first followers of Christ, celibacy “for the Kingdom of Heaven” was usual, even among the ordinary faithful[14]. It was considered one of the main testimonies of love for God, after martyrdom[15].
Vocation to Love and Celibacy: A Path Proposed by God to Be Happy
In conclusion of the considerations that we have been making hitherto, we can say that vocation is a path designed by God to be happy and to be bearers of a real and wonderful fertility. This is the framework in which all supernatural vocation is explained, both to celibacy and to marriage.
Vocation cannot be understood unless it is discovered as a true gift, as a present. It is not an imposition of the divine Will, a will that no one who wants to be good should resist. Nor is it an honorable personal choice marked by heroic resignation.
The expectations of the vocational path have a lot to do with which ideas of happiness guide one’s life. It is also important not to forget that the happiness of Heaven, being a supernatural happiness -living in God- would not be true if it were not also a true human happiness.
It is not uncommon to find many Christians who want to be faithful seeming to resign themselves to what they have to do. Perhaps they do not affirm it this way on a theoretical level, but it seems that they live resigned to it. Saint Josemaría says forcefully: “I am increasingly convinced: the happiness of Heaven is for those who know how to be happy on earth“[16]. And that divine happiness, which is also human, must be able to be lived, enjoyed with affection, and unfolded in one’s vocation, also to love and celibacy.
Notes to the article
[1] Saint John Paul II, Encyclical Redemptor Hominis, 10.
[2] Ocáriz, F., Sobre Dios, la Iglesia y el mundo, Ed. Logos, Rosario (2013), 123.
[3] Ugarte Concuera, F., ¿Puedo elegir mi vocación?, Ed. Logos, Rosario (2014), 22.
[4] Idem. Pg. 23
[5] From the early days of Christianity, some men and women embraced the vocation to celibacy and followed this path. Men were often called ascetics or abstinents, and women were called virgins. Although it was an original practice, with the appearance and spread of monasticism at the beginning of the 4th century, celibacy lived by ordinary Christians amid the world practically disappeared and ceased to be considered theologically as well. This situation changes in the first half of the 20th century, with the general movement of return to the sources of Christianity. There, this path of lay celibacy began to be established again in institutions of the Church, as is the case of Opus Dei. Cfr. Touze, L., voice celibacy, in Diccionario de Saint Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, Ed. Monte Carmelo – Instituto Histórico San Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, 3rd ed., Burgos (Spain), 2015, 224.
[6] We refer to the Latin rite. In the Eastern Catholic Church, celibacy is not a requirement for priests. They can marry before receiving priestly ordination. Instead, only priests who have voluntarily opted for celibacy have access to the episcopate. The reasons for this discipline are multi-secular and based on various historical situations.
[7] For a consideration of the difference between priestly, religious men and lay celibacy, see Leonardi, M., Como Jesús, Palabra, Madrid (2015), 79-93.
[8] Cf. Jn 15:16.
[9] Cfr. García-Morato, J. R., Creados por amor, elegidos para amar, Eunsa, Pamplona (2005), 51 and 52.
[10] The Essenes were the followers of a Jewish sect that practiced asceticism, celibacy, and community of goods, and scrupulously observed the precepts of the Torah, the Mosaic Law.
[11] It is a form of consecration of a Hebrew woman or man to Yahweh, through a vow to fulfill a series of precepts of life. The consecrated person using this vow was called a Nazirite or Nazarene. The prescriptions to be followed are narrated in Num 6.
[12] Cfr. Leonardi, M., Como Jesús, Palabra, Madrid (2015), 93-98.
[13] Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia, n. 161.
[14] For a brief historical synthesis of the different ways of living celibacy, cf. Leonardi, M., Como Jesús, Palabra, Madrid (2015), 75-79.
[15] Cf. García-Morato, J. R., Creados por amor, elegidos para amar, Eunsa, Pamplona (2005), 53.
[16] Forge, n. 1005.
Fernando Cassol
