Brother Paul Bednarczyk, CSC, who was elected superior general of the Congregation of Holy Cross July 1, 2022, speaks at the National Religious Vocation Conference in Plano, Texas, November 1, 2012. / National Religious Vocation Conference via F… […]
Sister Isabela, Sister Roziane, and Sister Mariana Guimaraes. / Sr. Roziane Guimaraes
Brasilia, Brazil, Apr 7, 2022 / 12:31 pm (CNA).
Sister Mariana, Sister Roziane, and Sister Isabela Guimaraes are three blood sisters who embraced their call t… […]
Sister Catherine Wybourne, also known as the "Digitalnun." / Benedictine Nuns Holy Trinity Monastery Facebook
Denver Newsroom, Feb 25, 2022 / 14:30 pm (CNA).
Messages from around the world have flooded Twitter as the beloved “Digitaln… […]
Pope Francis meets religious sisters at a general audience on Jan. 19, 2022. / Vatican Media
Vatican City, Feb 1, 2022 / 09:30 am (CNA).
Pope Francis told religious sisters’ to fight back when they are treated unfairly or “reduced to servitude”… […]
A nun at the prayer vigil for consecrated life in St. Peter’s Basilica, Jan. 28, 2016. / Alexey Gotovskiy/CNA
Denver, Colo., Dec 24, 2021 / 04:00 am (CNA).
Discerning your vocation is about more than pursuing a celibate vocation alone, said Father Ryan O’Neill, director of vocations for the Archdiocese of Denver. The purpose, he said, is to “increase the knowledge and possibility of vocation for anybody.”
“It gives us all a moment to be like, ‘Oh yeah, I do have a vocation. God does have a plan for my life, and I can find out what that is,” said O’Neill, who was ordained in 2012.
“We should all take a moment to ask, ‘How is discernment part of my daily Christian experience? How are we seeking the Father’s will?’” he said.
Everyone is created for marriage at the natural level because of their biological identity, O’Neill said, but to have a celibate vocation is “a supernatural vocation.”
“You have to pause, and say, ‘Okay, I know I’m created for marriage, but, Jesus, are you calling me to something different?’” O’Neill said.
For those considering a celibate vocation, O’Neill suggested reaching out to a religious order or a local diocese to go on a discernment retreat at the earliest opportunity. If no retreats are immediately available, meet with a priest or religious to talk about your interest in a celibate vocation.
“The first principle is, you cannot drive a parked car,” O’Neill said. “You’ve got to get in the car and you’ve got to drive somewhere. That means don’t sit in your bedroom asking God what He wants. Do something about it.”
O’Neill compared it with the idea of really liking someone, but never mustering up the courage to ask them on a date.
“You’ll never get an answer unless you drive the car in a direction you think you should go,” he said.
Reaching a “dead end” where the answer is “no” is okay, O’Neill said, especially on the first try. If you encounter a “no,” either from a spiritual director or in your own discernment, it does not mean you are not meant for a celibate vocation—it may mean that you need to try a couple communities before finding the right place.
“We have this pressure to find the right answer and to make sure it’s the exact fit, and that’s just not real,” he said. “The world works by you going out and driving into a dead end, being okay with it, and saying, ‘I found an answer, now I turn around and I go back the direction I came, and I go a different direction.’”
As a practical tip for discerning a celibate vocation, O’Neill suggested increasing the amount of time you spend in prayer and learning the Liturgy of the Hours, both of which, he said, will increase your relationship with Jesus.
“It’s only going to be beneficial if you spend more time in prayer,” he said. “If your life is going to be centered around a relationship with Jesus as a religious sister, as a priest, or as a religious brother, why would you not start working on that relationship now?”
O’Neill also said that it is important to not be actively dating when you are discerning a celibate vocation because it can cause additional stress and confusion.
“Either you are going to direct your heart toward marriage, or you’re going to direct it away from marriage, but to do both is actually torturous for your own heart,” he said. “Allow yourself to focus on one thing at a time. Let your heart relax in whatever direction you are focusing on.”
One of the greatest joys of O’Neill’s vocation as a priest, he said, is the freedom to seek what God wants.
“Our world puts so much pressure on young people to have it all figured out, to have a 5-year plan, a 10-year plan,” O’Neill said. “All those things really bore down upon me when I was in college until I was given permission by a priest to let all those things go, and say, ‘Jesus what do you think?’ and ‘Jesus what do you want?’”
“When I focused on that I felt more free than I ever had before, and I began to understand that that’s really what God wants. God wants us to have an experience of freedom,” he said.
Both marriage and celibate vocations are good things, O’Neill said, and each has a different kind of intimacy, whether that be spiritual intimacy with Christ or physical intimacy with your spouse.
“It’s okay to not get married for the sake of Jesus,” O’Neill said. “Marriage is good, but so is being celibate. What is your heart longing for?”
null / Courtesy of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles.
Kansas City, Mo., Dec 3, 2021 / 15:06 pm (CNA).
After the harrowing experience of shootings at their abbey in rural Missouri, the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles resolved t… […]
The Benedictine Monastery of San Jose in Costa Rica’s Diocese of Cartago, which was canonically closed Nov. 7, 2021. / Diocese of Cartago.
Cartago, Costa Rica, Nov 10, 2021 / 10:24 am (CNA).
The Diocese of Cartago has ordered the canonical closure of the San José Benedictine Monastery, a diocesan foundation that had functioned ad experimentum for some years.
“This decision of ecclesiastical closure is carried out as a result of an internal administrative process of the Church, which originated in a pastoral visit to the Monastery; this being done in accordance with the powers conferred by the Code of Canon Law, whose result and conclusions were endorsed by the Congregation for the Institutes of Religious Life and Societies of Apostolic Life in Rome,” the diocese stated Nov. 7.
Father Jorge David Arley Campos, press officer for the Diocese of Cartago, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister news agency Nov. 9. that “as the assessment and investigation of the fruits of the experience is an internal process, the specific reasons” for the closure are not published, since “it was the decision of the commission in charge and the judicial vicar of the diocese.”
“The final decision was made known but not the reasons, since there are elements of secrecy in the matter and they cannot be exposed to public opinion due to the nature of the entrusted secret, in order not to damage the conscience of the faithful and to avoid incorrect interpretations by the faithful,” the priest said.
On its Facebook page, the monastery calls itself a “monastic community governed by the Rule of Saint Benedict, cloistered under our constitutions, and our main work is: prayer and manual labor.”
“We are a cloistered community, we do not do pastoral work outside the monastery. We do not belong to the Diocese of Cartago,” the Facebook page states.
The Nov. 7 diocesan communiqué says that “the members of this diocesan experience have been allowed and offered all our collaboration in their transfer to other experiences of community, if they see fit, awaiting word from them.”
The diocese said that while it has closed the monastery and thus ended its ecclesial mission, it is aware that the monastery was also established as a civil association enrolled in the Civil Registry and so “it belongs to them to determine its future as a civil association.”
From Nov. 7 “the Diocesan Experience of the San José Benedictine Monastery will not be part of the Diocese of Cartago, likewise there will be no authorization for the celebration of the sacraments and sacramentals in the place of that experience.”
Fr. Arley Campos explained to ACI Prensa that as a civil association the monastery is “a legal entity under which they were legally protected as a group.”
“As an association it’s up to them to determine their future, but they are no longer canonically a movement of the Catholic Church,” the priest said.
An article published Nov.1 La Nación, a San José daily, says that “the Benedictine monks of the San José Monastery, in Paraíso de Cartago, charged that the current bishop of Cartago, Mario Enrique Quirós Quirós, has persecuted them for years to ‘eliminate’ their ‘presence ‘in the diocese and take from them their monastery grounds.”
The monastery was founded about eight years ago under Bishop José Francisco Ulloa Rojas. Bishop Quirós succeeded him in 2017.
In its Nov. 7 statement, the Diocese of Cartago doesn’t mention the article in La Nación, but noted that “the land and facilities where the campus of said experience have been located is the property of the indicated Association and has never been the subject of discussion.”
A response sent by the Diocese of Cartago to La Nación says that “the members of the San José Monastery, which was founded by the diocese, were informed of the conclusion of said experience, as a result of not obtaining the expected fruits during this time.”
The diocese further noted that members of the monastery “have been given the opportunity to exercise, pursuant to CIC c. 50, their right of reply.”
Canon 50 of the Code of Canon Law establishes that “before issuing a singular decree, an authority is to seek out the necessary information and proofs and, insofar as possible, to hear those whose rights can be injured.”
The press officer of the Diocese of Cartago explained to ACI Prensa that what happened in this case was the “closure of a diocesan foundation that was subject to evaluation and that could have become an autonomous monastery,” as they exist in other parts of the world.
Fr. Arley Campos said that the members of the group can stay on their property, “since the material goods they enjoy are theirs and their internal regulations, like those of any civil group, are those that govern their action.”
However, the priest clarified, “its mode of operation and what that entails is no longer covered by the Diocesan Church of Cartago.”
Pope Francis meets with the Salesian Sisters of St. John Bosco in Rome on Oct. 22, 2021. / Vatican Media
Rome, Italy, Oct 23, 2021 / 08:30 am (CNA).
Pope Francis paid a visit to the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians on Friday and asked the re… […]
Pope Francis’ video message to the Confederation of Latin American and Caribbean Religious (CLAR) on Aug. 13, 2021. / Screenshot
Rome Newsroom, Aug 14, 2021 / 10:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis warned against misuse of the liturgy that places an emphasis on ideology in a video message sent Friday to a Latin American conference on religious life.
“Let us not forget that a faith that is not inculturated is not authentic. For this reason, I invite you to participate in the process that will provide the true sense of a culture that exists in the soul of the people,” Pope Francis said in the video sent on Aug. 13.
“When this inculturation does not take place, Christian life, and even more so the consecrated life, ends up with the oddest and most ridiculous Gnostic tendencies. We’ve seen this, for example, in the misuse of the liturgy [where] what is important is ideology rather than the reality of the people. This is not the Gospel.”
The pope’s video message was featured at a virtual conference organized by the Confederation of Latin American and Caribbean Religious (CLAR).
The conference focused on inculturation, a concept which John Paul II described as the process by which “the Church makes the Gospel incarnate in different cultures and at the same time introduces peoples, together with their cultures, into her own community.”
Pope Francis said that many men and women in religious life can be tempted to focus on the decline in numbers of vocations in their orders. He urged them to “renounce the criterion of numbers.”
“Otherwise it can turn you into fearful disciples, trapped in the past and giving into nostalgia. This nostalgia is fundamentally the siren song of religious life,” Francis said.
Instead of focusing on numbers, religious should focus on evangelization and “leave the rest to the Holy Spirit,” the pope said.
“I would like to remind you that joy, the highest expression of life in Christ, is the greatest witness we can offer the holy people of God whom we are called to serve and accompany on their pilgrimage toward the encounter with the Father,” he said. “Peace, joy, and a sense of humor.”
“How sad it is to see consecrated men and women who have no sense of humor, who take everything so seriously … To be with Jesus is to be joyful,” Pope Francis said.
“May the Holy Virgin protect you. She knows all about encounter, fraternity, patience, and inculturation,” he said.
Claretian Father Darrin Merlino has launched Catholic Media Missionaries (CMM), an apostolate to evangelize the culture through media, utilizing the creation of faith-friendly movies, television programs, videos, books and more. Its initial offerings include Hound […]
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