Become a Part of Something Larger than Yourself

If you are discerning whether or not to spend your life as a Catholic priest or religious brother, you have no doubt heard some excellent advice on dealing with the spiritual side of things. Get a spiritual director. Go on retreat. Make frequent use of the sacraments. Hang out with the religious brothers or priests you are thinking about joining. Make friends with diocesan priests and seminarians. This is all excellent advice.

What you might not have heard is advice about discerning the more practical elements of a vocation to be a Dominican priest or brother. Joining the Dominican Order, any other religious order, or entering diocesan seminary radically alters your day-to-day life. That’s why it’s often said that true discernment really begins when you’ve entered a formation program. You now experience in a very real way what you’ve been discerning, up until now, in theory. Still, before you make the move into religious life, you’d be wise to consider how well you are prepared for the inevitable changes and challenges.

Perhaps the most substantial and potentially disconcerting change upon entering a religious order is the change from Private Citizen to Public Person. Before you enter formation, your vocation discernment is largely private. You stick to your “personal” prayer, your “personal” meeting with a spiritual director, sharing a few things with your “personal” friends, etc. And you get to set many of the boundaries of what’s “personal” in your life and what’s “public.”

Once you become part of a religious order, you no longer belong entirely to yourself. Even before ordination or profession of solemn vows, other people look to you as an example. Regardless of how far you’ve progressed in studies, many laypeople are going to perceive you as an “expert,” or at least give your words and actions more weight, or defer to you in certain conversations.

But you’re not alone in the public forum. This scrutiny has been true of leaders in the faith since the beginning of Scripture. Go back at least as far as the Prophet Ezekiel, when he undertakes certain rituals upon his wife’s death. All the people observing him say, “Will you not tell us what these things mean for us, that you are acting this way?” (Ezekiel 24:19). And so, even as Ezekiel is mourning the loss of his wife, hearing the Word of God, coming to grips with God’s will, and acting upon God’s commands, people around him are seeking wisdom from him.

And Ezekiel had it pretty easy after that. The effects of the “public person” culminate in the greatest example of all history: Jesus Christ. From the Doctors of the Law hanging on this twelve-year-old boy’s words in the temple, to the Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees trying to manipulate they young savior into betraying their teachings and tradition, Jesus was at the same time endeared by some and scrutinized by many. But you don’t have to be a prophet or the Savior of the World to be a good public person in the Church.

As a Dominican priest or brother, your every word and every action is more than your take on a given issue or your way of behaving in a given situation. You are perceived as – and very rightly are – a representative of the Dominicans. Your Facebook posts and pictures, your Twitter comments, the establishments you choose to do business with, how you dress and behave – all become public artifacts of the friars’ reputation. But this is not necessarily a bad thing.

For the most part, you will find this change in social position freeing. Oddly, being a Public Person living under well-established expectations can be a way of helping you grow in holiness. By allowing yourself to be formed by the community’s expectations necessarily rules out attitudes and behaviors that stunt your growth in Christ, especially when these expectations rub against what the world expects from you. And if you embrace community life and priestly formation, you may find your way of moving from thoughts to words or actions is tempered by the influence of your community and the respect you have for its reputation.

In the Dominican Order, Friars who understood their role as public persons have changed the world in the most amazing and good ways. For example, in 1511, Dominican Friar Antonio de Montesinos preached a homily on the island of Hispaniola wherein he supported the human rights of the island’s natives and condemned their cruel treatment by Spanish conquistadors. He was despised and even threatened by local leaders who refused to hear the truth of his words. Yet, his prior and community of Dominican Friars not only supported his preaching, but defended it, declaring that when one Dominican Friar preaches, the whole community preaches. Friar Antonio de Montesinos reflected the convictions of his Religious Order and expressed it in his words. He also inspired the conversion of Bartolomé de las Casas, the Father of Modern Human Rights.

And let’s not forget another Dominican Friar, St. Thomas Aquinas, whose writings changed the landscape of theology and teaching for centuries to come! Can you imagine Thomas working in this world today? Who wouldn’t want to follow that blog?!

In discerning your vocation, ask yourself: am I prepared to be a public representative of my religious community or diocese? Am I prepared to submit myself both privately and publicly to my formators in all areas of ministerial formation – spiritual, human, intellectual, and pastoral? Am I prepared to undergo public scrutiny of my words and deeds? Am I prepared to no longer belong entirely to myself?

When you become a part of something larger than yourself, you become something both larger and smaller than you have ever been. Adjusting to this new reality is a challenge worthy of the fight!