I’m 26 years-old and I cannot decide whether to get married or to enter the seminary. I apologize for the vagueness of my question, but I don’t know how I could be sure about which choice to make.

God bless you, Father Angelo.
First of all, I want to thank you for the work you do through the column “A Priest Answers” .
I am certain that many people have found it useful, just as it has been for me time and time again.
I’ll introduce myself: my name is… (you can make this public, just omit my name), I’m 26 years-old and I can’t decide whether to get married or to enter the seminary.
I apologize for the vagueness of my question, but I don’t know how I could be sure about which choice to make.
In fact, sometimes I feel a strong passion towards the altar and a desire to study Theology more in depth and “fight” for the Church. However, at other times I find the idea of “working” as a parish priest heavy and boring and I desire instead to go ahead with my current career path (which provides me with a lot of fulfillment). Sometimes I desire to remain celibate in order to take care of the community, sometimes I strongly desire the embrace and company of a woman…
Overall, I feel like a drifting ship, carried by the wind, that doesn’t know how to orient itself. Of course, I have a spiritual director who is helping me with this choice, but I would still like to hear your opinion because I hold you in high esteem.
Finally, I would like to share, in the attachment, a reflection I wrote on this topic; I was initially unsure because it felt prideful of me, as if I wanted to boast about it, but I decided to go on with it since I’m interested in a serious review, in order to check whether what I wrote is doctrinally sound or just a bunch of heresies.
I thank you in advance and ask for your prayers. I will certainly reciprocate. 

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Priest’s answer

Dearest,
1. Your email allows me to reiterate something I wrote many times, that is: there is in us a plurality of vocations.
First of all, it should be clarified what we mean by vocation.
The vocation or calling is what every one of us is, in their dispositions, aspirations and abilities.
Vocation is written firstly in our own nature, so that we feel like we have been made for that specific route. 

2. Sometimes this calling comes from the outside, as it happened with Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, when he was called by Jesus Christ who had at that time already ascended to Heaven.
But it wasn’t a calling extraneous to his nature.
Saint Paul was made to be an apostle.
In his own way, he was one before being called by Jesus.
Unfortunately, this vocation was expressed in the wrong direction and with a measure of fanaticism.
With Christ’s calling, he fulfilled his role as apostle to the point that he became the apostle par excellence.
But his disposition towards the apostolate had always been present.
In order to stop him from persisting on the wrong path, Jesus told him: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goad.” (Acts 26:14). 

3. If Saint Paul hadn’t become a Christian, he would have probably followed the natural inclination towards marriage. He would have been like one of the many teachers in Israel.
When Christ called him he was still very young. The Acts of the Apostles say that he was present during the stoning of Stephen and he approved of it (see Acts 8:1). Some sources say that he did not actively participate in the stoning because he wasn’t yet 18 years-old, which was the minimum age required to take part in that act. 
With his conversion, which happened shortly after, Saint Paul stopped following his natural inclination because he was taken by a double, stronger, desire: that to “be free of anxieties. An unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord.” (1Cor 7:32) and that to “become all things to all, to save at least some.” (1Cor 9:19).

4. The strong love for Jesus Christ that had been awakened in him, generated the desire to bring it to all people and resulted naturally in choosing chastity, which was clearly, for him, the choice of a greater love and a greater dedication.
It was the kind of love that led him to live a higher fatherhood and motherhood of which he said: “Even if you should have countless guides to Christ, yet you do not have many fathers, for I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” (1Cor 4:15) and “My children, for whom I am again in labor until Christ be formed in you!” (Gal 4:19). 

5. Coming to you: you feel an ardent passion for Christ, but you don’t see yourself being a priest.
You would like to be free in order to fight everywhere for Christ, for the Church and for mankind.
There’s no doubting that the desire “to study Theology more in depth and fight for the Church” comes from Christ.
Our Lord, “who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work.” (Phil 2:13), passed by you and, like he did with Saint Augustine, exhaled His perfume and you drew in your breath and now you burn for Him (see Confessions, X, 27, 38).
If the words you used are truthful, and I don’t doubt that they are, and you have actually felt this “strong passion towards the altar and a desire to study Theology more in depth and “fight” for the Church” and you experienced it repeatedly and still feel it – I dare to think – sometimes with the strength of a tsunami, how can we doubt that it is the Lord who is repeating His call? 

6. However, when faced with this calling that excites you, you feel as if paralysed when you think of yourself as a parish priest.
This  isn’t certainly because you hold this very precious and indispensable minister in low esteem, but rather because you feel that it is not your specific vocation. You would feel as if your wings had been clipped.
Therefore, you come back to the fulfillment that you are getting from your studies and your incipient profession.
From this follows the thought to go back to human affections, of course with the intention to live them out in the most beautiful and holy way possible. 

7. However, in following the higher call – that of the altar, of the study of theology and of going out to rescue souls, becoming a parish priest is not the only option, albeit a precious one.
There are also those, like Saint Paul, who didn’t stay permanently in one place, but went everywhere.
Why not, then, consider the Order of Saint Dominic which seems to me to fit perfectly the three aspirations you specifically mentioned in regards to your vocation?
Our eternal Father, talking to Saint Catherine of Siena about the first dominicans said, using the fourteenth-century language of the time: “its subjects were not as they are now, but blooming flowers, and men of great perfection. Each scented to be another St. Paul, their eyes so illuminated that the darkness of error was dissipated by their glance. (Dialogue no. 158). 

8. What to do then, now that you feel these callings, which are both beautiful, both precious and both perfectly in adherence with your being and personality?
To the youth who asked what he had to do to gain eternal life Jesus replied: “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Matt 19:21). 
That youth didn’t dare to detach himself. He went away saddened. That sadness probably accompanied him for all his life because nothing and no one can perfectly fill our heart, except for God, except for Jesus Christ.

9. I think the time has come in which our Lord has called you to move forward with the highest action of your life: that to take your heart, your life, your present and your future and to give them to Him.
Faced with the souls who are lost because there is nobody to go conquer them, how can we not feel called to go ahead with this great act and, without waiting for others to step up, to say to Jesus Christ: “I’ll come”?
This is not recklessness since your spiritual director also saw in you the signs of a supernatural vocation.  

10. I can share with you that this was the story of my vocation. Finding myself faced with the various vocations I felt attracted to, I considered my desire for the altar and to gain souls for Christ which was in adherence with my aspirations and, during a moment of great suffering, for the good of the Church, I said: “God, I’ll come”.
I lived that decision as an immolation.
Later, I learned that our Lord had led me to make a decision for my life through an act of great charity. If not the greatest, certainly the most impactful.
And, immediately after that act of charity, I experienced a feeling of peace so sweet that I will never forget it.  

I will gladly hold you in prayer. I have started already.
I’m certain that our Lord will give you the strength to say your big yes to the highest vocation among those made for you.
Later, separately from this answer, I will send you my considerations on the document attached in which you express your opinions on how the priesthood and marriage should be lived.
With a few clarifications, I find it very interesting and deserving to be shared with our guests. It can do some good!
I bless you and wish you the best in Domino et in Dominico!
Father Angelo

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