Is the single life a vocation? Maybe we’re asking the wrong question

Aug 25, 2017

By Mary Rezac
From a young age, Catholics are taught to pray about and discern their vocations — whether they’re called to marriage, to the religious life, to the priesthood, or consecrated single life.

This can leave the lay single person feeling that they are in a vocational limbo of sorts, and it’s become a topic of much heated and emotional debate in the Catholic blogosphere: have these people missed their vocation? Is the lay single state, chosen or by default, a vocation?

But actually, at the end of the day – does it matter?
Fr Ben Hasse is the Vocations Director for the Diocese of Marquette, Mich. He said addressing the topic of singleness in the Church can be difficult because of the emotions surrounding the issue.

“I have quite a few friends who would like to be married, so there’s a much more emotional investment in the question because there’s more people who find themselves single” rather than having specifically chosen it, he said.

Recognising the emotional weight of the topic, Fr Hasse noted that there are many aspects to addressing the question of vocation and singleness that need to be taken into account, and that it can be difficult — and dangerous — to make generalisations about a population in the Church that is actually very diverse.

Being specific about singleness
Fr Hasse said that he has found it is helpful as a pastor to approach singleness very specifically — whether it’s a college student who hopes to marry someday, or a widow who lost her husband last month, being single encompasses a wide variety of people and circumstances.

“Everybody will be single for at least part of their life. Nobody is born as a priest or married to someone or a consecrated religious, so everyone will pass through being single,” he said.

“It’s important to distinguish between people who are single because that’s kind of where you’re at when you’re 16, versus someone who has really felt God calling them to give their life in service to the Church as a single person,” or various other circumstances.

For example, a single 19-year-old college student is probably not necessarily living a vocation of singleness in any settled way, Fr Hasse said, but a person in their 40s who finds joy in serving Christ in their everyday circumstances of work and life “is not someone I would say lacks a vocation.”

“It would be different from the way we usually use the word because it wouldn’t be defined, and made concrete by vows or promises,” he said.

“But the single accountant or school teacher could certainly live their life and see the work of their hands as something they’re offering to God, and live that in a very spiritually fruitful way, and I wouldn’t say — now here’s a person without a vocation.”

Your vocation is given at baptism
Jason Coito, Coordinator of Young Adult Ministry for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said that most of the debates surrounding singleness and vocation rely “on a very narrow definition of vocation, or confuses the term with what we refer to as ‘states in life’.”

He said when we become fixated on discerning our state in life, referred to in the Church as the primary vocation, “...we become so focused on the ranking of them, rather than looking at each day or the bigger picture and saying, here are all of these components of my life, now how am I called to live the promise of my baptism and of my life, and how do these things work together?”

It can be helpful instead to refocus these debates and conversations on the universal vocation to holiness that each Christian receives at their baptism, Coito said.

“I think this helpfully reframes the conversation and then asks us, ‘How is God calling me to make a response to Him and to my brothers and sisters from within the state in life in which I find myself?’”

This respects every vocation, because it’s a question anyone can answer on any given day in their life, regardless of their state in life, he said.

“You do have a vocation. All baptised Catholics are called to live their lives as disciples of Jesus. This is the foundational call of our lives as Catholics,” he said.

“If you feel deeply called to get married, and you have prayerfully discerned and confirmed this call then, until you meet the person you feel called to get married to, you continue to live out your baptismal call, open to the people and circumstances that God puts in front of you each day. For those who are married, we do pretty much the same thing, except that we do this out of the sacramental relationship we have with our spouse,” he said.

In Lumen Gentium, one of the principal documents of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI wrote about the universal call to holiness each Christian has:

“Thus it is evident to everyone, that all the faithful of Christ, of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity; by this holiness as such, a more human manner of living is promoted in this earthly society. In order that the faithful may reach this perfection, they must use their strength accordingly as they have received it, as a gift from Christ. They must follow in His footsteps and conform themselves to His image, seeking the will of the Father in all things. They must devote themselves, with all their being, to the glory of God and the service of their neighbour. In this way, the holiness of the People of God will grow into an abundant harvest of good, as is admirably shown by the life of so many saints in Church history.”

Fr Hasse reiterated the importance of the baptismal call to holiness, and said that this call is not something to “settle for” but, rather, should be the primary focus of our lives as Christians.

“The call to holiness is not some second-string operation,” he said.

“It’s not like — wow I really wish I had something important to work towards, but since I don’t, sanctity will have to tide me over until the beatific vision.

“So I think a reappropriation of the universal call to holiness, which is deeply, profoundly significant, is the one that matters in a sense, and we’re all called to that,” he said. --CNA