Discernment and Communion | Fr. Bryce Sibley | Homiletic & Pastoral Review
If young people want to properly discern a vocation, they need an expert to help guide them.
Several years ago I had a discussion with a young man about his discerning a possible vocation to the priesthood. During our conversation, this young man confidently told me that, having already completed his discernment, he was certain that he was called neither to priesthood nor to celibacy. I asked him how exactly he had arrived at this conclusion. He explained that he had prayed about it for a while, made a weekend retreat, and after that he knew with certainty that God wanted him to get married. I then asked whether he had sought counsel during discernment process—with a priest, religious, or trusted spiritual advisor? His answer was that there was no one. He had discerned he was not called to priesthood or religious life all by himself.
I know that this young man is not unique in his solitary vocational discernment. It’s something of which I have seen a fair amount over the years—young people who decide that they ought to discern a call to priesthood or the consecrated life, and then come to the conclusion about their vocation without having discussed it with anyone. While I admire the apparent willingness to discern a vocation to the priesthood or consecrated life, young people should know that honest and authentic vocational discernment can never be done alone. There is one main reason for this: no vocation in the Church is “private.” Thus, proper vocational discernment always has a communal and ecclesial dimension. If young people come to me and say that they have discerned that they were not called to celibacy without any assistance or guidance, I usually tell them to go back to square one with the discernment process. Quite possibly they have arrived at the right conclusion, but the way in which they got there was faulty.
There are several reasons why discernment in isolation should be avoided.
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