Seeking

Who will seek?

The invitation to consider living the Order of the Present Moment is tendered. Now the query is to discover who would seek such an Order. The question implies that some people will not seek the stairway to heaven. We readily “see” examples in history and in current times of the visible, traditional religious orders and those who seek to join them. 



We also know from statistics, that the traditional religious orders have experienced a decline in membership. There are various factors involved. Reasons may include the increasing technological distractions of our era, as well as reinforced approval of secularized self-identity. There is a shift away from the spiritual view.

In times past, or in current cultures of less tangible wealth, some join the traditional religious orders not only for reasons of faith and vocational calling, but as a means of education and position that result from a religious vocation. Also, unrefined and subjective as it may seem, secondary considerations include a deficit in appearance or socialization skills which may hinder a vocation to married life or success in a competitive, adult, work force. While, zeal for God and desire to serve Him in the religious life may be the primary and overriding influence, the likelihood of less lofty human factors remains. We are human, after all.

Why do some, within the various religious orders' age acceptance range, choose to enter, and others do not, yet later in life seem that they would have been prime candidates? To this question, a woman, age 62, responded candidly. When at a chronological age in which young people are prime for acceptance in religious orders, her life already was filled with childhood “baggage” that did not allow her to be free to recognize the options with clarity. Thus she married, had children, divorced, remarried, and divorced. She spent years dealing with the choices she'd already made and the environmental influences that had affected her emotionally, before she could be freed from the effects in order to be open more fully to God. 


The woman explains her current position: “I think I have always thought about becoming a nun--was often asked if I was one already because of my allegiance to this Church. However, I don't think I was, am, or will be ready to be as confined as they are to a set of rules. I have learned to function outside of that system and really would have a hard time living that closely with so many women with different opinions about things. I've been left too long by myself. All that would be just another distraction.”

Others informally have shared that they knew they were called to the married life, to have children. One young woman who suspects she is called to a traditional religious order, admits she also can see herself marrying a young man she is friends with, if she would allow their relationship to go in that direction. 

However, for now she is working to put herself through college with a goal toward a service career. She reveals feeling conflicted, for she very much desires to be closer to Jesus and to grow in holiness. She sees for herself that she would love to have children as she loves children, but that as a religious she could also work with children depending upon the order's charism, or founding mission, such as a teaching or nursing order.

Recently a young man, a two-year convert to Catholicism, did join an active religious order being formed in the pattern of St. Francis of Assisi's life of poverty and service. The seed was planted by the visible, tangible presence of the group--of their brown habits, shaved heads, full beards, barefoot and in sandals, their striving to live in temporal simplicity, hoping to visit the sick and pray, and be formed in the ways of religious life through ascetic practices. 

Had the young man not seen the group, not had opportunity to talk with them, or observe their external representation of living in relative opposition to the norm of the current secular culture, he may not have seriously considered this particular religious order, or perhaps not religious life at all. 

But he has been seeking, as many are seeking, young and old and in between. He is now one of twelve in this developing order. One factor worth mentioning is that of the members who have college degrees, none are in subject areas for marketable employment.  Also, 12 members are not significant quantity considering how many Catholics within a diocese, or the higher number of Christians in the geographic area—all souls who in varying degrees of intensity and awareness are seeking God, seeking the stairway to heaven!

What about all the thousands and thousands of souls, perhaps millions worldwide who are not in this order, not in any religious order, yet are Christians, and more specifically Catholics, who are also seeking within the parameters of their current circumstances and daily existences? 

For various reasons, some of which are suggested in a few individual examples, these majority of souls do not seek to join what they see, what is so visible in exterior signs, of these various traditional religious orders and varied, religiously defined groups. 

What about all the other souls? How do they seek and find a stairway to heaven, or is it meant by God that they do trial and error method, each to his own, stumbling, restarting, or stagnating, over the years? Perhaps explaining the schema of dockers and floaters will help--an understanding of types of persons, ways of being, learning styles, internal or external locus of control. Awareness of self and others, however, pales to the awareness of God. 

"Knowledge of created beings is one thing, and knowledge of the divine truth is another. The second surpasses the first just as the sun outshines the moon."--St. Mark the Ascetic

(If the schema discussed in the next post not helpful, skip to the post following.)