Pints With Aquinas - How to NOT Discern Your Vocation! | Mthr Natalia

Episode Date: July 20, 2024

Mother is the vocations director for her monastery. In this episode she talks about common errors, misteps, and mistakes discerners make. This is not just for young women she speaks on how Men and Women can fall into these traps. This is also not just for those discerning a religious vocation her advice is for those discerning marriage as well. 🤝 💸 Support the Channel: https://mattfradd.locals.com 🎧 Mother's Podcast: https://whatgodisnot.com/ 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/matt 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd  

Glory to Jesus Christ. I'm Mother Natalia, a Byzantine Catholic nun from Christ to the Bridegroom Monastery, and this is Pines with Aquinas. My spiritual father and I have a nonprofit that we run together, and this is not a pitch for you to support our nonprofit. This is to mention that every few months,

we have a Zoom meeting with some of the people who support the nonprofit, and it's just kind of like a meet and greet sort of thing. But on our last call, I asked those, a lot of them listened to these Pines with Aquinas episodes. So I asked them if they had any desires or any ideas for what might be good topics.

And one of the guys on the call said, he's discerning his vocation right now, and he said, it would be really helpful to have an episode on what not to do when you're discerning your vocation. And I think these, first of all, I thought it was an amazing idea, and so I wanted to do that topic, but I also would say what I'm going to say here can definitely be applied more generally to discernment. So it's not only about discerning your vocation.

So I don't want you to think that if you're already in your vocation, you don't need this episode because there might be something in here that will be helpful to you. And then also, if you want a fuller discussion on this topic, I thought it was such a good idea that I ended up doing a full topic on it with my spiritual father and I also have a podcast called What God is Not.

And this Wednesday, I think, July 24th, the episode will be released on which we have a much longer discussion. And so we go over more rules than I'm gonna have time to fit into this episode, more rules of what to not do when you're discerning. But yeah, so this is not comprehensive, what I'm gonna say today. These are just some of the things that came to mind and came on my heart as I was praying to prepare for

the episode and it's coming both from these rules of what not to do when you're discerning are coming both from my personal experience in my own discernment of my vocation. Some of these things were things that I did and learned from. But then also from my role as vocation director for our community in what I'm seeing as other women are approaching me in wanting to discern with our community. And yeah, so some of these I've kind of learned from seeing it done well or seeing it done right, and then others I've learned from the opposite.

The first, and I think maybe the most common problem I see, so that's why it's the first one that I want to address, is when you are discerning your vocation or otherwise, don't become paralyzed by just the pressure or the indecision or whatever it is. Like I would really encourage you to just keep asking, what's the next right step? Because we have this tendency to get so scared of all of the steps that might come

and everything that will, yeah, then come as a result of this one decision that we become paralyzed and can't make the one decision. Most commonly I see this when people are discerning religious life or priesthood, though I see this in marriage as well, it's like they're scared to even make a call. They're scared to come on a visit. They're scared to come on a longer visit.

They're scared to apply. And I get that because that was absolutely my life. When I was discerning my vocation, I was afraid that to visit the monastery meant I'm now doomed to be a nun. And that is how it played out in my own life, obviously. I'm not doomed. I love my vocation, I love being a nun. But what I mean

is, you know, don't be afraid to visit a community, to go on one date or something like that. And that's not committing to the rest of your life. The point is to take small steps and to just continue asking, what's the next right step? Because we call it discernment for a reason, right? Each step of discernment should be that. It should be a discernment. It's not a lifelong commitment from day one. Another problem that I see frequently, and to some degree I struggled with this as well, was don't think that entering into a vocation is going to just get rid of your struggles and your problems. So what I mean by that is I've seen it happen frequently where, for instance, someone really struggles with chastity and they just think, well, I struggle with this for now, but once

I'm married, then I won't struggle with that anymore because I'll have a place to direct that energy or whatever it may be. And I see this, you know, with religious life or monastic life, when I've talked with discerners who want to become a nun because they struggle with envy or they struggle with comparison or they struggle with loneliness, or they struggle with loneliness, or whatever it is, and they think that once they enter a community, those things will just go away. And that's just not how it happens.

It's not like, you know, I remember one person in particular who I was talking with who she said, well, I want to be a nun because I really struggle with vanity. And I know that if I'm a nun, I won't struggle with vanity. And I'm like, ha ha, ha ha, you will. If you already have those struggles, they're not just going to disappear because you enter into a particular life. And there's a really great explanation

of this from St. John Cashion's writings on the eight vices when he's writing about the evil thoughts, which I did the whole series on. This is the section when he's talking about anger. When we try to escape the struggle for long-suffering by retreating into solitude, those unhealed passions we take there with us are merely hidden, not erased. For unless our passions are first purged, solitude and withdrawal from the world not only foster them, but also keep them concealed, no longer allowing us to perceive what passion it is that enslaves us. On the contrary, they impose on us an illusion of virtue, and persuade us to believe that we have achieved long suffering and humility, because there is no

one present to provoke and test us. So, so yeah, just don't don't think that whenever you enter into your vocation, suddenly the temptations and the struggles that you had before are going to go away. Because actually what's going to happen is they'll be manifested maybe in different ways. They'll be exacerbated because community life of any kind, whether that's with a family or in a monastic or religious community, community life intensifies our struggles. And yeah, so that's not just going to go away.

The last one that I'll mention, just for the sake of time, is don't try, don't try to trick yourself or others into letting you pursue a particular vocation. And again this doesn't just apply to vocations, this applies to discernment of life in general, you know, what career you're going to pursue, which house you're going to buy with your spouse, things like that. Because I see this, and again, struggled with this myself, this backwards thinking when we're discerning a vocation of, well, I've decided which vocation I'm called to, and so I'm just going to make all the pieces fit into that. And if there's a piece that doesn't fit into that, I'm either going to pretend it doesn't exist by hiding it from even myself, but also from others,

from the vocation director, from the spiritual director. We either try to hide them or like shove them in to fit somewhere that they don't, like a square block and a round hole. And the reason this is important to not try to trick others or to hide things from the vocation director or your spiritual director or your future spouse, if that's the vocation.

The reason to not do this is because your discernment is not yours alone. And this is a very good thing. It's good that your discernment is not yours alone because we need the input of others in order to discern well. And for whatever reason, people see this more easily, more clearly when they're discerning the married life than they do when they're discerning the married life than they do when they're discerning with say a religious community.

Most people would agree that their discernment is just as much their future spouse's discernment as their own. But then I'll have someone come visit our community and tell me as the vocation director that they're called to our community. And I'm like, well, that is not for you alone to decide. This is a conversation that we have together. This is a journey that we walk together, not only for the good of the community, but for the good of the discerner. As the vocation director, I'm trying to help someone discern their call. It's not the point of the vocation director is not simply to protect the community or to look out for the good of the community, because that's not how God works. Right? This isn't a battle between what's good for the community versus what's good for the person.

That's not how God works. If someone has a vocation, it's good for them and for the community. It's good for them and for their spouse. God works for the good of all of those involved in that to which he's calling them. I remember a conversation that I had with a particular discerner who,

she just received this so, so beautifully. She's just, oh, she's so beautiful. But I had a conversation with her about particular struggles in her life about particular struggles in her life, and why she couldn't discern with our community due to these particular struggles. And it wasn't a matter, and I tried to be very clear about this, and again, she received it so well, it wasn't a matter of you can't discern here because these struggles make you bad and unworthy of a vocation to our community. It's a matter of these particular

struggles that you have. It would not be good for you to be in our community. Those struggles are not going to be healed in our community, which is the point of any vocation. Like the vocation in which you enter is supposed to be healing for you. Because this is the spiritual life. The spiritual life is a life of healing and growing into a more healthy relationship with God, through a more healthy relationship with ourselves, which is a good distinction to make, actually,

because I made the point of your vocation, whatever you enter into, isn't just going to solve your problems and make your temptations go away, and that's true, but this is different from the idea that our vocation is meant to be healing. It's not healing because the temptations disappear, it's healing because in your vocation, you can confront those temptations, you can see them more clearly, you can address them. So anyways, it was clear to me that with this discerner, her particular struggles were not going to be healed through our community, maybe through a different community,

or maybe through a different vocation, but our community wasn't the best place for her, which would mean it wouldn't be good for us either, but that wasn't the point. St. John Cashion also says, this is not about the vices, this is a different part, but he's talking about the need for transparency in spiritual direction, basically, transparency with our elders. He says, Abba Moses then said, true discernment comes to us only as a result of true humility, and this in turn is shown by our revealing to our spiritual fathers, not only what we do, but also what we think,

by never trusting our own thoughts, and by following in all things the words of our elders, regarding as good what they have judged to be so. He also says, Nothing so harms a monk and brings such joy to the demons as the hiding of one's thoughts from one's spiritual father. The devil has a field day with secrecy.

The things that we keep in the dark, we trick ourselves into thinking that it's for our benefit for them to be in the dark. It's better if people don't know about this. It's better if the vocation director doesn't know about this. But the reason the vocation director needs to know about it, once you're at that point in relationship, I'm not saying in your first call, you need to just put all the cards on the table, right? But if you actually are discerning with a community

and you're seriously considering entering it, if you can't trust the vocation director to discern with you in a healthy way, is that really a community that you want to be entering? If you can't trust your spiritual director to receive you and to give you honest, fruitful, helpful feedback about what's going on in your heart and in your mind, are you really with the right spiritual director? Or maybe you really with the right spiritual director? Or maybe you are with the right spiritual director, but are there things that you need to work through

in order to get to that place? So anyways, these are some things to consider as you're discerning your vocation specifically, but just discerning things in general. And if you want a more, I think I think my spiritual father and I went through maybe three or four more rules of how to not discern in the episode that comes out. I think it's called What Discernment is Not. So you're welcome to check that out. What God is Not is the name of the podcast. And yeah, I think What God is not is the name of the podcast.

And yeah, I think that's it. In the name of the Father, of the Son, of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for the gift of technology. I ask that you help both my listeners and myself that you help both my listeners and myself to use technology well, to use it for the upbuilding of your kingdom, not as a place of escape, not as a way to numb out.

I ask Father that you grant my listeners directors, to help deepen our relationship with you. Heal the parts of our hearts that are afraid of transparency. Transparency with our spiritual directors, but also transparency with ourselves, and most especially transparency with you. Grant us open hearts that are receptive to your will. Through the prayers of St. Nathaniel, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Cashin, St. John Paul II, Blessed Pier Giorgio, the Most Holy Theotokos and all the saints and through the prayers of our holy fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God have mercy on us. Amen.