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- The Following as Response to a Call
Long ago, when the Lord decided to come, he chose us, all of us, in order to redeem us. He took up a work of Redemption that was not designed for individuals only, that knew no separation and limitation, that was meant for all. Then he appeared in the world and met individual people. These people followed him in a particular way by leaving everything in order to go with him. Because they did this, they were somehow convinced that they had chosen him. But they were mistaken in two ways: in the first place, even before they knew him, he had included them in his work of redemption; but secondly, he called each of them individually and they followed at his call, even if they did not happen to hear it with bodily ears. Both elements apply to every vocation. The Lord always calls first, and when we condescend to hear him, our following is always merely a response. But often we are so taken up with ourselves and our importance that we do not even think that the Lord has anything to say to us. And yet it is he who chooses us for Christian life. He can call us specially to the priestly or religious life, but if we do not perceive this call within a certain time, we know that he has made the choice of the lay state for us, and we are to enter into this choice by means of an explicit act.
The Lord’s call and choice are always grace. Even when it seems to us that our contribution is important and indispensable, only what the Lord does in us and for us is truly indispensable. Even our activity, perhaps in days of recollection and retreat, is only the preparation for interior silence, in order to hear his call in it. Should we decide, without the Lord’s grace, to choose his way, we would not even know what this way is. It would be a path chosen, thought up, laid out and decorated by ourselves; we could pretend that it was the way of the Lord. It might perhaps be a very extraordinary way, an extremely imaginative way, and thus we might think it was a way of the Lord. But the Lord’s way is essentially not one we have chosen. For the Lord’s way is the Father’s mission and commission. His way is the glorification of the Father, and our way is his glorification. Someone might have the idea of remaining virginal, to live a life of penance and to found some work in the Church. But all this would only serve his own glorification if it were not based on a call from the Lord.
The Lord has not only chosen, but instituted them. The choice is followed by institution in one of the Christian states of life. The Lord goes with us as we step from the choice to the beginning of the mission. He not only calls; he also institutes. What is not instituted through him is not instituted at all. If a Catholic has never listened to the Lord and then happens to marry a Catholic woman, and, because it seems appropriate, receives the sacrament of marriage, he has not consciously let himself be instituted by the Lord into his state of life, but has taken it on himself. He will not receive assurance that he is on the way of the Lord. If this marriage turns out unhappily and there is no way out, he must know that a part of his misfortune lies in the fact that he did not listen to the Lord in the beginning. In former times people considered much more carefully whether a child was destined for the world or for the cloister, but because this first, fundamental consideration is so often lacking today, many modern marriages are built on shaky ground and present a picture of devastation. And institution by the Lord is a once-for-all act. We can pass by the time for the decisive questions to the Lord, or rather, the time for listening to his call. Much, of course, can later be retrieved and set right, but other things cannot. There are things for which it is simply too late. Of course the person concerned will still have access to the Lord’s grace, which is greater than his hardness of heart. But his situation in life may be outwardly beyond help; then the only possibility left is to bear what is unavoidable with the Lord’s grace, for the Lord gives the person who has willfully chosen his life the grace to live according to his will even here. But it is a grace of penance for a life of penance. This grace can be so powerful that one can even have the Lord’s joy in bearing the painful expiation of one’s former deafness.
John, vol. III (Jn 15:16)
The Call is Addressed to Everyone
He leads out those who are his own. He leads out only his own sheep: he leaves the others inside. But he calls his own by name. The Church is no longer the undifferentiated bloc of believers: it dissolves, so to speak, into individual paths and missions and offices, each member is set on his own path, each mission of the Lord is a wholly personal mission that cannot be exchanged for any other, the means and powers required for this are distributed to individuals, and a special providence accompanies the individual little sheep on its special path. No one can say that he has not been called. The call is always different; it can have precise contours or be only hinted at. But it is always a call. The one who is not called does not belong to the Lord’s sheep; and this is only because he does not wish to belong to them. The one who is in the Lord’s sheepfold is called by him with full certainty and with full definiteness. If someone does not hear the call, it is always only his sin that is the cause of this: his sin does not allow the call to be transmitted. No call is addressed to any of those who have not yet received the sacraments in grace; those who have not yet been baptized or, if they are baptized, absent themselves from Communion, or are present only in an external manner, or who have turned away from God anew; those who take part only with their body but do not place their souls at the Lord’s disposition. The shepherd alone determines freely the name that the Lord gives to his little sheep: it cannot be deduced from the being of the sheep itself. Everything can lie in the Lord’s call: every commission that is possible within the commission of Christ; every state of life that is an image of the life of the Lord: the religious state, the priestly state or the lay state.
John, vol. II (Jn 10:3)
The Decision
If God decides to speak and to call someone, he does not, for the most part, take into account the place where the one called finds himself. At the same time, this place no longer appears fixed; the one called sits as though in a train that travels through the countryside with new images constantly appearing. Wherever he looks there is something fascinating; immediately thereafter everything is again different. And yet all of this contributes something essential to the situation of the traveler. Before there was a view of the sea; now there are high mountains, and he should find an answer in himself that corresponds equally to both. He should know something that can be used everywhere. And this something lies simultaneously in God and in man; he simply cannot realize it. He knows for certain that God calls, just as he knows that he must give an answer, but his inner situation changes so quickly that his answer never seems to be the right one. There could be—and this is indeed expected—a Yes that is like falling into an abyss. A Yes that appears completely impossible. The air has become so thin that the speaker no longer hears his own voice. And if he said Yes in a life-threatening situation, the landscape has already fully changed again. It is as if God should want the Yes to be the only thing that remains the same, the only thing still standing, while all the rest changes. Man cannot arrange things so that the train stops in order to give him time to orient himself better. If the train were to stop, allowing man to give a reasonable, well-grounded, qualified, and conditional Yes, a Yes that included everything that seemed possible to him (presumably by degrees), then such a Yes would immediately resound in all its emptiness as a mere echo of his own reason. But, someone will object, did not God himself endow man with reason? Indeed he did, but for a moment man’s understanding no longer has the decisive word; God himself does. Therefore it does not help to close one’s eyes in the desire to forget the passing landscape. It is still there, and it must be thought about together with the answer. Man has to see it and say Yes; however, this view should be characterized as a seeing in God.
Until now the circumstances of life were given and accepted by man almost without question; they were aspects of his existence. Now it is a matter of distancing oneself from these circumstances in order to attain complete freedom in God. As a result, the main areas of life appear to shift. What was insignificant becomes essential, and what appeared decisive for everyday life loses its meaning. In order to be free, man must affirm simultaneously the old and the new situation. Only then does his Yes gain the necessary breadth. He can approach a thousand things from a new angle, and at each approach he can express his Yes more clearly. Of course, he can give a global Yes and fundamentally renounce everything that has gone before. But this total Yes should not be made too precipitously; he should give sufficient thought to each individual item. The same, original Yes should resound at every place and should point toward God without looking back. At the same time, however, this unreserved pointing toward God will contain countless backward glances at what exists in order to prove itself in individual details.
For the believer, this broadening of his Yes is a preliminary stage that allows him to anticipate the future broadening of his faith and the demands of God. He affirms all, and he affirms nothing. And finally, his Yes, naked and, as it were, totally deprived of its strength, goes toward God: without strength, because it cannot be supported by any arguments; and yet in full strength, because it lays claim to man’s entire strength—and because it already fully needs and uses this Yes for the coming service. Whoever would like to insert some pauses here, in order purportedly to examine the situation, in order to construct his life stone by stone in light of God’s demands, has missed his hour. No one is asking about the construction, about the walls that can support him, but about readiness—even for a collapse. There is an urgency: one cannot return to say goodbye or to bury one’s dead father. The in-breaking of eternity into my passing life has an absolute and timeless character. There are no points of comparison; there are no possibilities to assess where one stands or to withdraw in order to deliberate with oneself. Only a person who himself is called by God and sent forth will be able to say a word here. This person, without himself knowing it, can be God’s mouthpiece and thus help to form a complete Yes.
For the one called, such a point of intersection between eternity and time is unique. So much so that it strikes him like an immense catastrophe. In this intersection the believer is depersonalized. He observes that the place on earth that he has occupied until now has been left free. Much of what has gone into his day-to-day life has been hollowed out. Only thus is he able to move in this space. He realizes that his life was not determined by his personality, strength of mind, or intelligence; rather it was something for which his personality was intended and designed. He occupied that place himself, for good or for ill, until the moment God calls. And in this call God fills the believer with his spirit and strength. The negative image of the believer that has existed until now is replaced by a positive one. And man grasps that only his Yes truly gives him a personality. Henceforth, he knows himself both as an individual intended by God and as one who is penetrated by the anonymity of the children of God. In a new sense, he is one among many in the Church, a member of the communion of saints. He becomes one who is sent, someone for whom the mission is more important than he is himself. Like a newly hatched bird, he now can move in the freedom of a new world that is God’s world. He need not be anxious; his place is filled and no longer left free; his Yes has its own strength. He has left his hesitations behind. Certainly he will never fully attain the ideal of holiness that God determined for him. However, he may claim the fullness of grace for the path upon which he is now walking. God has prepared this grace for his chosen children: it is here for him.
Man Before God, chapter 4, p. 57-62.
