What the single life can teach us

Sydney
25 May 2003

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What the single life can teach us

By Teresa Pirola

The single life is a perplexing vocation. It defies neat definition and escapes the explicit attention of the Church. Single people live with an openness to marriage, but they are not married. They are called to live chastely but do not take a vow of celibacy. It is said that single people spend their time, energies and ‘freedom’ on building up the Church.

While this may be true, it can imply that the single vocation is about the good works one ‘does’ rather than who the single person is in their very being and identity.

It is also said that single people live out their vocation through their baptism. Of course! But every Christian is baptised. What does the single vocation witness to, in an intense way, which is not witnessed (as intensely) in the married or celibate state?

Over the years an insight into this vocation has been taking shape for me. I submit that the single person witnesses in a special way to a dimension of Christian hope, i.e. they embody in a striking way a faithful response to the ‘now’ but ‘not yet’ reality of the kingdom of God.

Let’s explore that statement ever so briefly here.

As Christians we believe that our salvation, our union with God through Christ in the Spirit, is a present reality. The kingdom of God is here! This is the extraordinary proclamation of Christian faith.

Yet, even as we declare and live this conviction, we still experience lack of fulfilment. Even in the happiest of marriages, in the lives of the most content celibates, there remains the experience of suffering, emptiness, disappointment, a yearning for ‘more’. The reality of salvation impacts on our lives, and yet so much remains beyond our grasp. We long for the day when ‘Christ will come again’ and bring all things to completion. Living with this tension - the kingdom of God ‘now’ but ‘not yet’, presence and absence, expectancy and empty handedness - is a central challenge for every Christian.

I submit that committed Christian single people powerfully embody what it means to embrace this tension, and by so doing call the whole Church to a sharper awareness of what it means to be faithful amidst all life’s ambiguities, disappointments and question marks. Single people live with an orientation towards the future, but with no guarantee of it being realised in their present.

They live with a desire for and openness to a celebrated life commitment, but without one. Year after year they celebrate the anniversaries of married and celibate friends, yet never their own. At every turn, they find themselves affirming and supporting the vocations of marriage, priesthood and religious life but without any direct, personal benefit to themselves. (There is an awesome selflessness in this.)

And yet, the single person does not decisively and formally ‘choose’ to be single. At its vocational heart, their life’s perspective is shaped by a sense of expectation and empty handedness, of asking questions of the future and entrusting it to God.

While all of us live without knowledge of the future, in the life commitment of the married or celibate person a huge part of that ‘not knowing’ is relieved.

Single people, on the other hand, live with the experience of ‘not knowing’ (in a vocational sense) at the core of their being. They go forward in life, open to a new and clearly defined commitment (which for most is the hope of marriage), yet accepting of that hope not being - and perhaps never being - fulfilled in the present.

Thus our committed single people are precious to the Church, not just because of what they ‘do’ for us, but because of the living hope they embody in who they are: believers who grasp the gift of the present moment, who are trusting before an unknowable future, joyful even without grasping what they most desire, upholding realities of love which they themselves may never enter.

We are speaking here of a great mystery of faith and love. By the witness of our committed single people, the Church is deeply nourished and challenged.

Teresa Pirola co-ordinates The Story Source, a writing/ publishing ministry serving Catholic parishes and dioceses.