The best man at my wedding last year mentioned that, when it comes to “vocation,” I seem to have approached the question in much the same way that others approach Pokémon:“gotta catch ‘em all.”
Having lived as a single man, a diocesan seminarian, a Dominican friar, and now a married layman with my first child due to be born at some point in the coming weeks, the question of “vocation” is one that has clearly loomed large in my life for some years.
In this month of August, the church in Australia asks us all to reflect more deeply on the idea of “vocation”— what God’s call upon our lives might be.
Given my circuitous path through the sometimes thorny thicket of discernment, I thought I might pen a few thoughts on the question.
Coincidentally, the exemplar whom I have always thought the best entrée into the question of discernment is a man whose feast day we celebrate on the 20th of this month—St Bernard of Clairvaux.
The “mellifluous doctor” as he is known, in recognition of the sweet, honeyed words that poured from his lips while preaching, was someone who took his own calling very seriously.
The line from Scripture often associated with vocations generally is this: “If you would be perfect, go and sell what you own, give the money to the poor, then you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Mt 19:21).
Well, St Bernard of Clairvaux did that. He decided as a young man that he was going to enter religious life: he was going to seek that path of perfection.
He was such a compelling personality, so filled with fervour, that in communicating this decision to his friends and relatives he convinced many of them to do the same.
When he arrived at the monastery of Cîteaux in the year 1113 and knocked on the door, there were 30 of his friends, relatives and brothers behind him, also seeking admission to the monastery.
It would be tempting for me to now launch upon an extended excursus of St Bernard’s extraordinary life.
He was an advisor to popes and kings. He wrote the religious rule for the Knights Templar
He preached the Second Crusade at Vézelay in 1146 with such fervour that the crowd surged forward and quickly exhausted the supply of white, cloth crosses that had been prepared for those willing to take up the call, so Bernard took off his voluminous Cistercian robe and started hacking into it, in order to make more crosses.
He was prodigious in his output of writing and sermons, all of which are not only profound, but eminently readable: his collected Sermons on the Song of Songs were my bedside reading for 18 months, some years ago.
It is St Bernard’s search, our search, for perfection—for God—that best encapsulates his life.
He was a seeker: he sought that treasure in heaven to which the gospel refers. He sought to follow Christ.
In our own vocational journeys of discernment, I tend to think of us all as fellow “seekers.”
In those moving sermons delivered to his fellow monks in the 12th century, St Bernard at one point remarks with great poignancy: “I used to seek with a hard and frozen heart Him whom my soul wished to love” (Sermon XVI).
The thawing of our hearts is often a necessary preliminary to true discernment; God’s plans for our lives do not always seem to coincide at first glance with what we ourselves have planned.
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” (Is 55:8-9).
Yet this continuous search for Christ is the defining characteristic of St Bernard: it is the golden thread that runs throughout his whole life.
One of Bernard’s students in the monastery eventually became pope: Eugene III, the first Cistercian pope.
Eugene, new to the role, asked his former teacher for advice on how to best exercise his authority as Supreme Pontiff, as chief shepherd of the universal church.
In response, St Bernard wrote a short work which has become a classic of the tradition: De Consideratione, On Consideration.
It is a masterful treatise, full of edifying advice on how to exercise leadership in a Christian context. Benedict XVI recommended it as compulsory reading for everyone in the church.
I have always been tremendously moved by the fact that, at the very end of those four short books—having written marvellous, penetrating things—St Bernard concludes:
“He must still be sought who has not yet sufficiently been found, and who cannot be sought too much; but He is perhaps more worthily sought and more easily found by prayer than by discussion. Therefore, let this be the end of the book but not the end of the search.”
That is a beautiful summation of our Christian vocation: we are forever seeking the way, the truth, the life, the light, that is Christ. St Bernard continued that search even into the grave.
When the bones of the saint were examined in 1855 there was found amongst them a wooden tablet, faced with parchment, upon which were inscribed the still legible words, “Fasciculus myrrhae dilectus meus mihi, inter ubera mea commorabitur” (A little bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me, he shall abide between my breasts (Song of Songs 1:13)).
The tablet upon which these words were written had a hook attached. The natural inference is that this tablet and those words hung in the saint’s cell and, after his death and perhaps in response to his own express wish, it had been laid upon his breast.
This would be perfectly in keeping with the way that Bernard lived his vocation; the way he lived the entirety of his Christian and religious life.
Years earlier, when commenting on Psalm 104—“Seek his face evermore”—St Bernard had written: “The psalmist implies, it seems to me, that even after God has been found he shall not cease to be sought.”
That is the best summation of vocation I have ever heard: we seek, we find, and yet we continue to seek where God is calling us.
“To be called,” implies continues movement towards the voice of the one calling.
“Vocation” and “discernment” are not things that ever truly end—we are always tending towards Christ, and trying to decide which path we should take.
Even once professed, ordained or married, we are continually called to discern where we are daily being asked to seek his face.
With that in mind, let this be the end of my article, but not the end of our search.