A DISCOURSE UPON THE VOCATION TO THE ECCLESIASTICAL STATE: ADDRESSED TO THE YOUNG. INTENDING, my dear children, to consecrate yourselves to the holy ministry, you have, without doubt, carefully examined, whether it be God that has called you to a state into which Jesus Christ himself did not enter, without a mission from his Father, and into which no one has a right to enter without a mission from Jesus Christ: Sicut misit me Pater, et ego mitto vos. I suppose then that human considerations have had no share in a vocation, which is defiled and rendered illegitimate, by every mo tive that proceeds not from the spirit of God. I suppose that your early morals have not, by their irregularity, already announced to you, that you should never presume to thrust yourselves into the sanctuary, the formidable gates of which, were in ancient times open only to innocence, and into which innocence itself did not enter without trembling: I suppose, in fine, that the enlightened judges to whom, in the tribunal, you have confided the details of your past life, and the most secret inclinations of your heart, have discovered in you, as far as it is given to the limited and ever uncertain lights of mortals to penetrate; have, I say, discovered in you, the marks of a true vocation; that in assenting to your installation in the holy place, they believed they were concurring in the eternal designs of God upon you; that they presumed, that in presenting yourselves to the church, you offered nothing to her, but what the Lord himself had chosen; and that they have said to you, with a holy confidence, as Laban said, of old, to Eliezar: Ingredere benedicte Domini, cur foris stas ?* Come in, thou blessed of the Lord, why standest thou * Genesis. c. xxiv. v. 31. without? But if, on the other hand, my dear children, these essential conditions are wanting to your vocation; if, before presenting yourselves in this place, you have not long examined before God, whether the design of consecrating yourselves to the holy ministry, came from him; if the order and circumstances of your birth, have had a greater share in it, than the order of the Almighty and the impulse of his grace; if the hope of finding in the sanctuary, a situation more comfortable, more honourable and commodious than awaited you at home, has decided your choice; if your vocation has had its origin, in the arrangements and the cupidity of friends; if they have consulted their interests, rather than your inclinations and the interests of your salvation, and if the necessities of your family, and not those of the church, have given you to the altar, your vocation, which began in the flesh, will end in the flesh. It is cupidity that has dedicated you to the church, and it will not fail to stain the whole course of your ministry; you cannot be the Priest of Jesus Christ, who knows you not, and who has not sent you; you will be merely the Priest of your own passions, and of those of your relatives, from whom alone you have received your mission. When the relatives of Christ, according to the flesh, dazzled by views altogether carnal of his first miracles, and moved by the success of the opening of his mission, already conceiving the hope of a splendid fortune according to the world, and such is almost always the object of relatives: urge him to quit the obscurity of a village, and manifest himself to the world, on the occasion of a public solemnity in Jerusalem: Si hæc facis, manifesta teipsum mundo,* what does Christ answer them? that they are ever ready to counsel those who are allied to them by blood, such steps and pursuits as may be glorious and profitable to themselves; and that they regard neither the designs of God, nor whom He has chosen, nor the times he has marked for the manifestation of his choice; that all times are good, and all persons equal in their eyes, provided they may contribute to the advancement of their earthly projects of ambition and fortune. In effect, every thing seems good to carmal parents: suppose a child vicious, born with inclinations altogether opposed to the sanctity of the ministry; yet, if his priest *John. c. vii. v. 4. hood promises to him and to them, temporal advantages; behold their time and their vocation; they heed no other: Tempus vestrum semper est paratum; tempus autem meum nondum advenit.* But the time of Jesus Christ is rarely the same as their's; and woe to those who do not await it; woe to those who anticipate it; woe to those who take the voice of flesh and blood for the voice of heaven, and confound the time of cupidity with the hour of grace: Tempus vestrum semper est paratum; tempus autem meum nondum advenit. Purity of motive is, then, the first mark of a vocation. But although you should have no reproach to make yourselves, on the score of your mo¬ tives; although an inclination from childhood, for the church, were to bespeak their purity; you ought still to ask yourselves, whether your morals hitherto have pronounced this early inclination to be the impulse of grace, rather than a mere impression of nature; for the second mark of a vocation is innocence of morals. You ought to examine, whether an innocent life has prepared you for this holy step; whether those John. c. vii. v. 6. |