The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1913-07-05

/ gradually by the cumulative and
wave-like movements of interior fear
and love of God, is always sweet,
humble, tranquil, very devotional and
glad to obey; and withal it is hot to
act. But this last quality needs to be
moderated, less the very spark of
divine fire, as St. Francis de Sales
calls a vocation Letters to Persons
in the World, Mackey, p. 1S4), should
be trampled into darkness by head
long hurry. This is guarded against
by wise counsel, especially that of
ones father confessor His part is to
make Gods call manifestly certain;
and he does so largely by negative
means. He knows it to be doubtful
if not wholly fanciful, from various
reasons. Some of these are feeble
health, advanced years, Grass stupid
ty, and incuriably violent temper, or
plain evidence that the movement is
no more than the effervesence of an
emotional nature. Or he finds the
aspirant to be in the callow state Of
indeliberate youth. Or, again, he dis
covers (for the confessor should
know the person outside the confes-
sionaD him or her to be incuriably
eccentric The signal sounded in each
of such cases is to slow down; fol-
lowed often enough by that of a total
stop. The spiritual guide knows that
it is better for his penitent to weep
a few tears of regret for failure to
enter the seminary or the novitiate,
rather than be allowed to enter and to
shed whole flood of very bitter tears
when afterwards dismissed.
The confessor is, furthermore, a
painful witness of the divided will of
God-as we venture to call tin GER
tain cases. We mean true calling
interiorly, and a manifest hindrance
exteriorly. 1t may be the ill health
of the person, as already noted; it
may be that of bounden duty to stay
in the world to support parents or
other close kindred. In the long run
this is no hardship at all, for the no.
BILE aspirations God stirs within the
heart bear fruit in intention, and fin
ally are rewarded abundantly in Para
disc. The hindrances that He places
are but the lattices through which He
lovingly watches His spouse Can't.
H. 81. He builds and furnishes and
richly endows a cloister in the spirit
in all such cases, with, as experience
copiously proves, no inferior results
of inner and outer virtue. Mean
while, when vocations are the ques-
ton, directors are uniformly slow; to
settle vocation by snap judgment
is flying in the face of Providence.
No one in the wide world can have
so much to do with the beginnings OF
a vocation as parents. And their
place in this Office, so exceedingly
honorable, so vastly meritorious, is
often taken by loving sister or
brother A mothers weight of in
f1uence, cast into the scales when a
soul is balancing whether or not to
obey the divine voice, is decisive;
and a fathers cooperation is gener-
ally quite indispensable. These are
afterwards well rewarded. For what
spiritual joy can compare with that
of parents when, after years of self
forgetful toll, they see their beloved
boy offering for the first time the holy
sacrifice of the Mass upon their parish
altar. And how sweet is the death
bed which is soothed by the ministra
ton of ones own child.
How strange, then, that parents moi
seldom fail to perceive this theil
golden opportunity; that they will
never say word of suggestion or en-
couragement to their devout boy OF
girl, plainly well fitted for the sane
tuary or the convent; that they refuse
or half refuse their consent even tt
the end. We know of one mother who
actually followed her daughter to the
town in which the novitiate was sit
uated, took rooms in hotel there
and harried and prosecuted her ant
the Sisters necessarily, until she go
, her child out and carried her away;
mother born and bred Catholic
in easy circumstances, and with othel
, children and her husband at home.
The very reverse of this, ant
equally lamentable, is the folly o
, parents whose tyrannous piety forces
> their child into the priesthood or ;
community, state of life for whic1
: he or she has had no calling what
soever. The giant apostate of tina
: era of apostacy, the French revolu
ton, was Talleyrand, priest and
bishop, forced into the priesthood b,
family pressure and for wholly pre-
fame purposes.
But all such sacrilege, whether O
y undue influence, for, or cruel resist
l. ance to, vocation, are Offset hur
dred to one by the cooperation o
parents as wise as they are tender
I hearted. 1t very often involves year
g of self-denial to pay the way of tn
u boy through college, or to give up
e girl who is both the joy and the SUI
e port of a growing family, that sh
s may devote her life exclusively t
Jesus Christ and His poor in a relis
3 Gus order Instances of such sacr
e fee are, happily, frequently met will
IS And now let us return to our frs
N thought, namely, that the state of
g Christian is itself a high call to pc
p lection. The vast bulk of our ance
n tors, the martyrs of the early Churcl
a, were men and women whose home
n and families we're novitiates for tn
s high virtues of martyrdom. There
no condition of existence in whic