Making Contact with a Vocation Director

Wow! such a post! I usually don’t comment on this great blog because I feel that language is an obstacle for me, but this time I’ll do my best cause I really feel like responding. I felt so touched by your experience on making contact, I think the making contact bit was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life (and I’ve experienced plenty and varied experiences) I have a particular problem when it comes to speaking… I mean, to talking to someone about something going on in my heart, and I have a deep but loud silence which tortures me each and every time I try to ssay something. So, imagine when I found out I had to make contact with someone I didn’t know at all and had to talk with her about my deepest secret, about the one thing that no one new about.You may imagine what a task it was, but by means of prayer everything is possible, so I finally managed and asked one nun to be my vocation director, cause in many retreats I had learned how important it was if I wanted to move on in my discernment process, otherwise I’d just stay there waiting for something to fall from the sky eventually, and that was not happening, lol.
I agree with you when you say that making this step was, by it self very important, I felt I had given a big step on my processes after a long while of staying still.
That’s pretty much my experience. Now I’d like to ask you some questions, some things that worry me lately and that make me feel like I’m staying still again.
I feel my director is not accompanying me enough, I mean she’s great and everything, I’ve even gone to the house of the sisters and stayed there for some time, but we live pretty far away from each other and when I see her she says she’ll call me, she’ll send me some files she sends for discernment but she sent me the two first and she insists she’ll send me the third one but I’m still waiting… I feel in my particular case I need someone to be much closer to me cause I find it very difficult to open my heart… even to myself… You mentioned you had two directors, you think maybe I’d need an other one? maybe a priest? or maybe I should tell my director something, what could it be? I’m kind of lost here…
Thanks!
Greetings from Argentina!

What a great post, Julie. Yes our primary concern is to help inquirers get to know the sisters and brothers in the community. In addition, we engage in the ministry of listening and accompanying.

Sometimes vocation directors where several hats, so if you are hoping to receive some materials, I would suggest that you drop your vocation director a note or email . . . . or phone him or her. I’ve often said, “You really have to want to do this!” I said that when I was in the discernment process and in the formation process. And after I became a vocation director, I believed it all the more. For it is the gentle work of the Holy Spirit that goes on in an inquirer’s heart that is important . . . so it is not our job to coax, but to be present.

Also, I always expect women in discernment to have a spiritual director, and meet with her or him every month. If you are feeling a little bereft of accompaniment, I think you would find that helpful. A spiritual director can help you sort out your feelings, and help you discover how God is speaking to you through the attention or inattention of your vocation director.

It was sixteen years ago that I entered religious life. And while it’s not always easy, I recognize that life itself is not easy, whether one is married, single, or a religious.

I can still say, “I love being a sister!”

My experience with making contact is that I get nervous but at the same time I am excited. I have only done it once but I didn’t have any questions until after I was done talking to her. She had called me. Now I want to call her but I now I have to wait 3 years before considering coming on a retreat, so I haven’t. I became Catholic at the Easter Vigil but felt called before I even started RCIA. I have emailed vocation directors and have had gotten some good advice. All them want me to come on a visit. It is just that my parents won’t allow it for awhile. They are apposed to me even thinking about a religious vocation. They did not want me to become Catholic for that matter. I was thinking today, Mary was also the one who brought me to the Catholic faith. I haven’t talked to them in awhile because they want me to come visit but I cannot. what should I do? I feel God is trying to tell me to let go of it and to fully depend on him for my vocation. Thanks for this post.
God Bless

“It was like my secret was finally going to be out in the open which was not only terrifying but kind of a relief. I didn’t know what would come of all that but I knew that if I didn’t respond to this nudging of God’s Spirit (no matter how crazy it all seemed to me) then I might miss something.”

YES!

I had been going on retreats held by the 2 vocation directors for almost a year before I finally told one of them. They invited me to a dinner/discussion with a girl who was doing a live-in week and a few of the younger sisters. As I listened to their vocation stories, I felt like each one was speaking about a part of me. The next day I met with one of the directors because I was freaking out about everything. During out talk, I finally managed to get out, “Well… or even… religious life.” I couldn’t even look at her, but I breathed a sigh of relief. She then told me that she had figured that I was thinking about religious life for a while. Of course she knew.

I had to tell her/someone because I felt like if I didn’t give it a chance that I’d be missing something.

And that’s where I am right now. still discerning and figuring it all out and, yes, still freaking out. Thanks Sr. Julie for this post!

I called a vocation director pretty early on in my discernment, but I was very nervous about it because I didn’t know how the conversation was ’supposed’ to go. I actually phoned a random vocation director, who was in a totally different part of the country from me and part of a community that I didn’t feel called to at all, so that I could hang up and pretend it never happened if I bungled the conversation or asked stupid questions. I was anxious that I would sound dumb for misusing vocabulary (for example, I couldn’t figure out when it was appropriate to use synonyms like ‘order’ versus ‘community’ versus ‘congregation’ versus ‘religious institute’) so I figured that it would be sort of practice run for when I talked to the sisters I really felt called to. Now it seems silly to have worried so much! Vocation directors are happy to talk to everyone, including people in the earliest stages of discernment, and vocabulary certainly has nothing to do with it. Besides, once I got over those initial butterflies, I settled into the comfort of knowing that discerning with a vocation director isn’t about making an impression… it’s just about looking into the hopes of God in life.

After that initial random call across the country, I had enough confidence to ask to go on a retreat with the sisters in my city with whom I really felt I shared a charism. That’s the first time I met the vocation director, and it was really great. There were four or five of us on the retreat, but the vocation director took the time to talk to each of us individually a few times during the weekend. It was a really nice opportunity to ‘check in’ on a more individual basis, share my sense of where I was with God in discernment of religious life, pray together, and basically have the opportunity for the three of us – God, the vocation director, and me – to be on the same page about how we were all feeling about the discernment. It was all very open and honest and reasonable, and I was very glad that I met her and the other sisters in person. As someone said above, one of the most important things the vocation director did was introduce me to her other sisters and now I have spent a lot of time with them and I really feel that I know them. I’ve known the sisters for two years now. I need to finish one more year at college to graduate, but then I hope to apply and enter.

I second everyone: great post, Sister J.

Sister Pat, I appreciate your hope that discerners have a spiritual director in addition to a vocation director for the reasons that you state.

I think it is important for another reason, which I find difficult to articulate. So let me apologize upfront for my clumsiness and the possibility that some may be offended by what I am about to say.

I see discernment as having two (at least two) very distinct chapters: 1) Am I called to religious life and – if yes – am I willing to explore, and eventually, answer that calling. If all the answers in Chapter 1 are YES, then we move to Chapter 2: To what order am I called? To what order will I say YES? What order will say YES to me?

I know that each of us experiences these Chapters differently (2 before 1; both at the same time; etc.) and that is God’s business, not any of ours. In those instances, the vocation director at a specific order may end up serving, quite successfully, the role of Vocation Director and Spiritual Director.

That said, I personally think that the two roles should be separate. I am trying to come up with an example as to why I think that.
I’ll keep thinking while I write the following, which is where I think a Sister could be offended and I hope, if someone is, that she will give me the opportunity to talk it through with her:

I am a social worker. Our professional/ethical training that emphasizes that the therapist/counselor/guide should have one role and one role only in a person’s life as a means of avoiding any conflict of interest on the part of the counselor/guide. Bottom line, we are taught that each and every one of us we MUST take every possible precaution so that our needs never drive the substance of the relationship and, thus, the counseled or guided person’s decision-making, etc. The potential consequences can be grave, so we are obligated to avoid the worst kind of “dual relationship” (sexual, romantic, inappropriate financial, etc.) by making a commitment to avoid ALL dual relationships, even the most mundane (you don’t counsel your mother’s second cousin and you don’t buy a couch from your “10am Thursday appointment”).

I see spiritual direction as a form of “counseling” and I think the same care is necessary. And here is my example. Let’s say a person is ready to check out a nagging sense the sense that she is supposed to be a religious sister. She contacts the Vocation Director at Order X and asks for accompaniment in discerning that basic call. They are moving along and conclude that the calling is indeed that of the Holy Spirit. In the process, the discerner begins to discover she is increasingly comfortable ——– spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, in every sense comfortable ————- with the Catholic culture and views typically called “conservative or traditional” but her Vocation Director/spiritual director is committed (personally and congregationally) to the Catholic culture and views typically called “liberal or progressive”. Or the reverse: the discerner finds she is leaning toward a “liberal or progressive” culture/theology and her Vocation Director/Spiritual Director is committed (personally and Congregationally) to the more conservative culture/theology.

Ideally, the discerner is brave enough and comfortable enough to tell her Vocation Director/Spiritual Director about the middle-of-the-night epiphanies and doubts and questions that carry her away from the Sister’s (and Order’s) public views and may, in fact, lead the discerner to believe the Sister (and Order and all those who hold the Sister’s culture/theology) are just plain incorrect/misguided/misinformed, etc.

Ideally, the Vocation Director/spiritual director is a master at absolutely spiritual/theological/doctrinal neutrality and is able to guide the discerner in a deeper exploration of the Catholic culture/theology that meets the discerner’s needs, even when it contradicts that of the director.

I think it is unwise to count on those ideal responses. I think discernment is too important to risk this scenario:

The discerner begins to silence her differences … for any number of reasons: she fears loss of the relationship; she wants to please her director; her heart is invested in her nuns and does not ant to risk having to give them up; she is ashamed of her questions; she fears her epiphanies because they challenge the basics of her Sister’s life as a nun, etc.

And the Sister is presented with a very difficult reality: she is obligated as SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR to help the young woman fully engage in her doubts, questions, epiphanies and challenges to the very details of the Sister’s theology, spirituality, daily life. She is obligated to “see the young woman through” this evolution in a way that is focused on helping the young woman discover who SHE is as a religious woman, even if that creates chasms out of the differences between discerned and director and ends the Sister having to facilitate, through hour after hour, a Sister-to-be’s adoption of beliefs and a way of life that seriously challenge and contradict the Sister’s most dearly held beliefs and choices. Transition to a different spiritual director makes sense but that must be done carefully, lovingly, probably slowly so that there is no suggestion of rejection, judgment, abandonment simply because the discerner’s very real calling is in a direction that could present a genuine challenge to the director’s, so much so that every meeting between spiritual director and discerner puts them on opposite ends of any of spectrums.

I personally think that is expecting much more of discerners (younger ones, especially) and Vocation Directors than is fair or appropriate.
And that is just one example.

Thus, my hope would be that all Vocation Directors would encourage
ALL discerners to find a spiritual director who is NOT also a Vocation Director for a women’s religious order.

This is not a judgment: I am not saying discerners and nuns could not achieve the ideal. I am merely saying that humans are humans and we struggle mightily with achieving any and every ideal in relationship. The holiness of nuns is perhaps in that they struggle longer and harder than most of the rest of us. But ideals in relationship present a struggle for each and every one of us, discerners and nuns included, and it makes sense to protect these beautiful relationships – spiritual direction and vocation direction – as much as possible by separating them until the discerner has chosen her Congregation and no longer needs a “vocation director” per se .

And that way, the Spiritual Direction is for the discernment of life and relationship with God and the Vocation Director is for the discernment of life and relationship with a specific Order (and that discernment, of course, furthers discernment of life and relationship with God).

So, Sister Pat, I like your suggestion and hope it is generally recommended to discerners.

jean

Sister Julie – Have a wonderful week at home with your sisters. I think it would be great to have a companion post about spiritual directors. For me, the separation has been not particularly of my doing: my spiritual director is a priest so there is no way the two roles could be held by one person and I could not get confused nor could they.

The larger issue came to my attention when it became clear that my spiritual director feels very strongly that I need to be looking at orders that wear the traditional pre-VII habit. He is very disappointed that I am not. He thinks it is a mistae that I am not. And he knows his opinion and disappointment are not going to change my decision-making on this, though our discussions and the substance of his concern and the process of our differences provide plenty of protein-rich food for my own spiritual development in a whole host of ways. Were I not 46 and accustomed to holding my own with authority figures in my professional life, this would be very painful and I know my discernment would be stunted because I could not have said, “Padre, it aint happening but let’s talk about it anyway because we can both learn from our differences on this”.

That said, as I have gotten to know various orders, I have come up with all kinds of questions and realizations about what works for me or not, and I can take those back and hash them out in very stark and emotional terms with Padre until I am at the nut of it all————–and several times I have known that I could not have said, “Sister, I am terribly, terribly uncomfortable with this practice in your community for these spiritual reasons and I want you to hash it out with me spiritually, even though we can both probably predict right now that we will never agree on this and the divide may be deep”. I can, however, go back to Padre and say what I have to say about my experiences with various orders and I can thrash and be confused and question every detail and challenge the very cornerstone of the Order……….without any concern that I am hurting him, being rude, being critical, that it will turn into an emotionally-laden theological deabte (except on the habit) or end up severing the relationship.

Anyway, Sister J, I think your idea of a companion piece is a great idea.

jean

It was actually the internet that helped me make the leap. I too enjoyed Vision Guide and, for those Canadians out there, vocations.ca. The internet allowed me to explore religious life anonymously. I remember staying up most of the night because I didn’t want my roommate to see what I was reading. I found a lot of answers to my initial questions.
It also allowed me to discover different “Come and See” weekends and that was usually the way that I would make contact with the Vocation Director. It seems easier for me to ask to come and visit them to say that I was interested in Religious life.
But in the end, God had other plans. I ended up moving to a different city and I was looking for a place to live temporarily. It was then that I met the community that I am now with. I lived with them for 6 months before officially entering. But even then I had to make the leap and tell the vocation director that I may be interested in joining the community.

I believe that the Lord has all sorts of ways to help us find our path.

Sister Hidegard,

Thank you for your support. I love my spiritual director – he is just right for me because he does challenge me mightily, which I need – AND you nailed it: he is **very** directive and very orthodox and, for those reasons, I would not recommend him for a young woman in discernment. He is, however, profoundly in love the Eucharist, with Jesus, with Jesus’ profound sacrificial love for us. He is also one of the few priests I have encountered who routinely (though “tastefully” and appropriately) uses his own struggles, “dominant sins” (or faults), failures, etc., as teaching tools for his parishioners. It is an overwhelming thing for me to see this man – with his tremendous sense of pride and a tendency toward impatience and anger – humble himself again and again as he speaks of Jesus’ love for us even as we fail and most especially as we see forgiveness and reconciliation and as we pursue reparations for the harm and hurt we have unleashed on the world as we pursued our own misguided but human paths. His humility and holy love of Christ inspire deep love from those of us who have a taste for his passion. I know he believes “the habit” represents total sacrifice (this is a 40 year old priest with a black belt in karate and a wonderfully dramatic humor who is most often dressed in a cassock. He is not afraid to acknowlegde that he does feel the loss of a wife’s company when he wakes some mornings. I am deeply moved by his presence and his deep love of Christ. He does not love sacrifice. He loves Jesus Christ. And, thus, he is committed to sacrifice. His desire for me to “wear the habit” is an expression of love for me and Jesus: he wants me to experience and GIVE total love. I understand where he is coming from and I trust that, though he may always worry for me, his own spiritual world and understanding of total sacrifice will expand as he sees, through whatever community I eventually join, the holiness of nuns who “do not wear the habit”.

We do have a bit of a joke that I might do better to wear “the habit” because it would remind ME that I am a nun and should not flirt. It is a joke and it is a playful acknowledgement of who I am by nature. I find that my crucifix, which I wear so that it is visible, is sufficient reminder when I need it (which is when I am in the company of delightful men. My spiritual director has been fabulous in his ability to hear and see that I am a tremedously sexual person by nature and that I know that “sexuality” is about energy and passion for relationship and not “just” sex. I will never forget his happy words, after giving a retreat and several of us were decompressing with him, “this is where I get my human intimacy”. I loved the depth and joyfulness of that statement. It was a kicker in my discernment. Trade in “sex” for that? Absolutely. Sign me up.)

It is much to the credit of this very orthodox priest that he continues with me, even though I am a yankee feminist liberal who is not likely to ever be anything but a Roman Catholic sister who strives for deep and abiding love of Jesus and his people, which does not – in my view – require a rejection of either my feminist theology or his orthodox one.

And, as you say, his beliefs about the habit could **absolutely** get in the way of the Holy Spirit for many, many, many other women discerners and I would not recommend him in that role.

Thanks again for the support, Sister Hildegard. It means a lot to me.

Jean

I just spent a week with an order and was really thrilled to hear the vocation director initiate a discussion about the reasons why a discerner needs both a spiritual director and a vocation director. Her honesty about the reality that, while she would always try to advocate for the discerner, the reality is that she is ultimately responsible to her congregation and its desire to sustain and grow and that the two – her desire and her obligation – could create a very real conflict of interest.
Her straightforwardness about that – her need to be honest with me about the boundaries of the relationship and her role within it – was deeply compelling to me as both symbol and sign of “right relationship”. She fully “owned” this specific tension that is inherent in vocation direction and, in communicating it to me, allowed me to fully own my experience of and response to that tension. I was absolutely thrilled and it was one of the many “click” moments for me with this order: so many indicators of of active intention toward “right relationship”.

I did come to the conclusion, as we talked, that I need to seek out a female spiritual director at this point in my discernment, not because of any problem with my current spiritual director but because of changing needs and questions as I transition to a new phase of my own spiritual life.

Sister Julie, thanks again for this great website.

Sister Julie – Thank you! I loved the prayers, the songs, the music, the discussions that raised issues and specific questions I had been chewing on (how wonderful to discover that some of the sisters were also chewing on them !), their ministries, the way they spoke of their lives and choices and the jokes (!). I loved the simple room in which I stayed and the simple beauty of the Convent Chapel with the Blessed Sacrament. It was a lovely, lovely week and it gave me goose bumps, too. Jean