Thoughts on Vocation by Walter Ciszeck, S.J.

"...Any young man or woman who has felt called to a vocation and then hesitated, wondering if the call is genuine, knows the agonies of such second thoughts and how powerful counter arguments can be. Reasons and rationalizations boil through your mind. There are present and future responsibilities toward family and friends to think of, thoughts of the good to be done at home or in other possible ways of serving God and man, mistrust about the motives swaying the mind now this way and now that, doubts about one's abilities to live up to the call (and even about the call itself), vague fears for the future and very real fears of making a mistake right here and now, knowing a decision must be made and yet knowing, too, that it involves a committment from which there can be no turning back, something that will change the whole course of your life. Men faced with the possibility of a new and perhaps better job, women considering a proposal to marry, parents planning a move of one sort or another, teenagers trying to decide their future in a changing world — all knowing the troubling turmoil of doubts and fears, of competing reasons and of answers, that can afflict the mind and paralyze the will in such a situation..."

..."I was tortured by these questions and these arguments. They made sense both logically and spiritually, and I knew they were more than mere rationalizations. The mind comes up with rationalizations to justify for itself a decision taken without sufficient reason, or to justify doing what the will has already determined for itself that it is going to do. That is why such rationalizations are often suspect, why motives must always be examined so carefully. But these were arguments against doing what I knew I wanted to do, these were questions based on fact and on reality, and they were valid arguments. Everyone who has to weigh the choice of the vocation against some call of family, or who has had to weigh the value of some future course or vision against the demanding realities of the present, knows the force of the dilemma that troubled me then.

Abraham, called by God to leave behind everything he knew and cherished in order to set out for an unknown land on the strength of a vague promise, must have known the full force of such counter arguments. Or again, when called by God to sacrifice his son Isaac, who embodied the very fulfillment of that original promise, how could Abraham be so sure of the will of God? How can anyone be sure? I guess we can't be sure, but must go with faith. All of us would make good fathers, good employees, good employers, and good husbands. However, the greatest good found within our hearts for those of us exploring the call is to answer yes in faith to accept the priesthood. We have to be young Abraham, willing to sacrifice it all 'for the greater glory of God.'"

Taken from He Leadeth Me by Walter Ciszeck, S.J., an American Jesuit who was imprisoned in Russia for 23 years.