The Need to Be Chosen! Part of My Journey Back to the Seminary

When I left the seminary 3 years ago I had much peace and joy in leaving as I did for the love of the Lord.  I didn't leave in discord or anger.  This confounded many of my close friends who saw many of my gifts and talents as a sign calling me to the priesthood.  For even I understood that gifts are given to individuals for the sake of others and not self!  But I truly had confirmation in leaving, through my love of the Lord and through the intercession of a St. Joseph, I felt called to leave the seminary!  But if that is the case, then why am I back? Great question!

If I had to try explain it, I would say the Lord wanted me to feel His calling to the priesthood.  He didn't want me to just go through the motions in becoming a priest, but have the desire of the Church in my heart to become a priest!  This comes with being chosen by the Lord.  Trust me, if I wasn't called, the celibate life is not something I would choose freely.  But I am, however, willing to enter into the espousal love with the Lord and His Church.  That is a life I would gladly accept!

To be chosen, to feel chosen is a gift and it is something lost in our culture!  Do we as Christians believe we are chosen? Chosen to be God's sons and daughters? What happens when we lose that sense of being chosen?  I think our culture reveals it, a sense of despair and desperation.  Philip Rieff in his book The Triumph of the Therapeutic hits this point;

"There is no more feeling more desperate than that of being free to choose, and yet without the specific compulsion of being chosen...This is one way of stating the difference between gods and men.  Gods choose; men are chosen.  What men lose when they become as free as gods is precisely that sense of being chosen, which encourages them, in there gratitude, to take their subsequent choices seriously"

Remember the story of humanity?  Remember the story of Adam and Eve?  Didn't the serpent tell them if they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil that they would become like God himself?  We, constantly battle this!  We constantly grasp at things and forget that the Lord has chosen us from the very beginning!  If we can grasp this understanding, then the response to his love is easy! 

In my call back to the seminary, I'm diving back into the beauty of being chosen.  Not to the idea of being chosen for the priesthood, as beautiful as that is, but to being His son.  I will continue to surrender to the Lord and pray that He will fulfill what he started in my re-application to the seminary!  And if I do one day become a priest, I believe JPII's response to a similar question, "why the priesthood?" will have to be my answer: “I am often asked, especially by young people, why I became a priest. I must begin by saying that it is impossible to explain entirely. For it remains a mystery, even to myself. How does one explain the ways of God!”