Living Our Vocation
“The will of God is the will that carries my will. God’s freedom allows me to be free. To find the will of God, do not look “out there”; drill down to the deepest depths of your own will, and there you will discover the will of God.” (Michael J. Himes, Doing the Truth in Love)
Powerful words! So, it begins, our discerning process many years ago, and it still goes on!
It all started back in the seventies, when our lives were turned upside down by what we believed to be a call from God. A call to sell our home, build a house with another family and live in community sharing all our belongings and working with the poor. A decision we were not making lightly, but knew we could not ignore what we were feeling. With a few friends, two priests, and two sons, we prayed, journaled and met often.
The desire consumed us. We prayed and discerned for one year. At the end of that year we knew we had to act; we just knew somehow it was right. Our pastor blessed us and our Bishop, Daniel Reilly, came for dinner and blessed our new home and prayed with us. He also sent a wonderful priest to be a spiritual guide for us.
So, it was that our journey began, our Exodus story, our exile. We were selling our home, packing up and leaving all that was familiar, safe and comfortable to us. We were about to embrace what we believed was our vocation, our calling… sharing our time, talent and treasure in a simple life of service.
We were scared, we were excited, we had moments of real fear! Some of our family members were sure we had lost our minds (maybe we had!) We lost some friends that just could not understand that we had a desire to live the Gospel. We explained how we believed in Acts 2:42, a life in community, where we would share our belongings as we tried to live the Gospel and reach out to those on the margins. To be a witness. And as Catherine de Hueck Doherty says in her book The Gospel without Compromise, “To be a witness means simply to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.”
Time moved on; we loved our church and stayed close. We were introduced to the secular Franciscans, third order. Once again, we felt our Lord was speaking to us. St. Francis had always been a part of us so we listened. After two years of formation we made our solemn promise before our Lord and our Church to live simply and follow the Rule of St. Francis; to serve and always work to rebuild our Church, together with our Fraternity.
The Rule of St. Francis for Seculars strengthens us to live the life we had been called to live. It gives us a place in the Church we love. There is a real joy in the depth of my heart. This is not to say there has not been a share of doubt, struggle, grief, betrayal… and questions at times. Some people, especially in our Church, were not always welcoming.
But again, I will say, the joy, the hope of knowing in our hearts we were trying to live out our vocation was enough. And, of course, our Lord always sent others to stand with us.
“You will know your vocation by the joy that it brings you. You will know. You will know when it is right.” (Dorothy Day)
-Submitted by Marilyn and Tony Pinto