Life is difficult. I steal this from the first line of Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled because it is simply the most appropriate way I know to begin a written exploration of what it means to me to be giving my life over to Jesus Christ. Part of what makes life difficult for us, as young people, is the multiplicity we find in our American world. There are so many directions for our lives to take and, yet, we are to find the will of God amidst all of this? We may feel tugged in a million different directions at once as we try to please our parents, our friends, our pastor, the old ladies at daily Mass, our grandparents, and even (or especially?) ourselves. Where does God fit in for us? Perhaps it's easy, at this point, to simply assume that God's will for me is whatever makes me happy. I could agree with that. But what exactly is happiness? I'm willing to bet that our perceptions of this word are varied and even flawed, in its essence. So what do we mean by happy? How does one become happy? Is it merely the actualization of every physical, emotional, and sexual desire we have? Can happiness be reduced to a mathematical formula, applicable to each and every person? Is happiness just about me getting exactly what I want when I want it?

All of these questions and concerns collide with one another simultaneously when the issue of vocation, the call of God in and through His only Son, Jesus Christ, is raised. Jesus calls each and every person (yes, EVERYBODY) by name to a specific life of service in order to build up His body, the Church. One may think in terms of vocation when considering anything in life, for God pervades all and nothing, absolutely NOTHING, is disconnected from Him in any way. As college-age young adults, we are especially hungering to find Christ, for all practical purposes, in the more important “life decisions,” including an academic major, career, and especially what state of life one will permanently occupy on earth, be it single, married, consecrated, or ordained. I will, in no way, attempt to address each of these topics individually; but what I do write will automatically (though perhaps indirectly) point in that direction. Here we go.

So here we are, as young people, standing on the threshold of the rest of our lives. The decisions we make today and in the next few years will, for the most part, make all the difference as to who we will be, what we will be doing, who we will be doing it with, and where all of this is happening for decades from now. We look ahead and see a myriad of options- academic majors, summer jobs, extracurricular activities, possible careers, marriage partners, places to go, things to do, etc. We owe much of this, and thus the confusion we experience that follows to our industrialized, specialized, Western, American culture. I was driving down Coldwater Road the other day and a small church had written on its billboard, “Everyone ends up somewhere in life, very few end up somewhere on purpose.” This really got me thinking about the danger inherent in a culture of such extreme multiplicity. So how do we, as people of faith, avoid a kind of paralysis or, perhaps worse, a kind of indifference that leads us to wherever the wind takes us?

At the seminary, Fr. Fabian, my logic professor and the living legend at the university, repeated on several occasions during class, even if only directed towards fostering good study habits, “We must maintain simplicity amidst multiplicity.” So the obvious study implication is that we would simplify the sheer amount of information we receive in class in a way that makes it more easily studied and remembered. I'd like to propose that this same quote can be applied to this extreme multiplicity present in each and every one of our lives. We must learn to be simple. Our lives must truly reflect a desire to boil every experience down to one consistent and pure medium for reflection and examination.

For me, this simplicity is ultimately bound to the spiritual life. No matter what goes on in my day and no matter how many directions I may feel pulled, I will always regularly turn to prayer and offer these experiences and emotions to the Master Himself. Only He can give me the grace necessary to continue to move on and deliberately choose His will and follow it in the concrete reality of daily life. Developing a more mature, consistent, and deep life of prayer is perhaps the simple answer to the complex question regarding what one should do with his or her life. As young people, if we realize this now and if we answer the invitation to actually do so in the everyday life of prayer in complete fidelity to our good God, we will surely hear God's call and find ourselves deliberately and faithfully following it each and every day. Restated, finding God's will and having the grace to follow it presupposes a mature, consistent, and deep life of prayer.

I find this affirmed, and probably better articulated, in two quotes taken from Pope Benedict XVI's address to young Dutch Catholics on November 27, 2005:

Dear friends, Jesus is your true friend and Lord; enter into a relationship of true friendship with him! He is expecting you and in him alone will you find happiness.

-and later-

How easy it is to be content with the superficial pleasures that daily life offers us; how easy it is to live only for oneself, apparently enjoying life! But sooner or later we realize that this is not true happiness, because true happiness is much deeper:

We find it only in Jesus.

It really is easy to be content with superficial pleasures. What are yours? Parties? Food? Movies? Sports? They don't necessarily need to be “bad,” they need only distract us from our true happiness- Jesus Christ.

So, to address what I was asking before, it seems obvious that happiness is most certainly not the mere actualization of our wants and desires. Happiness is Jesus Himself. Only in relationship with Him do we find true happiness. With this in mind, it seems appropriate to address loneliness. Everyone is lonely. It is part of the human experience. Reliable sources have even told me that married persons and celibate persons will both admit to feeling lonely just as often. Loneliness does not discriminate. Marriage does not promise to remove loneliness; and it doesn't even promise to make you lonely any less than someone who is not married. So we can debunk any idea that another person, be it a friend or especially a spouse, can fulfill us. Only Jesus Christ can do this. If you are lonely and are thus desperately looking for a relationship to throw yourself at in hopes of feeling less lonely and more fulfilled, you would be wise to pick Jesus Christ as the object of these thoughts and actions. If, however, the object is another person then there is no logical way you will find true peace and happiness, for you are pursuing the creation in place of the Creator Himself. Keeping this in mind, a paradox emerges: once we find peace amidst the pain of loneliness in Christ, we are so much more capable of entering into a mutual, loving relationship with another person because we have a powerful confidence about ourselves and are capable of being truly happy, whether we are with or without another person. This is truly attractive when found in someone. We should all desire that kind of confidence in our relationship with God.

In light of this, I'm sorry to say it- but our culture's idea of romance and dating could almost be thrown out the window. And I don't only mean the picture we get of a disordered sexuality- I trust you know enough about that already. But romance, in general, can become an idol. Modern movies portray a passionate, emotionally charged, and fantasy-like kind of love much more often than a faithful-even-through-hard-times and servant-like kind of love. For example, the idea that we could not live without another person is a flat-out lie. Sure something like this can cause one's heart to flutter and feel tingly and very good; but that doesn't mean it's true. As responsible Christians, we need to be keenly aware of how these “philosophies of men...but not of Christ” (see Colossians 2:8) affect the way we desire romance, making sure to always keep them in check with the greater scope of God's plan for us as human beings. We are created for so much more than shallow Westernized romance.
Now desires. These, as I understand them, are quite tricky. They really are innately and essentially good- we always desire the Good in something; but, thanks to original sin, we can suffer misordered desires for a counterfeit and lower good. The simple answer to this, once again, is prayer. Only in prayer can we discern the spirits active in our desires as coming from 1) ourselves, 2) Satan, or 3) God. Recognizing this takes time and sometimes even a spiritual director to help you work through these things over a longer period of time. All in all, though, we must form a habit of taking specific desires to prayer and giving them to God. His Spirit is marked primarily by peace. The fruits of His Spirit working in desires are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (see Galatians 5:22-23). Follow the desires that are of God.

In conclusion, life is difficult, life is complicated, and life is confusing; but we must never lose sight that life is absolutely beautiful. Jesus Christ calls each and every one of us , by name, to fulfill a mission in order to build up His body, the Church. The simple answer to the anxiety and confusion we experience now is to respond to Christ's invitation to grow in maturity of prayer. We must enter into the deepest parts of our human experience- the pain, the joy, the desires, the longings, the emotions- and find the consolation He so desperately wants to give us, especially if it is in solidarity with His death on the cross. Do not lose heart! We must always hold fast to the anchor of hope and be assured that God never leaves our side. Following God's will promises TRUE happiness, both now and for all eternity. Turn to Christ, He will not fail you.

"It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choice that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society."
Pope John Paul the Great, World Youth Day 2000, Rome

By Chris Lapp

02/10/06