Every young man and woman wishes to achieve something in life time, and some are more ambitious than others, but we could come across very few young men and women who have no goal in life. Some would like to become doctors, some engineers, some business persons, and some others computer experts. Those who think moderately might like to confine themselves to humbler of offices, such as teaching, and the daring one’s might like to restrict themselves with agriculture.
Very rarely do we come across young people thinking of opting a way of life which looks at reality beyond the tip of their noses. How many young men and women in a particular class room might wish to follow the life of renunciation and service to God and humanity? One should be surprised to find such a person today.
If the number of young men and women opting to offer their lives unconditionally to the service of God and neighbor, then most of the prestigious institutions run by missionaries might need to be closed. Providentially there are still men and women who think beyond what an ordinary, average young man or woman might think, and choose a way of life which might be considered an utterly wrong decision and even stupid at that.
But the fact is that most of the young people today do not consider this way of life at the service of God at an early stage in life; most of them might think about it only something shocking and life-changing takes place, and they cannot but choose this way of life, as in the case of an important pillar of the Church, St Paul.
The call to follow the path of renunciation could be dramatic and unambiguous. But the percentage of people joining religious and clerical state is very few. Most people might find this one of the avenues open to them to explore. Some might even find themselves entering into a wrong path and might feel it hard to return to take the path that they recognize as made for them.
A young religious once spoke to me about her childhood ambition to become a physician, popular and earn a lot of money. But she could not pursue her dream because of the financial constrains put on her family. She then joined a religious congregation and has joyfully completed her novitiate, pronounced her first vows, and has font hopes that one day her Provincial Superior would allow her to pursue her dream of becoming a physician. She said that when she expressed her childhood dream to her Novice Mistress, the nun seems to have told the youngster that she might be allowed to do studies in medicine when the appropriate time comes.
Unfortunately the young religious is living with the false hope given her and feels one day she might be able to realize her dream of becoming a physician. But what about her two other aspirations – to become famous and to earn a lot of money? Even if she is allowed to study medicine and become a physician to work in a dispensary or a hospital, how will she ever realize these two dreams?
What the youngster has not realized is that the kind of value system that she still holds close to her heart is very different from the value system of the Kingdom of God, which every consecrated man and woman is expected to embrace.
St Ignatius of Loyola in his classical The Spiritual Exercises presents in a contemplation on Two Standards the values of the kingdom vis-à-vis of the world. The world considers as great values riches, honor/prestige and pride, as opposed to the dearest values of Jesus, poverty, humiliations/contempt and humility. It is then not hard to recognize where the young religious stands as far as the value systems are concerned.
Those who hold the dreams of their childhood or youth days close to their hearts have two options open to them : if the value system that their dreams represent are diametrically opposed to that of the kingdom of God, then they should give up such dreams in order to pursue a different dream that would keep them close to Jesus and his kingdom values. The second option is that they should quit the religious life and find another way of life which would give them enough avenues to realize their dreams.
Any ambition, however holy it might be, is contrary to the cherished values of the Kingdom of God, because they might put the persons in the forefront instead of presenting God and his holy action in their lives as of prime importance.
It is quite easy to camouflage deep-seated ambitions, which are worldly, and present them as positive values oriented towards furthering of the kingdom of God. Thus there could be persons who might aspire to occupy certain positions in the administration of the congregation or to head the most prestigious institutions and claim that they desire this only to better serve God and his people. Such people might be disappointed when they do not get the position they are aspiring for, and it is beyond all doubt that such a value is far from that of the Kingdom values of Jesus.
What every religious is invited to is to empty themselves of all the castles they had been building in the air before they responded to the call of God, and stand before him with their tabula rasa, so that God might write on them what he wants.
Those who keep their hearts filled with worldly values may only find that they do not have a place to offer to God, and thus God might be just an outsider continuously knocking at their hearts, so that he could find a place in them and live as Emmanuel. That is the reason why any worldly value would be incompatible with the values of the Kingdom of Christ.
Jesus had a dream, which he articulates in his Messianic Manifesto, found in the fourth chapter of the Gospel according to Luke, and if at all a religious has to have a dream, it has to be in conformity with the dream of Jesus, and it is only then they would partake of the mission of Jesus and can pride in being the disciples of the master.