Is this even the right question to ask? I've tended to raise it in conversations geared toward helping a friend evaluate his or her life, deal with a challenging situation, or contemplate a change in his or her career, relationship situation, worship habits, involvement in the community, and so on. Yet turning this question back on myself usually seems a bit selfish. Why should I be so concerned about my own fulfillment when other responsibilities and needs solicit and attract my attention?
However, if I'm honest with myself, it was the sense of fulfillment that I encountered in the Jesuits whom I knew during my high school years, and in the priests and laypersons who served as Catholic chaplains at Dartmouth, that deepened in me the idea of a vocation. I had heard Christ's call fairly clearly during a semester in Prague, but in meeting and getting to know Jesuits who had embraced similar calls to religious life and priestly ministry, I grew in confidence and faith that I too could find, in accepting the invitation to be a Jesuit, the same measure of consolation and fulfillment that these men enjoyed.
Seven years into my ongoing formation process, returning to this question of fulfillment has brought some disturbance as well as direction. I'm still struggling to understand why a challenging teaching position didn't work out for me despite my best intentions, while the comparatively steep and swift learning curve in my current grant-writing assignment brings satisfaction as well as some lingering anxiety. When my short-term perspective presents constancy neither in abounding happiness nor in creeping despair, but rather in an often-changing mixture of successes and shortfalls, enthusiasm and error, I wonder what might bring a lasting sense of fulfillment, and whether or not I'd even recognize it. There's a certain ease in gravitating toward the things that I'm good at, and the situations in which I'm comfortable, but keeping myself confined to these areas is not the sort of existence that I desire, as I've learned from experiences that have pushed me beyond my comfort zone and my perceived limitations.
Autumn Woods
Hardwick, MA
The more I sit with this issue of fulfillment, the more I realize that it's not a feeling or goal I desire to attain; rather, it emerges as a validation of being in "the right place," doing "the right thing," recognizing a consistency between my vocation and my life, whether in an expansive sense or in a finite moment. St. Ignatius, in his spiritual writings, refers to this as "consolation"– a felt resonance among the mind, heart, and body that comes from being in relationship with God, living for the end for which one has been created, and moving toward the fullest possible expression of this unique identity and purpose that one has been given. I experienced this feeling often during my discernment process while at Dartmouth– serving as a catechist for fellow students, pursuing studies in human geography that touched on topics of community and environment, shepherding and accompanying a variety of friends and acquaintances through some deep darknesses, and amid weekly visits and cribbage games with residents of a local nursing home where I quietly volunteered for a few years. It has also occurred during countless experiences in my Jesuit formation– from working as an orderly on a terminal cancer ward to assisting with Holy Week liturgies in a rural Mexican village; from laboring to support the various programs of a dynamic Hispanic parish to memorizing the Gettysburg Address for a Civil War lesson in my 8th grade history class last year. Sometimes, consolation surprises me in a far more ordinary moment– today, for example, I felt it while walking down the hill from my house to the office, joining the footsteps of fellow Jesuits and other Holy Cross faculty and staff on a pleasant autumn morning.
The question above isn't entirely off the mark, yet praying with it has led me to recognize anew that such consolation tends to come not when I'm seeking to be fulfilled, but when I'm living in a way that's fulfilling. Such consolation feels most rewarding and most authentic when I'm responding to a call I've received, needs I've witnessed, or even a gust of creative inspiration... and when I'm able to appreciate God's subtle power and influence giving my words and actions the potential to expand and deepen beyond the range of my vision and influence. That grace is what I continue to see in the Jesuits whom I admire, the colleagues whom I respect, and the friends whom I value. That's the attitude I desire to have, the freedom I desire to experience, and the source of fulfillment that nourishes my vocation.
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