Life As Vocation
Julián Carrón - Life as Vocation. Julián Carrón.
Notes in English, unrevised by the Author. Source: https://youtu.be/Jte2YVimHrM
All circumstances are factors in our vocation. Even a start at 03:30 in the afternoon, after a busy morning, can become a valuable opportunity to discover the extent of what we experience.
Life as vocation
What is vocation? It is the way to understand the value of circumstances and walk toward destiny. According to Giussani, living vocation means tending to the destiny for which life is made.
This destiny is a mystery: it cannot be described or imagined, because the same mystery that gives us life fixes it. We do not decide it.
A destiny of happiness
What is the destiny that is fixed for us and the mystery that gives us life? Our fulfillment, our happiness.
The mystery did not create us for any other purpose than to achieve happiness. And living life as a vocation means precisely tending to this destiny, this mystery, through the circumstances that the Lord makes us encounter, responding freely and consciously.
Embracing the circumstances
Vocation is thus to go to destiny by embracing all the circumstances it proposes to us. Giussani highlights how vocation is not realized “in spite of.”
Every situation, every encounter, and every challenge that reality presents to us is an opportunity to discover and live our destiny, the task to which we are called. Nothing is really stable: everything is part of a journey. If we use every event to advance toward this destiny, then we look at circumstances—which are spared to no one—to recognize their essential value in our vocation. They are a valuable opportunity to walk toward our fulfillment.
First point: intolerance
Today, the cultural climate in which we live is marked by a widespread malaise. It expresses itself in different forms: anxiety, irritation, exasperation, discomfort. Just think of how we often wake up already weighed down by worries from the first moment of the morning.
How can all this become a circumstance for walking toward our destiny? That is precisely the question to ask.
An “angry” time
While preparing these reflections, I came across an interview with Strega Prize winner Sandro Veronesi. He defines our time as a time of rage: a time when we hoped to come out better (alluding to the Covid period), but where instead we discovered ourselves worse, more intolerant, and absent than before.
If we look honestly at the everyday, we find confirmations of this anger everywhere: in social media, tensions at work, chronic stress, family arguments, and even arguments between neighbors. Similar situations also emerge in educational environments, with phenomena of aggression toward teachers or bullying among students.
Even politics, as American philosopher Martha Nussbaum notes in her essay Monarchy of Fear, seems to fuel polarization through anger, disgust, or envy.
Circumstances as an essential factor in vocation
Yet, these very experiences that appear to us as obstacles—“stumbling blocks”—can become essential factors in our vocation. If we do not see them as an opportunity to grow, they will only become barriers that stand in our way. But if we see them as a provocation, something that challenges us and pushes us to face them, then we begin to grasp their profound significance.
None of us is well off living perpetually in anger or impatience. Such states of mind challenge us. If we do not deal with them, we will end up communicating, with our every gesture, further discomfort and impatience. We would thus end up contributing to a vicious cycle that makes relationships even more complicated.
Therefore, there is no point in looking for scapegoats in others or circumstances: if we want to regain peace, we must touch the source of this suffering, as Veronesi himself points out. It is not enough to be “politically correct” or to denounce the situation. It is necessary to get in touch with the reasons for anger, to probe its roots.
A concrete example: inner emptiness
I was struck by a recent episode that helps to understand the deeper origins of violence and anger. A boy had picked on a weaker classmate, so much so that his parents considered pulling him out of school. Learning of this, the victim's older brother left with a neighbor to confront the violent boy.
His mother, informed of this, wanted the meeting to take place at her home. When she confronted the boy, she asked him, “Why are you doing this? Why do you have it in for my son?” He began to speak and told his story. The woman, realizing his suffering, said to him, “What emptiness do you have inside you?”
Then the boy confessed that no one had ever welcomed him into their home. That violence hid a deeper discomfort: an inner emptiness.
Attempts to fill a void
As Simone Weil writes, all “sins” are attempts to fill voids. Weil shifts the focus from moral transgression to the existential aspect: each of us, when experiencing a void, tries to fill it somehow, often in the wrong way.
Circumstances, even when they provoke impatience, anger, or discomfort, can prove to be a means of growing and discovering our vocation. How? By accepting them as an opportunity for confrontation, prompting us to see the emptiness that lies within us or in others. Only in this way, out of pain and misunderstanding, can the desire for a greater good emerge, capable of restoring us to peace, meaning, and direction on the path of life.
We see how this path can help us go deeper, beyond the appearance of violence and discomfort, to the point of discovering the emptiness that often lies at its origin. This is what even a careful scrutinizer of the human soul, Dostoevsky, observes: all of us, to varying degrees, have become disaccustomed to really living. To the point that we sometimes feel a revulsion for what is really life.
Disaccustomed to life
This “disaccustomedness” to living shines through in the way we deal with everyday things. When we are told about what is authentically life, we often react with annoyance or indifference, as if it were a burdensome task rather than a gift. In reality, we are faced with what can be called an existential evil: the inability to live fully and truthfully.
Creating an environment of listening
Without realizing it, in every daily gesture—when we eat lunch with family, when we watch the news or discuss with friends—we are communicating our way of standing in front of reality. We are thus creating (or denying) a space in which the other feels welcomed. Otherwise, we see stories of loneliness and despair emerging, like that of the girl who took her own life in Rome, leaving written, “In life I had the necessary and sometimes even the superfluous, but not the indispensable.”
A crisis of generations
According to psychiatrist Cesare Cornacchia, young people today experience an emptiness that generates anguish and anger, a legacy that comes from previous generations. In this panorama, the acuity of that mother who was able to identify the emptiness at the origin of a boy's violence against her son is striking. She avoided stopping at the symptom—the violence—to go to the root of the malaise.
A deeper look
If we want to avoid increasing this situation, for ourselves and for the people we care about, we have to ask ourselves what tool we have to intercept it and not confuse ourselves. Giussani, in Theology of Religious Sense, states that we possess within us a criterion of judgment: it is our humanity itself. It is the desire for happiness, for full and authentic fulfillment.
What is it that moves our choices?
We often do not realize it, but it is precisely that desire for happiness that leads us to prefer one film to another, to engage in certain jobs, to choose the person with whom to build a family. Chekhov, in line with this thought, said, “When I wanted to understand someone—or myself—I would examine not actions but desires. Tell me what you want and I will tell you who you are.”
Returning to this original desire—which is expressed in us as a tension toward happiness—helps us recognize the real causes of malaise and meet the humanity of others with a fresh look. It is not a matter of ignoring violence or difficulties, but of seizing its provocation: an invitation to penetrate deeper into life, aware that there are spaces of acceptance and understanding that can transform emptiness into a path toward fulfillment.
Why not take advantage of the “symptoms” and “spies” we experience, to address the real issue?
Today more than ever we need to understand the nature of the desire we carry within us, if we are to grasp the origin of our malaise, discomfort, or impatience. All these states are signs of something else, manifestations of an irreducibility that, paradoxically, is now revealed with great clarity.
The irreducibility of the human being
What is this “irreducibility”? Precisely in this time of extreme confusion—as Luciani noted years ago—the religious sentiment re-emerges in a powerful way, albeit with all its uncertainties and contradictions. It is the restlessness of man who feels bound to “something infinite.” The various traditions have called it God, but the essential point is that the human being is, by nature, related to the Immeasurable.
Whatever man tries to grasp, as he grasps it, that thing escapes him (as the poet Clement Rebora wrote). And paradoxically, this happens even more when he tries to possess it forcefully. It is as if in each of us there is a mysterious destiny, which makes it impossible to “square” life with reductive or definitive solutions.
A heart in revolt
The religious sense awakens when man feels “choked” by a power greater than himself, yet he senses an irrepressible motion of the heart. He does not know how to give it a name or an end, nor what is its ultimate object. This is where impatience and discomfort come from, because we often ignore the deeper root of our restlessness.
Today, what is most striking is the difficulty in reading this restlessness. In the past, this was not always the case. There have been men and women capable of recognizing and interpreting the tension that inhabits us. One of these is St. Augustine, a great “expert” on humanity.
St. Augustine's key
St. Augustine, through his troubled history, became a genius of the human. He shows us the key to understanding the nature of the restlessness we carry within, to make sense of our impatience. He shows us that unless we grasp the true dimension of desire—this yearning for the Infinite that makes us never feel completely fulfilled—we will remain trapped between anger, insecurity, and dissatisfaction.
Only by learning to recognize the depth of this desire can we begin to answer essential questions, without settling for superficial solutions or a moment of passing relief. The irreducibility Luciani speaks of, and the restlessness Augustine describes, are not condemnations, but open doors to a greater possibility: to discover the true nature of our heart, and with it, our vocation.
“You show quite clearly the greatness that you have wished to attribute to the rational creature that we humans are, because, to its blissful stillness, nothing is sufficient that is less than You.”
St. Augustine thus addresses God, recalling the nature of our restlessness. It is not a sign of sickness or depression, but the mark of our greatness: we are made for something immeasurable, so much so that nothing less than God can fill our desire for fullness.
Our restlessness: a sign of greatness
If the heart remains unsatisfied, it does not mean that we are “flawed” or “badly made,” but rather that our destiny is greater than anything we can give ourselves on our own. Life would become unbearable, in fact, if the One for whom we were created did not exist.
The problem is that many do not understand the true nature of their desire. Because of this, they continually communicate impatience; yet, the very restlessness of our time, with all its challenges, may prove to be an opportunity to rediscover the origin of our vocation.
The urgency of going deep
Today, phrases like St. Augustine's—“Our heart is restless until it rests in You”—resonate with greater force precisely because external circumstances are more pressing and challenge us to the depths. As Teilhard de Chardin says, “You are the origin and the end of this attraction”: it is God Himself who is constantly stirring our hearts, preventing us from settling for anything less than Him.
“You who make me a partaker of Your being and shape me.”
This yearning for fullness exists because He who created us continues to give us life at every moment. It is as if man is “programmed” in view of a greater fulfillment: the new man of whom the Christian tradition speaks.
Need for a visit from Above
If we are made for God, how can we reach Him? It is necessary for Him to come and meet us, redeeming us from our limitation. This is why Christmas happened: a proclamation that God visited us and, by making Himself present in Jesus, made the mystery of Himself affectively attractive.
It is like when we fall in love: we feel that something—or Someone—grabs us to the point that we freely follow this attraction, without “striving” to want Him. Thus, God became man in Jesus to leave us free to adhere to Him or not.
A life-changing encounter
When we encounter the Mystery who loves us, we learn to look at our desire in a new way. As it happened to the Samaritan woman: Jesus does not deny her mistakes, but He discerns the thirst in her. It is a thirst for fullness, not just water. In that glance, she understands who is in front of her: the Christ.
Similarly, in our age marked by anger, fear, and emptiness, we need a Presence that explains who we are and why we so long for happiness. Only Christ can unveil the deep origin of our desire and offer us an adequate response capable of satisfying it.
A current testimony
A boy, immersed in many groups (school, basketball, scouts), while having fun, felt something was missing. Even his mother could not understand what he really needed. Until, listening to his brother talk to a group of friends via video conference, he was struck by the way they shared intimate aspects of their lives. A depth that displaced and fascinated him more than video games.
From there he became involved and a true friendship was born, a companionship that responded to that emptiness.
The invitation of Christianity
The emptiness that many experience today can only be filled by a full life. That is why Jesus says, “I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly.” If we do not experience an encounter that will satiate our thirst, we will remain trapped in anger, dissatisfaction, and fears.
Christmas, then, is not just an anniversary: it is the good news of a God who visits man, offering the possibility of a personal relationship with Him. This relationship liberates and fills our existence, restoring meaning and joy. May it also become for us a precious opportunity to recover the true meaning of the holiday and, above all, of our human vocation. Many best wishes for a Merry Christmas to all.
December 19, 2024 Talk by Fr. Julián Carrón, Holy Christmas 2024.
St. Michael the Archangel Foundation Convention entitled: “All Circumstances are Essential Factor of our Vocation.”
www.fondazionesanmichelearcangelo.org
Italian: https://youtu.be/Jte2YVimHrM?si=3cAPD5VHeynhelSS
The video dubbed into American with artificial intelligence can be found here:
https://youtu.be/QOo4Wxv_YGk?si=Natr-VbDCUdeuSwR
