Right now I’m reading “The Story of a Soul” for spiritual reading. It’s about St. Therese of Lisieux, a young woman who lived in France in the late 19th century and became a Carmelite nun at the age of 15. She died from tuberculosis at the age of 24, and was declared a doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II. I’ve read this book several times, and it’s one of my favorite stories of the lives of the saints. One of the reasons why I read the lives of the saints several times is because these stories never get old – every time you read them, you’re different somehow than you were the last time. As a result, different things in the lives of the saints strike you in different ways each time you read them. This happened to me today as I was reading “The Story of a Soul.” I was reading the section about how St. Therese says she feels called to all of these different vocations – priest, apostle, etc. She concludes that she does not have a calling to all of these vocations – a realization that left her feeling somewhat empty. St. Therese then goes on to say that the most important way to serve God and His Church is to love. Here is one of my favorite passages from this section:
“I understood that Love contains all the Vocations, that Love is all, that it embraces all times and all places… in a word, that it is Everlasting!
Then in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out, ‘Oh Jesus, my Love … I have finally found my vocation: My Vocation is Love!’”
I think that this passage is really important to reflect on, particularly for those of us who struggle with same-sex attractions. I’ve seen in my own life lately how discouraging it can be to struggle with SSA – I probably will never be a priest, and there is a chance that I may not ever get married. Because I may not have a particular vocation, meaning a vocation beyond the universal call to holiness, it can sometimes be easy to feel as if I don’t have a place in the Church and that I am not being of service to God. It can also be very easy to allow this struggle to be all-consuming, because the issues associated with SSA pop up all the time, and I want to deal with them rather than suppress them. While it is certainly important to deal with emotional issues and not repress feelings, this can very easily lead to a self-centered existence where I am focused on my struggles and my pain all of the time.
But St. Therese reminds us that we all have a vocation – to love, meaning to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. This realization is huge for me, because it draws me out of myself and draws me out of the vortex of self-centeredness that I often fall into. It reminds me that instead of feeling as if I don’t have a place in the Church, I can spend my time in serving the poor, for example. It reminds me that instead of constantly praying for myself and my own needs, I can recognize when that is no longer fruitful and pray for the needs of others. Doing this can help break the self-absorption that I believe is a huge trigger for feelings of homosexual attractions.
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