Thus Claret finished his first stage on the path towards his vocation as apostolic missionary. He had to make turns and detours: at the age of twenty he felt “frustrated, annoyed and bored with the world: he thought of giving up manufacturing and flee for solitude, to become a Carthusian”. He fostered the desire to become a Carthusian for a year, studying in the Diocesan Seminary of Vic, and when he set out to enter the Charterhouse at Montealegre, a sudden storm made him feel ill and to doubt: “What if God does not want you to go to the Carthusians?”. He was alarmed, and returned to the Seminary in Vic. Even fourteen years later Claret took a while to put his feet and his voice, now free from bondage, in his final vocation as apostolic missionary.
Telling us about the beginning of that search, Claret offers us lights so that each one illuminates their own path in the search for one’s own personal vocation, at the service of the world and of the Church, and from within it.
The state of life and dedication that each one performs best in the service of others will have been the “vocation” to which God has called him. You have to search for it to find and follow it. The path can be short or very long and with stages or changes of direction and wandering. We must avoid making mistakes; must persevere to be able to live one’s own vocation, because one plays his own happiness in it.
In that search we should not feel self-sufficient. Claret searched for the guidance of experienced persons; he had his spiritual directors; and this was not just at the beginning of his journey, but throughout his life, since the choice of a vocation needs to be always updated.
At what point or stage of your vital search did you find yourself? Have you already managed to discover or achieve and live your “vocation”?