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Pastoral Vocation.In courses on pastoral theology, the question of pastoral vocation usually receives sufficient attention, but not everyone explains it equally. It is completely clear that a vocation to any service is an important guarantee for its fruitful attainment. Love for that work which a man is going to do determines his relation to his work. To perform this service with coercion and without any attraction to it previously consigns this matter to futility and death. However, during his ordination a priest is entrusted, in a very mysterious and beneficial way, a special gift, or the “pledge to be held to account for it at the second and dread coming of our Lord God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” (From the word after the hierotonia while a new priest is being given the particle of St. Lamb). In the Holy Scripture of the both Testaments, a lot is said about vocation in general. The service of the prophets or apostles is specified with the special call from above. This service is not something that one is taken up into arbitrarily, but is given by the Heavenly High priest to the definitely chosen persons, and not to any random person. The voice of the special predestination to this service is heard in the vocation. In this question the emphasis must be, however, set at that person or event, which either can be acknowledged as vocation or which does not satisfy to this requirement. Can everything that seems to be a vocation be considered as such? In the Old Testament the Lord predetermines His prophet to the prophetic service by such words: “ Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child. But the LORD said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.” (Jer. 1:5-7). God also called Abraham and blessed him, and increased him. (Is 51:2), — about which Apostle Paul writes in the Epistles to the Romans (chapter 4, and Hebr. 11:8). From the wealth of people following Him, God calls 12 disciples, and then 70. The Holy Spirit orders: “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.” (The Acts. 13:2). The same Saul, who became Paul, can boldly speak of his holy vocation (2 Timothy 13:9) — “not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.” He himself writes the signature: “Paul, called to be an apostle” (Rom., 1 Cor.) and even “Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ” (Gal.). This thought of Apostle Paul in the first Epistles to Timothy (3:1) is rather interesting: “If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.” In translation, these words of the Apostle sound much feebler and less significant than in the Greek original. In Russian both times is used the word “desire”; in the Slavonic - in the first case “he wants,” and secondly “desires,” which in the essence sounds almost equal. In the Latin translation the same verb: “desiderat” is used. The French translation introduces a certain difference, which does not transmit, however, the central idea of the original: “si quelqu'un aspire a etre eveque, il desir une charge excellante.” The English and German verbs do not make any distinction, preserving the verb “desire” and “begehren,” the Greek original not only uses different verbs, but their content is stronger and of more weight in the both cases. “Who desires episcopacy” — in Greek it sounds oregete — which literally means “has a taste for episcopacy,” “has appetite to episcopacy.” In the Modern Greek language, orexis directly means “appetite.” Before the dinner, wishing the good appetite, a host says kalin orexin. In the second case, the Apostle says: epithimi, which in the Slavonic should be translated as “desires fervently” since the word epithimia indicates not simply a desire, but a strong desire, longing. In its negative sense this word is translated as “lust.” By this expression, the Apostle Paul emphasizes not a simple desire for episcopacy, i.e., being a priest, but having a taste for this service, whereas in the second case he speaks not of a simple desire, but of a strong aspiration and longing. Special predisposition to the service is supposed to be found in a candidate, but not only desire. It can be interpreted as the sensation of calling to this work. Bishop Theophan (the Recluse) wrote about this place of the New Testament in his interpretations precisely so. In the science of pastoral service, the question about vocation is put differently. The Catholics, with their tendency to refine, subdivide and classify everything, reasonably teach about the internal vocation (vocatio interna) and the external vocation (vocatio externa). The first is recognized as a certain internal aspiration, an attitude of soul, and the voice calling man to another way life, different to the usual mundane manner. However, the external vocation is more like a certain external push in the form of the encounter with someone spiritual, which turns over the entire life of man, or some illness, stress, loss of the dear ones, that suddenly change the entire line of life (examples of Anthony the Great, Ephraim the Syrian, Francois D' Assi, Ignatius Loyola and many other examples in the history of pastoral service and asceticism). The Russian science of the pastoral theology weighs this question differently. Some, as, for example, Bishop Boris, related it thoughtfully, critically, they did not deny the need of vocation for the priestly service. The others simplified the problem, as, for example, Archbishop Anthony (Amphitheatrov) of Kazan, who perceived vocation in the purely external and even random facts. These include a) the origin from the spiritual rank; b) education in all sciences, taught in the spiritual schools and the proper encouragement in the abilities, successes and behavior; c) internal agreement and love for the priesthood and even g) the will of the local bishop. (From Pevnitsky’s book “The Priest”). One cannot fail to perceive the tension and formality in this approach. Even more definite is the view of the Metropolitan Anthony Krapovitsky. He simply denies any possibility of vocation and considers that the voice of God perceptible in the heart of man is “nothing more than the fruit of self-delusion. The Catholic theologians assert that each candidate to the priesthood must hear it, but we think that only that candidate, who is previously indicated by the Church, can hear this voice. Self-appraisal and self-feeling should have the negligible value.” (Coll. Works, vol. 2, p. 184). Therefore, for our outstanding pastoralist “all the reasoning about the pastoral vocation must be displaced from that basis, on which they stood, and must be substituted with the thoughts about the pastoral preparation” (Coll. Works, vol.2, p. 186). In courses, enough time is dedicated to this question about preparation, and it must be illuminated especially in detail, but nevertheless it does not replace the very fact that of an internal voice, which is felt by some, but which is completely silent in the others. Certainly, a known portion of self-deception is always possible, and internal soberness is especially necessary in defining the “spirits,” but here another thing is shown in Metropolitan Anthony works: his perfect negation of any mystical feeling in the spiritual life of man. Metropolitan Anthony extremely negatively perceives everything mystical and even the very word “mysticism,” in spite of its frequent usage by such writers as Areopagits, Maximos the Confessor and the others, he completely sweeps it aside. He was an extreme rationalist and nominalist in his theology. On the one hand, there is such a negation of the internal mystical voice, while on the other — one cannot fail to recognize the “pre-indication by the Church” as something extremely undetermined. What is it? The origin from the spiritual class as it was in the former Russia? Or the forced enrollment into the seminary of a boy, who still has no understanding of the priesthood or anything in general? Or the sad sign of a scholarship in the spiritual school, which other schools do not give? A similar state of affairs occurred in the Serbian church before the crisis of 1945. It is not possible, furthermore, to forget the general flight of students from the seminaries and Academies, who got there according to the class rank and later filled the other departments. Metropolitan Anthony called such former seminarians “Rakitins” (according to Dostoyevsky), who were precisely such renegades of their school because of the absence of vocation to be there. What should the question about vocation in the conditions of our reality be reduced to? What can be considered as the sign of vocation? Are there such objective data for judgment about the vocation to the priesthood of a certain person? If for the military service we must have courage, bellicosity, and for artistic activity, a feeling for beauty, soul refinement, etc., then what signs must one possess who considers himself to be called to pastoral service, and absence of which is sufficient for the judging one as not having vocation, concerning a definite candidate? Here are the approximate points that must be considered as the absolute sign of not being called to be a priest:
What are the signs of vocation or, in the words of the Apostle, that the person has a taste for the priesthood?
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