June 18, 2014

By Rachel Daly

This will come as no surprise to many, but it's with great joy that I share with you that I am discerning a vocation to the religious life!

God has been working hard on my heart for the past few years, and while He could always change things up, it seems at this point that the religious life is indeed where He is calling me.

Here is the story of how my vocation has unfolded thus far:

I think my childhood was pretty normal in most ways. But deep down inside me, there was always a special desire to love in a big way.

I remember one day in fourth grade, my teacher talked a little bit about what it was like meeting her husband, and she said that she had decided that she would only marry if the right guy came along. I thought to myself that I too wanted to hold out for the best guy, the biggest romance ever.

And the same kind of thinking carried over into other areas of my life—I wanted the very best of everything. I worked hard on the soccer field, I didn't stop studying until I had A's in every class, and I made plans to travel the world and learn everything there was to know.

There was something inside me that just wanted to give and receive the very best in life.

One day, when I was in seventh grade, Father Bryan Stitt came and gave a talk on vocations to my class at Seton Catholic. I don’t remember much about it, but I remember that every characteristic of a priest or religious that he mentioned described me perfectly.

A few weeks later, I happened to go to confession to Father Bryan at school, and as I was leaving, I sheepishly stammered, “By the way, thank you for coming to talk to us about vocations.”

He cheerfully went on to tell me that his cousin had just become a Carmelite out in California, and that she couldn’t be happier.

As I left, I thought to myself, “Well, I guess I’ll have to give up that great romance I always wanted, along with any success and adventure I ever dreamed of.” I glumly began to readjust my mental picture of the future.

The thought that I might be called to the religious life grew heavier and heavier in my mind, until finally I gave it up. After giving it a thought and deciding that it could never make me happy, I believed I was off the hook.
Something changed, however, the summer before I went to college. I had completely forgotten about my brief stint of discernment in seventh grade, when suddenly, Father Bryan’s Carmelite cousin, Sister Shawn Pauline, OCD, appeared to give a talk during my last week as a camper at Camp Guggenheim.

The main reason why I had given up thinking about religious life was that I had believed that it would mean leaving all of the biggest desires of my heart unfulfilled. But Sister Shawn Pauline explained that a religious is a bride of Christ, and that Jesus fulfills the part of her heart that longs for a spouse.

A few weeks later, I went away to college. What happened there could fill several books, but in a nutshell, I began to feel the tug on my heart to consider religious life once again, and in the turmoil of trying to distinguish God’s voice from everything else, I began to spend increasing amounts of time in Eucharistic Adoration. At some point I realized that in those intimate times of prayer with Jesus, He had won me over and begun to show me that He could fulfill even a heart as big and thirsty as mine. In fact, He was the only thing that could fulfill it.

This girl who longed for everything had found her Everything.

St. Augustine, the patron of my home parish, summed up my story perfectly when he said, “To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.” Jesus has shown me so deeply that this is true.

Please pray for me as I continue to take the next steps in my vocation, and I promise to pray for you too!