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IS SOMEONE YOU CARE ABOUT CONSIDERING A RELIGIOUS VOCATION?

Here’s the still-unsurpassed guide to discernment—grounded in the theology of Aquinas. On the question of religious vocation, all are agreed: A candidate must be called by God. But how God calls, and how one knows He has called, are questions that receive widely differing answers. Errors are costly: A “false” vocation can harm both the Church and the man or woman who was not truly called. A vocation “missed” means a life’s full potential unrealized—and perhaps an incalculable loss to souls.

Which is why this book by Fr. Edward Farrell, OP, received such high praise from reviewers, educators and pastors alike when it first appeared in 1952. Father Farrell’s aims:

1) to lay down “practical, workable principles, as immediately proximate to action as possible, which can be used profitably by confessors and spiritual directors in their task of guiding prospective candidates for the religious state”; and 2) “to order, crystallize, and make explicit a body of Thomistic doctrine on religious vocation.”

In fact, Fr. Farrell succeeded in doing even more: As several reviewers pointed out, his guidebook was no less indispensable to young men and women considering religious life—and their parents—than to pastors and counselors. The reason? Sound advice and reliable answers on topics like:

 

 

Three principal signs of a religious vocation

Nine secondary signs

Step-by-step, how the candidate should examine his qualifications and suitability for religious life, and then decide

Four “material factors” that establish the suitability of a person for the religious life

What role does individual nature play in the determination of a vocation? What qualities or characteristics does God bestow upon His favored children?

Two indispensable conditions of divine vocation—and the personal habits and dispositions that contribute to them

Four basic human qualities that any prospective candidate for the religious life should have

Inward impediments to the religious life—e.g., sensuality and spiritual sloth—and their remedies

Six factors that contribute to religious vocation by positively influencing the exercise of virtues indispensable to it

The family’s role in vocation. Dangerous attitudes that “grow like weeds even in the minds of good, Catholic parents,” according to Pope Pius XI

The role of priests, and other special influences

Guidelines for priests in preaching and counseling about vocations

Is God’s call something internal, a grace infused into the soul? Or external, an invitation of a legitimate superior to embrace the religious life?

What is the “internal call” St. Thomas speaks of? Just as important: What is it not? Why is it necessary? How may it be discerned?

St. Thomas’s specific, practical norms on the nature and discernment of vocation

Two principles of Thomistic teaching on grace and predestination that apply specifically to the question of vocation

“Religious vocation” defined with theological precision —stripped of the confusions and ambiguities of popular usage

The one statement of Our Lord which contains “an epitome of Catholic doctrine on the nature of the religious state and its relation to the common Christian life”

The “virtue of religion”: how it “supplies the power that carries the candidate across the threshold of a new life”

The “virtue of magnanimity”: how it functions as “the special and proper cause of the intensity of the act of devotion which is religious vocation”

The virtue that will always be found wherever a vigorous religious life prevails—supplying to religious “the fullness of heart and courage necessary to keep them plodding along the great and difficult road to perfection”

Why “greatness” is inseparable from the religious life

How the essence of the religious state is found in the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience

How one can cultivate the seeds of religious vocation

“As complete a guide as seems possible for judging religious vocations....practical...This book should be a valuable aid to directors, an immense help to the young themselves.” —Ave Maria (1952)

“Candidates’ qualifications are treated extensively. The author also singles out the individuals who are the most important instruments in the work of fostering a vocation.”— Catholic Educational Review

“Analyzes vocation in the light of accepted doctrine on virtues and their influence on human acts, and is able thereby to arrive at a real definition of religious vocation....From an elaboration of this, the author then evolves workable principles that can be used profitably by spiritual directors in guiding prospective candidates for the religious state.”—Dominicana “The author has attempted, and in the opinion of this reviewer with great success, ‘to order, crystallize, and make explicit a body of Thomistic doctrine on religious vocation.’” —The Catholic Educator

“A valuable aid to directors, an immense help to the young themselves”

Hardcover

 

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