I am reading an interesting book entitled An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the World's Most Austere Religious Order. It is the true story of five men and their life and experiences in the English Carthusian charterhouse of Parkminster in the early 60's. It was recommended by a friend, who had also recommended it to a mutual friend of ours who is soon going to be testing his vocation with the traditionalist RC Benedictines in Oklahoma. (A curious recommendation since the Benedictine life is very, very different from the Carthusian life, as anyone who knows or has read anything about monasticism will tell you.) It is a good book and fun to read, and I have not found it to be in anyway negative towards the Church or the monastic life of the Carthusians. It is quite simply a portrait of these five men.
In reading a book like this it is sometimes tempting to wonder why anyone would want to devote his or her life to such a vocation when it seems so unnatural and austere - especially with an order like the Carthusians. But we simply cannot always probe and grasp someone else's vocation or God-given spirituality. God calls different people to different types of jobs in life, and gives people different spiritual compositions, so one can't (in most cases) say, "That vocation is stupid. The way you mortify the flesh is worthless. Your Lenten discipline is not good enough." I get so sick and tired of hearing idiotic nonsense like that... mumbo jumbo that suggests that everyone is the same, and God speaks to everyone in exactly the same way all the time, and deals with everyone the same. What a bunch of nonsense. But I guess we're all guilty of thinking that way about others from time to time. I know I am.
If a person feels a call from God to test a vocation to the religious life, or to some other task - such as being a missionary - he MUST obey that call and test the vocation, and everyone else around him just has to accept it, even if it doesn't make much sense at first. The life of a continuing Anglican priest is an utterly meaningless vocation, and a waste of time and talent, to a lot of outsiders, and to those who do not have the calling. Yet it is my vocation, and the way that God has called me to work out my salvation. The same is true for those in the religious life.
