— Letters from the readers of’Patmos Island -

ADULT VOCATIONS TO THE PRIESTHOOD

[…] in my priestly life I always ended up making all that I wouldn't do, thing I thank God. This has also taught me to distrust, and so very deep, of all those people and all those priests to whom Christ, always and rigor, he asks only and exclusively what they want, some of them have even godless effrontery to brag by saying in public: "Jesus said ... Jesus asked me ...». Not to mention some lay people, in particular of certain charismatic and the neocatechumenals, they have instead a holy spirit to its staff saying service and suggesting their – often against the doctrine and discipline of the Church's liturgical and canonical – what they want to hear and suggest.

Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

Caro Father.

I am a Dominican tertiary, and if I am not indiscreet I would like to ask you: Why not become a priest in the order of Friars preachers? If the question is indiscreet and erase everything and do not answer me. Heartfelt wishes for the Island of Patmos.

Andrea of Bernardo

Dear Andrea.

A novice as the habit of the order of preachers at the headquarters of the Italian national Dominican provinces in Naples

As I'm sure you will understand this is not the place to make my vocation story, also because the speech is complex. Numerous people, priests including, They asked me to write a book about the history of my vocation, but for now I have always given up. Maybe someday I'll do it in old age, at the bottom there is a public thing vocation, considering that it takes itself as more public can exist: the exercise of the sacred Ministry of priests.

I didn't choose the order of Friars Preachers or other orders because adult vocations: or they make radical choices by entering cloistered orders of strict observance, Trappist Monks or type, or in one of those very few Benedictine monasteries which, despite the irreversible decadence that has affected this worthy family, maintain a certain rigor. The experience teaches me that adults usually enter the contemplative orders or the secular clergy, Why can hardly be formed for religious life, except special thanks.

Given that the seminar – cleverly set up by the Council of Trent – don't fit the dogmas of the Catholic faith, My Bishop, as in the past have made many other bishops in the exercise of their legitimate authority, settled for me, that I had accomplished 40 year old, a more suitable ITER formative: in Rome was entrusted to a priestly house, living where I did the theological education, on the other hand, the training for the priesthood under the guidance of trainers selected by Bishop. It was a very valuable experience, because I got to live in contact with 30/35 priests in age between 32 ed i 45 years from all continents of the world, acquiring first of all a universal vision of the Catholic Church and certainly not a vision limited to the garden around the bell tower of the village, Since one of the major tragedies that devastates the secular clergy is the provincialism.

I believe I have made the right choice, or as a pious Trappist monk told me: "You are made for Fireworks, not for the silence of the cloister. In you is the innate sense of prayer, meditation and contemplation, but as support for fireworks will have to shoot». Thesis confirmed recently by a brother priest, also take the adult priesthood, formerly a psychiatrist and now a monk, who wrote to me with a sympathetic vein: "You were born to do Hunter, I was born to do the veterinarian». Joke before which, a young brother priest of mine replied: "You're not only limits to tear, because once you do it you're hopping around festive shreds, happy to have done a good service to the Church ".

In that House International priestly There was with me another Italian was ordained a deacon and then presbyter of the secular clergy a few months away from me, at the age of 43 year old, today a missionary priest in an indigenous area of ​​Panama. A day, talking between us, we discovered that we had both thought of a radical choice: “out of this world"And"lock ourselves up"in a Trappist monastery, but he too, so different but similar, it had been said: "you have the missionary spirit in the heart».

The formation of a religious, After entering the postulancy at ordination should not in my opinion – and a last time in certain orders lasted not less than 10/12 year old. When in the post-Vatican II Council certain religious families reduced formation to 5/6 year old, deleterious results in next time you are seen all. For instance: a few years ago, leading a group of families in Assisi, I had to translate and explain what it meant to the Latin inscription above the Porziuncola, which was nothing more than an indication of the indulgence reserved for those, repented and confessed, had crossed that threshold. In fact, there were four apathetic and fat people in the basilica fratacchioni Mexicans who had not been able to answer this trivial question put to them by the people, sign that … and he found in the temple those who sold sheep, oxen, and doves, money-changers sitting [«And entering the Temple (Jesus) He found people who sold oxen, sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at school». GV. 22,42]; and we also know how the Lord Jesus was angry before the painful scene [cf. GV. 2,13-25].

What I reproach to some religious families and certain orders historians is this: yesterday, the best vocations, they took them, because people who were particularly educated and gifted for studies came to them; with them the best speculative minds found their natural nucleus. In many historical Orders entered even the sons of aristocratic families or of the richest families, so much so that the "luck" of certain monastic congregations also stems from certain vocations through which convents and monasteries acquired substantial assets then to the death of parents of some monks and Friars, thanks to which they were able to open many houses around the world. Just think of the intense and productive missionary activity carried out by Dominican friars in the 16th century. And over time as different areas were evangelized by the Dominicans and the Jesuits evangelized, considering that in those evangelized by the Jesuits developed all below, from liberation theology to priest-guerrillas, from the syncretism indigenist theology. For charity, the Dominicans have grown in their breasts one among the worst heretics in the post-Council, Edward Schillebeeckx, I do not know, however, that we have exalted as the theologian of theologians or how the new Thomas Aquinas, as did the Jesuits at the level “institutional” with a subject much more dangerous: Karl Rahner.

Today, some historical Orders, declined to accept those that we hit off seminars and almost always serious moral reasons; and simply said that it takes, to be tossed out by a seminar now! What several of these religious families – Benedictine and Cistercian monks in the lead – remains, is the ancient "smell under her nose”, unless you have many of their abbeys, however, full of "misses"e you"mentally disturbed "at various levels. In fact, let's not forget that "boni them Benedictine monks ”, thanks to “Mirabile” the work of the last two Arciabati di Montecassino, led to the collapse of the great abbey of the West, now totally decayed and reduced to a handful of old monks. What in fact failed to make the American bombers that razed at the end of World War II were able to do so in the most dire of post-Conciliar seasons Dom Bernardo D'Onofrio, awarded with the subsequent election as Archbishop of Gaeta; and Peter Dom Vittorelli, formerly his private secretary and later his successor, over which modesty requires us to spread a merciful veil.

But nothing prevents me to be close to certain spiritualities, Proof of this is the fact that as soon as I was ordained deacon, I gave my first services to the Dominicans in Sant’Alessio all'Aventino; and when I began to preach, my style of preaching was everything inspired by the old homiletic Dominicans who'd known as a teenager and who had left an indelible mark in me by serving as a model of my preaching. As though said that Trappist monk, Maybe I was born really for «Fireworks», because in the economy of salvation, in the church there is also need Fireworks operators.

In my priestly life I always ended up doing anything that I wouldn't do, thing I thank God. This has also taught me to distrust, and so very deep, of all those people and all those priests to whom Christ, always and rigor, he asks only and exclusively what they want, some of them have even godless effrontery to brag by saying in public: "Jesus said ... Jesus asked me ...». Not to mention some lay people, in particular of certain charismatic and the neocatechumenals, they have instead a holy spirit to its staff saying service and suggesting their – often against the doctrine and discipline of the Church's liturgical and canonical – what they want to hear and suggest.

A vocation is truly authentic to the extent that they are applied and experienced two principles: the principle However has not made my, but your will» [cf. LC. 22, 42], and the principle “I was crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. This life in the flesh, I live it in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me " [cf. II Gal. 20].

In the absence of these two principles rooted in the consecrated person with the sacred order, contributing significantly to impress our indelible sacramental character, or we are dealing with a non-vocation, or are we faced with a fragile vocation, or we are faced with one of those many subjects that are not his fault, but for serious responsibility of seminaries and novitiates today and bad trainers who often populate them, did not receive adequate training. And those who have not been adequately trained but rather full of philosophisms, sociologisms and psychologisms, It always ends with l’ “the” next to “It gave“, between confusion and disorders of body and soul.

As for the rest, my spiritual closeness to the sons of Saint Dominic of Guzmàn I think blatant, not just because I work with a distinguished Dominican, But why this man of great faith and wisdom represents for me a model of doctrine and theology that inspire me and to draw from it safely with both hands; in the same manner in which I draw to producing another great Dominican, Tomas Tyn, of blessed memory [1950 − † 1990], died at a young age and has really all those germs that would lead him in later years to become an authentic Thomas Aquinas of the 20th century.