What does it mean to be called to single life
I say quite often about a book I am reading for a book blog that I recommend "everyone should read it". I must be blessed in my reading subject to be able to say it frequently enough. I declare it again, without reservation, of Single for a Greater Purpose by Luanne D Zurlo (Sophia Institute Press). The author, an American Wall Street equity analyst and involved in education reform in developing countries (has lived and worked extensively in Latin America), wrote an inspiring study of what it means to lead a single life as Catholic; its subtitle, "A hidden joy in the Catholic Church" indicates its basic message: this vocation is not the second best, but it is a call that leads to true fulfillment and inner peace.
In his introduction, Zurlo raises a question that is a recurring theme in his book: given the growing number of single men and women in the western world today, “Could God call more Catholics to a deeper communion with Him, to live as lay people do you celibate and bring the values of the Gospel into a culture that has gone mad and increasingly secularized? ”It is a good question; you don't have to be a worried Christian to notice the widespread lack of commitment in permanent relationships in our society, or the number of apparently adrift young people who have lived through numerous unsuccessful affairs and who shamelessly conclude that this is the life of.
The Church too, anxious to encourage the sacrament of marriage and to help married people to live their vocation, has often neglected to address individual people in the Church. Zurlo writes that he knows "an unknown number of individual Catholics who feel meaningless, directionless, unwelcome, misunderstood and even despised" because they are not married or live within the priesthood or religious life. In the "rubble of our troubled post-Christian world", perhaps God is creating a new form of Christian witness and apostolate in hidden dedicated single lives?
Zurlo points out that one of the problems that individual Catholics face is whether they are "transient", plan or hope to get married in time, or if God really wants them to dedicate themselves entirely to Him while still living in the world. She admits that for a few years as a young woman with an interesting and well-paid career, she thought that one day she would get married. It took a long time, prayer and growing discernment, to conclude that, despite having at times dated possible future spouses, God wanted him to remain single "for a greater purpose", as she says in her title.
What does a true single vocation mean? she asks. "It is the call to single life as a permanent and providentially ordered means of loving and serving God wholeheartedly." In addition to well-known historical examples of holy single lives, such as Catherine of Siena, Rosa di Lima and Giovanna d'Arco, Zurlo also indicates single devotees in our times, such as the Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi, Jan Tyranowski, mentor to the young Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II and the Irish Frank Duff, founder of the Legion of Mary.
Zurlo also includes one of my favorite writers, Caryll Houselander, a wood carver and artist, as well as a mystic, who suffered a disappointed infatuation in her youth, before accepting that she was destined for a single life. And, warning that marriage is considered as a complete emotional fulfillment, he quotes Fr Raniero Cantalamessa on how the testimony of unmarried secular lives can "save [marriage] from despair, because they open up to a horizon that extends even beyond death. “This is a timely book which deserves a serious audience.