Out with the old

Among the things I have learned in my lifetime - as we grow older, change and make decisions for ourselves, it does no good to linger. Move on! I have experienced life in enough institutions - schools, sabbatical programs, parishes, etc. - to know that there is a time for each of them and a time to leave them. Leave behind the old life. Put on the new. Don't try to take the old life with you.

Some seminarians make a disagreeable choice when choosing to leave seminary formation by not really leaving at all. Some discern well, pray and talk things over with their formators, pack up, leave, and then return to the seminary to visit old friends regularly or meet them in neutral locations to share good food and drink. Retaining and developing healthy friendships is always a great experience. What is not so great is clinging to such friendships when there is so much life to experience beyond the seminary. I have seen too many individuals from high school and college and other programs hang on to old haunts and older relationships as if nothing has changed.

I cannot believe this is healthy. We all grow at our own pace, we are not one size fits all, but when the former friends in one lifestyle keep reappearing as if that lifestyle were continuing for him or her there is a problem. A former seminarian, for example, whose relationships continue to be other seminarians without any new ones developing risks an arrested development. Oh, yes, it is important to maintain good relationships with good friends, but the nature of the relationships have changed and too many people act as if they are still in the former place rather than the new one. Cut the cord, as a wise man said.

Discernment is not a simple process and some try to circumvent it with quick decisions. There are those who know they need to make a change and do and slowly but surely their whole base of friends gradually change so that there are now acquaintances in the past and new friends are now the closer relationship. But some make the change and continue to cling to old relationships as if life has just made a slight turn rather than a full detour. Such relationships gradually feel strained among those left behind while the one moving on often clings to former ways of life.

There is nothing so sad, for example, as a former seminarian defensive about the seminary, the diocese, the religious order, the Church, etc., yet who has not fought the current battles and lacks the knowledge of what is current and who continues to think in an environmental awareness that ended years ago. Such people can often do damage to the continuity of such religious life or even Church life. For those who continue within the structure there is often a misunderstanding and ignorance of the truth that one is separate from other worlds. The call of Christ in Church life as a cleric or religious is all-encompassing and requires total commitment.

Forty-five years ago when I was ordained priests tried to prove to the Church that we were just like everybody else. But the truth is that we are not. We really are called to give up father and mother and brother and sister. God wants no mediators between Himself and His disciples. For the person called to be a priest among disciples, there can be no accompanists other than the Lord Himself.