THE IDEAL OF A RELIGIOUS VOCATION • PRIEST • BROTHER • SISTER by ffev. Wil/ianj M. ftobitjson, CSC The author of this pamphlet, Father William M. Robinson, C.S.G., in speaking of the religi- ous life, speaks from personal experience as well as from the wisdom of many years of study and labor as teacher, confessor, spiritual director and retreat master: for he himself is a religious of the Congregation of Holy Cross. He knows, therefore, the truth and beauty whereof he speaks. He has seen these realities— and the spirit of sacrifice and prayer which have engendered them and the happiness resulting from them — among the Priests and Brothers of his own religious family. For information about the Holy Cross Fathers and Lay Brothers, write to: THE HOLY CROSS FATHERS Holy Cross Seminary Notre Dame, Indiana SINGLED OUT by William M. Robinson, c.s.c. Rise up, and stand on thy feet; I have shown Myself to thee, that I may single thee out to serve Me. Acts, 26:16 (Knox translation) AVE MARIA PRESS Notre Dame, Indiana Spec Copyright 1950, AVE MARIA PRESS SINGLED OUT The Ideal of a Religious Vocation One of the great needs of our Catholic people, youngsters and adults, is a very positive presentation of the reason for the religious life. This should not be restricted merely to those who show a certain attrac- tion for this vocation themselves : rather, every Catholic man and woman ought to know and appreciate the teaching of the Church on religious life. This teaching is a part of integral Catholic doctrine and not something to be reserved for the education of candidates in a novitiate. Of course the enthusiastic appreciation of the religious vocation by religious themselves provides the greatest assurance that this ideal will be communicated to others. It would be hard to exaggerate the trib- utes deserved by the religious laboring for the Church in this country. It might not be irrelevant, however, to point out that we owe a very great proportion of these devoted laborers to Catholic centers in Europe like Ireland and Germany, Holland and Poland. There can be no question 3 about the Catholic mind in those centers. If we had had to depend in the past on vocations just from our own country, the works of the Church would be far less de- veloped here. Now it is obvious that we cannot go on indefinitely in this dependence on Catholic Europe. Economic conditions, infiltration of Communism, and limitation of immigrant quotas combine to make it difficult to remedy our own lack of voca- tions through this dependence. Further- more, it is time for us in America to be givers rather than beggars in the Church Militant. We must, then, see to it that our people are Catholic-minded on the ideals of the religious life. Even when we look at the negative side of the sacrifice made by religious, we ought not to exaggerate the generosity of their surrender. What do they really give up? Reality or dream? By their vow of pov- erty, they do give up worldly goods marked by the dollar sign. In most cases they do not yet have these goods; they give up their dream of one day possessing them; many people with the same dream and comparable abilities eke out a mere sub- sistence on social benefits. By their vow of chastity they give up the satisfactions and joys of marriage. But neither did they have these in actuality. Possession was only their 4 young dream ; many people with equal right to the same dream have found their way to the divorce court or else dragged out a life of sorrow and humiliation in un- happy marriages. By their vow of obe- dience, they give up the sweet privilege of doing their own will. But was that an in- dependence they actually possessed or just another youthful dream? There is no one who can do his own will; even the totali- tarian dictator is prevented in a million ways from doing everything he wants to do. It is not to be denied — as will be here- after shown— that these vows do represent a very real and very noble surrender. This is recognized by Our Lord Himself. When Christ remarked on how hard it was for the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as the rich man turned away from His in- vitation to discipleship because of his un- willingness to abandon his great possessions, Peter with characteristic bluntness asked Our Lord what they would get since they had given up all things to follow Him. Our Lord did not rebuke Peter for his audacity; did not sarcastically point out how little in their poverty they had to give up. He promised them, and all who like them were to abandon all things to follow Him, the hundredfold in this life and heav- enly bliss in the life to come. 5 How the Vows Contribute to Essential Christian Perfection The essence of Christian perfection is charity, love of God in Himself and in our neighbor for His sake. This is the great commandment that sums up the Law and the Prophets; it is the hall mark of true discipleship to Christ; the queen virtue which draws the other virtues in its suite and without which any other virtue is mere counterfeit. There is nothing sweeter, nothing nobler in human life than love given and love received. Since Christian life is essentially love, it is something that should attract the heart of man rather than frighten him by its austerity. It is a source of happiness, not of sadness; it is a source of strength to carry the burdens of life, not merely an added burden. That form of Christian living will be noblest and happiest, therefore, which best promotes the power to love and to be loved in true charity. The religious life, consti- tuted by the three vows of poverty, chas- tity and obedience, is guaranteed by the infallible Church, to be a state in which this love of God is most firmly secured. Hence it is termed a state of perfection—not in the sense that one must be perfect to enter it, nor that one must become perfect in pur- 6 suing it , but in the sense that it does afford sure means to Christian perfection. The religious vows promote divine char- ity in three ways : they strengthen man against the three fundamental weaknesses of fallen human nature; they free him from the three great solicitudes which handicap even good people in carrying out the com- mandment to love God with all their strength; finally they promote the positive donation of self which is required by true love. Let us now examine these three con- tributions of the vows to the perfection of Christian charity. The Vows Fortify Man Against the Wounds of Fallen Nature Wounds of Avarice: When Adam com- mitted original sin he threw away the tre- mendous privileges of his preternatural in- nocence. God had set man in a paradise of earthly beauty and harmony, with do- minion over all creatures to make them serve as instruments for elevating him to the knowledge and love and possession of God, the Sovereign Good. In punishment for his sin, Adam lost this dominion over creatures and left to his descendants a de- grading slavery to material goods. We call this servile tendency avarice or greed. 7 It is highly possible that most men would deny that avarice is any particular problem for them; they cannot imagine themselves enacting the role of the fictional miser, groping down the cellar stairs, candle in hand, to withdraw his moneybox from its hiding place and to luxuriate in the feel and the clink of his golden coins. No, most of us would not be caught in so crude a form of avarice. Still, this cynical world in which we live does accuse every one of us of this degrading vice in declaring, “Every man has his price.” Maybe he will not sell out for $5.00, but if you give him enough of what he wants (say $5,000,000, or social prestige, or po- litical power) he will sell anything— his country or his mother or his own soul. Now the world is not infallible; in fact, Christ thought it highly stupid. Nevertheless, it has had a lot of experience and has seen a multitude of men sell out. Maybe we ought not to be too hasty in thinking we do not need a safeguard against avarice. Christ Himself thought that we did. After thirty years on this earth, He began His first sermon, the first public expression of His Infinite Wisdom by this startling sen- tence: “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven!” Most of us can find proof in our own experi- 8 ence. Have you ever taken part in a family discussion as to the disposal of family prop- erty after a death? If you have, it is highly likely that you saw yourself, or at least your own flesh and blood, involved in very nasty quarreling about who gets what. Now, the vow of poverty cuts at the very roots of this greed. The Religious foregoes all ambition for financial advancement. He vows himself to dependence on the will of a superior for even his trivial needs until death. Wound of Concupiscence: The second loss that Adam suffered in consequence of betraying the privilege of his innocence was the loss of his “integrity,” i.e., the ab- solute control of his reason over sense ap- petites. Adam’s innocent body had been endowed with the most exquisite sensibility. No man since has ever been able to enjoy the pleasures of his bodily appetites as Adam did; but in Adam the animal was the docile servant of the angelic soul. It could and did relish the pleasures of sense most keenly but always in perfect subor- dination to the dictates of reason. When Adam’s reason refused obedience to God’s Sovereign Wisdom, God punished him by taking away this facile control of reason over the senses; the animal was in full 9 revolt against the angel. The senses can- not sin; it is only the will that can sin by consenting to the dictates of sense. This the will is never forced to do, but it does grow weary of the endless conflict and only too often finds peace in surrender. This is the problem of concupiscence. Comparatively few men would dare deny that it is a problem for them, as they do deny that avarice is a problem. The cynical world is so sure that it is a universal prob- lem that it does not hesitate to make an- other of its sweeping assertions in proclaim- ing that perfect continency of at least the sex appetite is impossible. Once again, the folly of the world is not the wisdom of Christ, the power of fallen nature is not the power of Christ’s grace. Even the worldling ought to admire the dignity of self-control which the religious life pro- motes. He may misinterpret this control as sterile emptiness, but he should at least recognize it as an expression of courage and an example of fidelity to duty for every man and woman, married or unmarried. The vow of chastity does not change human nature but it does provide a bulwark of Rule and associations which remove danger and make victory more easy. Wound of Pride : The final punishment of Adam’s fall is pride, the lifelong tend- 10 ency to stop short at self and ignore or even exclude God. Adam’s first sin was a sin of pride, but he had to do violence to his privileged state to commit it. Adam’s will was endowed with a preternatural gravitation toward God’s glory. His mag- nificent intellect readily understood that to serve God is to reign. Nevertheless, he was capable of pride, as he was not capable of greed and lust. When he committed that first sin of pride he lost this orderly gravi- tation toward God. He reversed the cur- rent of life so that it would no longer bear him easily Godward but tended to make him eddy pointlessly about his puny self. This is the most terrible penalty of orig- inal sin. It is all the more to be feared in that we are so little conscious of its presence in our fallen nature. Lust frightens us, for all its attractiveness, because it moves so di- rectly to the loss of God’s friendship. Pride, on the contrary blinds; the worse it is, the more it blinds. Our Lord was happy to be known as a friend of sinners, gloried in being a physician of mercy; but there was one class of sinners for whom even His in- finite power and mercy proved of no avail — the proud Pharisees and doctors of the law. There is no soul in hell who is not there 11 by reason of one of these three sins, avarice or lust or pride; but the root of every sin is essentially pride, a man stopping short at self against God. Now the vow of obedi- ence does not perform a u mercy killing” of this vicious pride; but it does set forth clearly the fundamental obligation and dig- nity of life, submission of the human will in obedience to God; and it establishes a comparatively easy rule and training pro- gram to uphold this submission. “Many are called, but few are chosen.” Every man is called to save his soul. He is not going to save his soul unless he has a solution for the terrible problem of avarice, lust, pride. The only solution for this prob- lem is the opposed spirit of poverty, chas- tity, obedience. No man then, who wishes to save his soul, can be indifferent to this spirit wherever his path of life may lead. Since the spirit of poverty and chastity and obedience is most easily realized when these virtues are vowed and protected by the rampart of Religious Rule and the coopera- tion of a select fellowship, it is clear that the choice of a religious life is eminently wise and not at all the abhorrent thing it is considered by the worldling. To put it shortly, the religious life is, as it were, a lifelong opportunity for one to fall more deeply in love with God. 12 Vows Free Man From Cares That Distract From God Financial Cares: The first solicitude weighing on good people in the world is the problem of economic welfare of self and family— food, shelter, clothing, social posi- tion, etc. Even with a beautiful spirit of evangelical poverty, good men and women are harassed by the problem of financial income: “getting and spending we lay waste our powers.” Faced by the problem of dollars and cents, it is hard to find and maintain that freedom which permits one to give undivided attention to the concerns of God and His Heaven. By the vow of poverty, the individual religious is entirely exempt from this division of interest. He receives no salary for his possibly magnifi- cent work, but he never has to have the least concern about food, shelter, economic welfare. Even if by his position he is in charge of the finances of his community, he ought to be so conscious of God’s Provi- dence aiding him in doing His work, that he can completely cast his cares on God. A religious institute is not like an ordinary business corporation; it does need money to carry on and develop its work; but merely making money is no concern of it at all; so long as the community keeps God’s in- 13 terests paramount, it will receive all the financial support it needs. Family Cares: The second great solici- tude from which man is freed by a religious life is the division of the heart of which St. Paul speaks in contrasting the state of vir- gins with married men and women. Marital love is not only a natural but also a super- natural glory of Christian life, since Christ has raised the natural contract of marriage to the dignity of a sacrament channeling to husband and wife all the graces they need for their happy and holy union. Neverthe- less, it still remains true that the married man or woman can be distracted from that love of God in the full strength demanded for Christian perfection, although there are many thousands of married men and women who exemplify holy living. Spiritual Worry: The third solicitude from which the religious vows protect one is the problem of knowing how best to do God’s Will. The more advanced a soul is in the way of perfection, the more it is in need of clear and sure direction to safe- guard it from weaknesses and delusions in the life of prayer and mortification. It is the rare exception for a person in the world to find a securely safe rule of life and a director prudent enough to interpret that rule. This problem does not exist for the 14 religious. He has no reason to worry about what he must do to become a saint. He has his Rule guaranteed by the Church to be a sure means of sanctity. He does not need to wonder how he is to become an- other St. Paul or another St. Francis of Assisi. He is not supposed to become an- other St. Somebody Else but St. Himself, the first of his kind. He will become this by following the Rule of his community as interpreted by his legitimate superiors. These legitimate superiors are themselves faulty and fallible men, but the subject can never make a mistake in obeying them so long as they command in accordance with constitutional authority. He can be abso- lutely sure of what God wants him to do. It is true that Religious Rule is so idealis- tically high that it would take something like the sanctity of the Word Incarnate or of His Immaculate Mother to keep it per- fectly; nevertheless, the path lies clear and the religious can have no doubt as to which way he must go; and it is certain that he will come far closer to fulfilling the plan of God in pursuing that clear path even with a faulty step than he ever would be able to do out in the world apart from that Rule. His road is mapped out for him. The Rule makes it impossible for him to mistake the way. 15 The Vows Positively Fulfill the Law of Love It would be a desirable aid in loving God if religious life merely warded off the three great root sins; if it diminished the three great worries of the soul in serving God. This contribution, important though it be, is, however, too negative to show the full- ness of the religious life. After all, the re- ligious state is more positive than merely avoiding evil and worry. True, we can check the sincerity of love by the fidelity of the lover to his obliga- tions; but love is something more positive than just avoiding deeds that would dis- please the beloved. Love is primarily a giv- ing process. The lover makes the beloved another self in whom he centers his inter- ests— not with the idea of getting but of giving. A love that measures its generosity, that limits it, is not true love. St. Augustine says: “The measure of love is to love with- out measure.” That is why we have the first commandment as given to us by Christ — God, the Perfect Good, must be loved with all the powers of our being. Perfect love involves, then, a total gift of self; where God is concerned there is in- volved a veritable holocaust or sacrifice in which the victim is entirely consumed by 16 fire. It is precisely this loving total immo- lation which the religious vows provide. By the vow of chastity one surrenders for God’s love the sweet goods of his body; by the vow of poverty he sacrifices the external material goods that money can buy; by the vow of obedience he gives up the sweetest good of all— his own will. So perfect is the holocaust of the religious vows, that theologians compare its efficacy to that of martyrdom. If the religious were to die immediately after offering the homage of his final vows, he would go straight to heaven like a martyr. Because the vows give God all the goods to which man can lay claim, the Church considers the religious dispensed from any previous obligation of private vow, such as special acts of piety or mortification; he may con- tinue to practise these observances and gain merit for doing so, but he has no further obligation, because the perfection of the religious vows is supposed to have already given to God the total acceptable sacrifice. Let us make here a very important ob- servation. True love is sacrificial, but let us not waste pity for the voluntary victim of this sacrifice. It is easy enough to see this when we consider human love. Even those who weep at weddings in some vague real- ization of the sacrificial donation the young 17 man and the young woman are making to each other, do not really feel sorry for them; they understand very well that the giving-up process to which their love drives is not emptiness but fulfillment. Without such a giving-up process, one remains piti- fully self-centered. That is the real empti- ness. The lover finds satisfaction through his true love by the very fact that he gives; the return of the gift by the beloved loving him is a sort of added bargain; the gen- erosity of his love already finds its satisfac- tion in going out of himself to constitute the beloved as another self. Of no love is it truer to assert that the sacrificial donation of love does not mean emptiness than it is of the love involved and gloriously perfected by the religious vows. Religious men and women do give up all the goods within their power to give; but they so give to fill up with God. a) They give up the noble satisfactions of married love, not because they do not wish to love and be loved, but because only God is enough to fill their capacity for love. b) They give up the material goods of the market place, not because they do not want riches, but because only the eternal riches of heaven are big enough for their holy ambition. 18 c) They give up their independence of will in favor of blind obedience to a fellow- human being— God’s representative— not because they are craven but because they realize that to serve God is to reign, the secret of total happiness. The Beauty of Religious Life Should Be Better Known The reason for the religious life is not just sentimental pietism but solid Catholic doctrine. Why should it be kept as a deep secret to be revealed only in the novitiate of the various Orders? How, in fact, can any young man or woman receive an integ- ral Catholic education who does not know what the religious life stands for? Above all, how can any young man or woman get the right perspective on planning the ful- fillment of young ambition, unless he or she is in a position to make comparison, to de- termine a reasoned choice among all the paths that beckon along life’s many- branched highway. In this regard, there is a forceful passage in the vocation pamphlet, “One Girl in a Hundred,” by Sister M. Madeleva, c.s.c. What Sister says to young women applies equally to young men. “The Sister ... is one person in a hundred. . . . She is not a person who closes her mind to the thought 19 and nobility of a generous life in the world, of marriage and a home and a family, of a professional position. She is not a frus- trated woman. Indeed she is the most complete and free and open-minded of all women. Most Catholic girls do not want to think of a religious vocation for fear that God might catch them in the act and im- pose a vocation on them. They remain condescendingly indifferent to the one great vocation in life that is essentially supernat- ural, the very one on which the entire fab- ric of Catholic education and hospitals and orphanages and missionary enterprises rests. . . . Work that the world offers them they contract for as if it were a tribute. Work that God offers them they recoil from as if it were a trap. ... In so far as they will not let themselves think outside the area of secular life and work they are prisoners of it. . . . The Sister knows that her life is not her own, that it belongs to God. She knows that He has given her the privilege of deciding how she will use it. She has the grace and wisdom to ask God what He wishes her to be. . . . She is not holier than the average girl, no more intelligent, no more attractive in any way. . . . She is simply the one girl in a hundred whom God has chosen to dedicate her life wholly to Him, to be the spiritual mother to thou- 20 sands of the children of the world. . . . Ninety-nine girls in a hundred marry and work for their husbands and home and children for the joy of these, or for their salaries and the independence of these. One girl in a hundred is asked by God instead of by a man or a profession to make and keep a spiritual home for Him and His children for the love of these now and forever.” This Knowledge Necessary for Parents These practical truths may not belong to the essential dogmas of the Church but they are certainly an indispensable part of Catholic philosophy. No one can be con- sidered well educated in Catholic thought who does not possess them. To know the real reason for the religious life is even more important for our students who are to be the future fathers and mothers in order that they may set up the truly Catholic home. The ideals and the spirit of the re- ligious life must serve both as a challenge and a guide for all who want to follow in the footsteps of the Master, for all who are to benefit by the divine wisdom of His Beatitudes whether in the cloister or not. There are some parents who are so ignorant of the dignity and fullness of the religious life that they reject violently any 21 idea of such a career for their flesh and blood. Perhaps they are the exception. But I wonder if the mother in the following story is not too typical an example of the common Catholic attitude of even compara- tively pious parents with regard to a reli- gious vocation. A priest was calling at a Catholic home to meet a boy who was con- sidering his entry into a seminary the fol- lowing fall. He met the mother and the boy, was satisfied himself by the attitude revealed in the ensuing conversation; and the mother in turn had her doubts and worries satisfied by his answers. After it had been agreed that the boy should enter the seminary for the following term, the mother brought in the rest of her lovely family to meet the priest. After greeting the other children, the visitor said with a smile, “How grand it would be if one or more of these other children would follow the example of their brother.” The mother made a startled and prompt pro- test: “Oh, Father, isn’t it enough to give up one?” “What do you mean?” replied the priest. “The only one of these children that you will not have to give up will be this boy who is now entering the seminary and, please God, will persevere to the priest- hood. These other children are going to go out of your life. They will marry and set 22 up their homes and so by the very neces- sity of their development will to some ex- tent push you out of your privileged posi- tion in their hearts. The boy who becomes a priest will indeed have his interests vastly enlarged, but nobody will ever take your place. You will reign in his heart with all the unique privileges of your motherhood without ever a rival.” The priest was somewhat of a prophet. The boy did persevere and became a priest; and he was the only child in the family that did not bring grief to that mother’s heart. Many were the times and long the years when she needed the consolation af- forded her by the love of her priest-son in order to bear up under the sorrows caused by the other children. How glad would that mother have been in later years to have “given them all up to God” for such joy as her consecrated son brought into her life. Yet the mother of this story, who did not know the beauty and the grandeur of the religious and the priestly life, was a Catho- lic school graduate and had close relatives who were nuns. Shall we continue turning out Catholic graduates who do not see any beauty in the ideals which are the logical climax of the noblest aspirations of a Chris- tian soul? 23 Religious Life: A Daily Beauty Of course the all important thing is for religious to show by their lives that they have learned these lessons for themselves. Certainly they must have learned them; it was to learn them that they spent a year or more in the novitiate. Yet they are human, so that even the most beautiful privileges can become routine, especially when these privileges do not register in perception. The religious life — and in this respect it is not different from any other life— can and will become monotonous, unless the light of faith keeps burning bright to show the eternal and divine values that are hidden beneath the weary sameness of daily duties. No religious can look back with self- satisfaction on the years spent in God’s service. God’s rights are absolute; man’s fallen powers are limited even with the help of grace. So it is no wonder that retrospect gives the religious no great reason for self- esteem. The holier he is, the greater is going to be his discontent with his record, because it takes a saint to appreciate the full demands made by the love of God. Nevertheless, it is to be hoped that there is no religious so short-sighted as to stop with the bleakness of this healthy discon- tent with self. Poor as may have been his 24 fervor, the religious life still affords him the joyful knowledge of giving to God the total consecration of all his powers and all his aspirations. At times work is going to be particularly hard and trying; health is going to be poor; the degree of success may seem inadequate. His faith does tell him of supernatural values won; but his feelings cannot register these values to offset the weariness and disappointment he feels. Since original * sin changed this earth from a paradise to a land of exile, there is sorrow and worry and disappointment in every life. But in no life are there such compensations to enable one to bear up under this burden as in the religious life. Even on the so-called “blue” days— and there are fewer of them in the religious life than in any other vocation— the religious can be invincibly joyous by listening to the testimony of his reason illumined by faith, instead of just listening to benighted feel- ings. If he really listens, there is going to be a holy joy that registers even through the lines of tiredness and pain. He is enjoying — or can enjoy the privilege of being spe daily loved by God and specially endowed with the power to love Him. That is the joy he must ever radiate so that all may see the wonders that he has experienced 25 in the holy vows of the religious life. Joy is the Christian’s great secret. For the re- ligious especially it is a continually increasing part of the hundred-fold promised by Our Lord for those who have left all to follow Him. Love of Christ: Objective of Religious Life Finally, let the religious make sure that 1 the world understands the concrete objec- tive of his life. He is not in love with pov- erty, chastity, obedience. These are ab- stractions, mere ideas formed by the mind. No one can love a mere abstraction. It won’t stand up against flesh and blood. He can philosophize about poverty, chastity and obedience until he is able to speak of them very eloquently. When the test comes, how- ever, the challenge of flesh and blood will sweep away the flimsy philosophy of mere abstract ideals. It is, rather, Christ Whom he must love, the Son of God Who came on earth to show how a child of God must live. Some years ago, a GI visited a leper asylum in the South Pacific. He watched while a Sister was dressing the leprous sores of a victim in the advanced stages of the disease. The GI said to her, “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars!” The Sister 26 looked up, shrugged, and smiled, “Neither would I!” She was doing it for more than a million dollars. That is the tremendous thing we must make people realize, the positive love-value there is in the religious life. That is what must be stressed rather than the negative giving up. St. Augustine has well said: “Where there is love there is no labor; and if labor there is, the labor itself is love!” The religious does not love poverty; he loves the poor Christ. He does not love purity; he loves the pure Christ. He does not love obedience; he loves the obedient Christ. He chooses Him above all; he chooses to follow Him rather than fallen Adam; to follow Him, obedient even unto the death of the Cross. Then there will be given to him as to Christ a name above all names. Having suffered with Jesus he shall likewise be glorified with Him. The Congregation of Holy Cross ... is a religious community founded in France in 1837 by Father Basil Moreau, C.S.C., whose cause for beatification has recently been started. Within a very few years after the founding, Moreau’s priests, 27 Brothers and Sisters were laboring in Af- rica, India, the United States, Canada, Po- land, and Italy. Today there are Holy Cross houses also in England, Haiti, Brazil, Ar- gentina and Chile — and more in the plan- ning stages for other countries. In the New World the young community has been especially blessed: God has con- fided to its care the famous Shrine of St. Joseph, Montreal, founded by the saintly Brother Andre, C.S.C., the largest and most visited place of pilgrimage in the Western Hemisphere; and in the United States the University of Notre Dame is one of the best known schools of the Americas. For over a hundred years this University, dedicated to Our Lady, has been a spiritual hub with apostolic spokes extending into many parts of the United States and of the world in the persons of Holy Cross priests and religious. Priests The candidate (high school graduate, college student or graduate) 1 for the Holy Cross Fathers spends one or two semesters as a student in a special Hall on the cam- pus of the University of Notre Dame . 2 In 1 Graduates of eighth grade, and high school students, enter Holy Cross Seminary, Notre Dame, Indiana. Write for complete information. 2 A lack of funds and of Latin will bar no one. 28 many ways he lives much like other Notre Dame men, but his schedule of classes, spiritual exercises and recreation is designed to prepare him for early entry into the Novitiate where he is to undergo a year’s intensive spiritual training. Then come the Major Seminary at Notre Dame and four years of Theology at Holy Cross College near the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. After ordination many priests go on for advanced degrees at Uni- versities at home or abroad. Holy Cross Priests are: Teachers Foreign missionaries Home missionaries Parish Priests Preachers of retreats, missions, novenas, etc. Writers Brothers The Brothers of Holy Cross, who aid the Holy Cross Fathers at Notre Dame and elsewhere at home and on the foreign mis- sions, do so chiefly by their religious lives of prayer and sacrifice and by dedicating to the service of God whatever talents and skills He has given them. The Brothers are 29 assigned to many office positions or to man- ual occupations such as carpentry, cooking, painting, farming. A special preparatory house at Notre Dame provides the Brother candidate an opportunity to test his vocation during the six months of postulancy before the Novi- tiate. Holy Cross Brothers (Priests’ Society) are: Office workers Mechanics Carpenters Painters Electricians Cooks, farmers, maintenance men, etc. For full information about the Holy Cross Fathers, and the Brothers who help them, write— or visit : The Director of Vocations Holy Cross Seminary Notre Dame, Indiana 30 NIHIL OBSTAT — Felix D. Duffey, C.S.G. Censor Deputatus IMPRIMATUR — Most Rev. John F. Noll, D.D Bishop of Fort Wayne January 31, 1950 All rights reserved. This pamphlet may not be reproduced by any means in whole or in part without permission of the publisher. A regular edition of ‘‘Singled Out,” for public sale with- out the material about Holy Cross, is published at ten cents per copy or $7.50 for 100 copies (postpaid). Order from: Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, Indiana. 31 1 ' I • \ o so H.C.F.