How can we encourage priestly vocations in our families? (2)

When it comes to important matters, one should not just think alone, but it is a good idea to ask for advice. Because we don't always see very clearly about ourselves; we sometimes lack objectivity . 

Of course the decision is not yet final at this age, and moreover the accomplishment of such a project will depend on many other factors which are not yet foreseeable; but the fact of entrusting to a priest whom the child admires, or to his habitual confessor this project glimpsed during a prayer before the Blessed Sacrament or by attending Mass, or others, can only be beneficial. It will be an opportunity to entrust this project to the Church in a certain way; it can help to understand that it will not be a purely personal project; it will also be a way of strengthening this call, of "objectivizing" it by submitting it to the judgment of a priest who knows the child, his defects and qualities; it can also help to have a certain personal detachment from this project, so as to be ready to renounce it if a major impediment were to arise.

For this alone, it is necessary that the child should have a good idea of the priest, so that the priest is not constantly denigrated in family conversations; it is necessary that the child perceive that there is a close collaboration between his parents and the referring priest; that the child should thus have confidence in his confessor, and that he can then confide his deepest aspirations to him.

(to be continued)

Father François-Régis de Bonnafos