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Vocation

Understanding health care as a vocation

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Today health care is described as many things, including a profession, business, industry or even a right. However, long before health care was any of these things, it started as…

Today health care is described as many things, including a profession, business, industry or even a right. However, long before health care was any of these things, it started as a calling to serve by caring for those who are ill.

The word “vocation” comes from the Latin word vocare, which means “to call.” While all of us are called to holiness and a specific state in life — such as married or religious — some, too, have a vocation to a specific type of service for their daily work. A vocation to care for the sick was the genesis of health care and should serve as the cornerstone in a discussion regarding any aspirations for health care in general and for health care workers in particular.

Spurred by Christianity

While some roots of modern medicine can be traced back to Hippocrates’ Oath, health care as we know it today largely developed thanks to Christianity. Prior to the time of Christ, there were no hospitals to speak of, and health care was largely utilized to keep soldiers and slaves in working order. The general public who became ill were ostracized and begged in the streets.

Christ, however, changed this paradigm by his example. In his public ministry, he used the healing of the sick to spread the Good News of God’s love and forgiveness. In many New Testament stories, upon arriving in a new town, he would heal the sick prior to preaching to the crowds. No doubt many of those who heard his message of hope were first drawn to him by his works to alleviate the suffering of the ill. Prior to Christianity, health care was considered from the point of utility — to keep people on the job. But Christ’s example and teachings led to a new understanding that caring for the sick was a holy endeavor, in and of itself, because each human person was created in the image of God.

Christ taught in Matthew 25 that “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” It is this charge that served as a spiritual calling for the many holy men and women who built hospitals, studied disease and developed treatments and surgeries to care for the sick among us, leading to the growth of health care as we know it today. Without Christ’s teachings and example, it is quite likely that many positive aspects of health care as we know it would not have come to be. Charitable care for the indigent, and even the ubiquitous nature of health care services in general, can be traced back to a dedication driven by a calling in the lives of many pioneers in health care from the likes of St. Camillus, to St. Mother Teresa, to Servant of God Jerome Lejeune and countless others who dedicated their whole lives to caring for the sick.

Health care is vocation

The importance of the vocational nature of health care is highlighted by its absence today in places where it is being forgotten. If health care is a business rather than a vocation, profits will guide care choices, and patients will suffer. If health care is an industry, then it is something that is to be regulated for the benefit of the state, and health care workers will suffer. We unfortunately see this today by infringements on the conscience rights of health care workers today when they are coerced to act against their deeply held beliefs. If health care is something to be demanded from those providing it, both patients and health care workers can suffer and the good of both can be misplaced.

This is an all too common misconception that can, in essence, indenture health care workers by disregarding their rights as workers rather than creating a mutual and fiduciary relationship between doctor and patient. In part, this has led hospitals and health care workers to be mere dispensaries of services, even if it is not in the best interest of the patient. The fruits of this tree can be seen most saliently with what has happened with the opioid crisis in recent years. While health care has aspects of each of these things, if we lose the centrality of health care as a vocation, then we jeopardize the many wonderful things that have been achieved by those who preceded us.

In contrast, when properly regarded as a vocation, health care can be a blessing to the called and to those whom they serve. Additionally, for one who works in health care, it can be a path of holiness as well. On a daily basis, a health care worker has many opportunities to practice corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Frequently, patients who suffer physical ailments share their mental and spiritual burdens as well. This is true especially for patients who do not have a strong faith as these interactions provide occasions for evangelization. Health care workers have the opportunity to show Christ’s love to them in a time of need, not only in caring for the physically ill, but in interacting with people who are frequently in physical or mental distress. It is always my hope that if patients are treated with love, they will recognize that it is because of Christ that we love them.

Health care is in a great need of a resurgence of viewing medicine as a calling in this way. It is for this reason that I always encourage those who are considering this path because it is filled with many joys and blessings for oneself as well as many opportunities to truly touch the lives of those for whom they care. It is these health care workers who will provide the best care for patients because of their dedication to those they serve.

In modern times we are faced with many questions regarding health care. How it is financed? How it is provided? How can we entice more workers to choose health care to improve staffing shortages and access for patients? These are all critical questions as we work to improve the system that we live in. However, if we can keep the focus of health care as a vocation and Christ as our example, we will most certainly make better choices for health care policies that will help both the health care worker and the patient engender a culture of virtue in the process.

Dr. Andrew J. Mullally, MD, is a family physician who co-hosts the “Doctor, Doctor” radio show on EWTN and practices in Indiana.

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St. Camillus de Lellis

Feast Day — July 18

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This 16th century Italian saint knew suffering and illness on a personal level. After serving in the army, Camillus contracted a leg disease which prevented him from becoming a Capuchin as he desired. Instead, he used his time to care for the sick and even became the director of the Roman hospital, St. Giacomo. Eventually he was ordained a priest and founded his own congregation, which began by ministering to those at Holy Ghost Hospital in Rome and later extended their work to Naples. In 1591, Pope Gregory XIV granted permission that they become a religious order, and they took the name of the Ministers of the Sick (also known as the Camillians), identifying themselves through a red cross on their cassocks. Soon Camillus sent his brothers to serve the wounded in Hungary and Croatia, becoming the first field medical unit. By the time of his death, the order had over 300 members.

St. John of God

Feast Day — March 8

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John’s life was defined by his impulsive nature. At a young age, he ran away from home to follow a visiting priest who spoke about the New World. However, falling sick on their travels, John became a shepherd before fleeing an unwanted marriage to become a soldier in the Spanish army, where he lived a life of sinfulness. John had a change of heart when he was thrown from his horse, and he soon decided to go to African and rescue Christians. However, his heart was moved when he met a noble family being exiled to Africa and offered to be their servant. The family fell ill, and John nursed them back to health. Returning to Spain, John worked as a religious book seller until he heard a sermon by St. John of Avila on repentance, causing John to give up all his belongings. The townspeople thought he had gone mad, so they hospitalized him until St. John of Avila told him his penance was over. From that point onward, he began caring for the sick in the hospital, and he went on to form to treat the poor, forming the Brothers Hospitallers to assist him in his mission. John died from pneumonia after diving into a frozen river to save one of his companions.
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Virtues

Does every moment count?

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Several years ago, while talking to a group of men, I shook up my listeners a bit — and perhaps also myself — by speaking in praise of wasting time…

Several years ago, while talking to a group of men, I shook up my listeners a bit — and perhaps also myself — by speaking in praise of wasting time or doing what many people would consider wasting it. After all, I said, most normal individuals were busy at that very moment doing their jobs, mowing their lawns, buying groceries, washing the laundry, saving the world. And here we sat talking about making good use of time but not getting anything done.

I’ll come back to that. For the moment, let’s agree that one person’s good use of time is another person’s waste. But it would be a mistake to leave it at that. Instead, let’s consider an obvious question: Is there any common factor in using time well?

At first sight, it looks as if there weren’t. Good, sincere, conscientious people obviously use time in very different ways and feel they’re right to do so. Taking a nap or running in a marathon, watching a ballgame on television or listening to an opera — people do one thing and not the other all the time and feel perfectly justified. Countless different behaviors represent good use of time for countless different people.

Individual callings

So, does using time well come down to a matter of personal taste?

One ancient answer is that most things people consider good uses of time aren’t really so good. You find that way of thinking in some older books of ascetical practice. According to this view, very nearly the only people who consistently use time well are contemplative religious, most of whose time is devoted to meditation and prayer, with a little manual labor and study on the side.

But although that may be an excellent lifestyle for contemplative religious, it’s surely not suited to laypeople living active lives in the world. Leaving aside practical considerations like the need to support yourself and a family, the reason that’s so is vocation. To put it briefly, your vocation is the key to what constitutes good use of time for you.

That calls for a closer look. At one level, everyone is called to love God and neighbor, and that is his or her vocation. True as that is, though, it’s too general to be of much use. All good people must try to love and serve God and neighbor. But how am I supposed to do that — right here and now, in the circumstances of my life?

At another level, the answer is that you do this by performing the duties of your state in life. Husbands and fathers do what husbands and fathers do, wives and mothers do what wives and mothers do, and so on for priests and religious and everybody else: Do what the duties of your state require.

But that, too, is not nearly specific enough to be of much practical use. Carry out the duties of your state in life, yes; but exactly what does that mean here and now?

Matter of discernment

At this third level, then, we come to the unique personal vocation of each individual. Here using time well means loving God and neighbor, fulfilling the duties of state in life, and doing God’s will for me in regard to all of the above in the present concrete circumstances of my life. Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade, a famous Jesuit spiritual director of the early 18th century, had a name for it: He called it “the sacrament of the present moment.”

From that point of view, the question of what constitutes good use of time has no single answer applicable to everyone. The answer will instead be different, depending on God’s will for each of us and on our ongoing discernment of his will.

To be sure, a prudent person will be guided by the norms of Christian morality as these are embodied in the teaching of the Church and also by the counsel of a reliable spiritual adviser. In the end, though, the only answer suitable for everyone is this: Do what God is asking of you to live out your personal vocation here and now.

And be sure always to bear in mind St. Paul’s advice: “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31).

Out of duty

There are of course certain more or less obvious mistakes for everyone to avoid. For people who are serious about the interior life, one of these is doing good things only out of a sense of duty, with no higher motive than that.

A priest letting his hair down once explained how that looked in his case: “I’m no saint. Yes, I work hard and I get a lot of things done. But the fact is I do it because I wouldn’t feel comfortable otherwise.”

He’s hardly alone. “As Americans,” a wise cardinal once remarked to me, “we’re all Puritans and all disciples of Immanuel Kant. We do things out of a sense of duty. And ‘duty’ is something defined externally — an obligation imposed from outside. Keeping busy and doing our duty is essential to our peace of mind. Busyness — activism — is a typically American fault.”

This isn’t an argument against doing your duty. That’s important in itself and important also as a starting point for much else. But it isn’t sufficient for an interior life of growing friendship with God. Duty may not be precisely the enemy of love, but unless one is careful, it can pretty much crowd love out of the picture. But spiritual progress absolutely requires that the driving force of one’s life increasingly be love.

I told the cardinal I didn’t know much about Puritans and Kant, but I did recognize what he was describing as the product of a compulsive personality (easy to recognize because I’ve got one myself). Whatever you attribute it to, it boils down to the same thing in the end: doing what you do because you feel you have to do it. And for people thus afflicted, that is good use of time.

Today the temptations that lead in this direction are probably subtler than ever. It’s easy, for example, to become ensnared by our electronic tools and toys — television, Internet and the rest. You think they’re helping you make good, efficient use of time, but beware: A few years ago I realized that email was leading me down this particular primrose path.

I was starting each day by reading my messages and replying to them. Then, naturally, I’d check the news on the Internet and catch up with some favorite websites. Thus I was spending an hour to an hour-and-a-half of prime time every day on email and Internet instead of doing my work.

The solution was to shift email and Internet to a time slot after work. It’s not only more efficient — it takes some of the pressure out of my schedule and helps me organize my day in light of the real priorities.

Time with the divine

As I suggested at the start, at the top of the priorities list is, or should be, “wasting” time on God. That includes things like regular Mass attendance and reception of the sacraments, daily prayer and meditation, retreats and days of recollection, reading the Bible and other spiritual literature. These aren’t just pious options; they are absolute necessities for anyone interested in maintaining and developing a friendship with God.

“I just don’t have the time,” some people say to that. Heaven help the man who some day has to stand before Jesus and explain, “I didn’t have time”!

Still, there is consolation in the fact that on some deep level, people even today continue to intuit spontaneously the importance of time. My evidence for that is the perennial popularity of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”

At bottom, it’s a parable about the passing of time — nostalgic happiness recalling times past, an anxious sense of the fleetingness and preciousness of time here and now, a mix of hopefulness and dread about the future depending on how we use the time that’s given us.

Like words for a poet, color for a painter and sound for a composer, time is everybody’s medium for shaping a life devoted to loving and serving God and neighbor.

Russell Shaw is an OSV contributing editor. This is the eighth part of a monthly Year of Faith series on virtues that originally ran in Our Sunday Visitor.

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Faith

What Is An “Active” Catholic?

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An active Catholic is thought to be one who, besides regular attendance of Mass and the sacraments, serves as a reader or extraordinary minister of holy Communion, teaches in the…

An active Catholic is thought to be one who, besides regular attendance of Mass and the sacraments, serves as a reader or extraordinary minister of holy Communion, teaches in the religious education or the RCIA program or is a member of the parish pastoral council. When we think of a “very active” Catholic, we are inclined to thinking of someone who is highly involved in parish ministries and programs.

Such a way of thinking is, at one level, not wrong. Every parish community depends on groups of parishioners who are willing to assist in the life of the parish. Without them, the parish would be poor and would not operate very well.

The fact is the most basic and necessary description of an active Catholic is a person who, besides participation in the Mass and the sacraments, seeks to live out the Catholic faith in the ordinary circumstances of his or her life.

Before we serve God in the parish, we serve him first in our homes, as parents, children, spouses and as single persons, and in society at large as workers, professionals and citizens.

Not enough Catholics think of their marriage as a vocation and the primary means by which they are active Catholics. Living together “for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness or health,” constitutes the framework within which most Catholics live their faith actively.

The role of parents in raising their children involves the same sort of commitment. The Church has, since the Second Vatican Council, promoted the idea of the family as the “domestic church.” All that goes on in the lives of parents and children goes to make up a truly active unit of the Church.

Consider also the area of work and the professions we have. We are not adequately inclined to think of these as vocations or the arenas within which we can be active Catholics. Yet they are in truth vocations, because they are the ways in which we serve God.

Whether we are employers or employees, there are a whole host of virtues that we are called upon to practice in our daily work. These include diligence, wisdom, fairness, charity, tolerance, solidarity and consideration of the needs and failures of others.

Being an active Catholic in our places of work does not mean that we go around preaching to others. It means acting out our faith in the knowledge that actions speak louder than words. Each profession or job brings with it a whole host of possibilities for serving the kingdom of God and embodying the Catholic faith.

Each and every one of us is called to be an active Catholic. This does not begin and end with what we do on Sunday morning. Certainly, the liturgical aspect of faith is central. But being an active Catholic means living our faith in the ordinary circumstances of life Monday through Saturday.

If on top of that we are able to take on some participation in the ministries and programs of the parish, so much the better. But such activities should be regarded as secondary to what has traditionally been called “the apostolate of the laity,” the work of advancing God’s kingdom within the everyday circumstances of life.

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Laity

Priesthood of the Laity

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The nature of the priesthood of the laity has caused a lot of confusion in the post-Second Vatican Council Church, and so it is important to clarify both the beauty…

The nature of the priesthood of the laity has caused a lot of confusion in the post-Second Vatican Council Church, and so it is important to clarify both the beauty of this doctrine and the difference between this priesthood and the ministerial priesthood.

The priesthood of the laity is based on the fact that all those baptized receive not only sanctifying grace, but also a character, or indelible mark, in their souls by which they are conformed to Christ as priest, prophet and king. Vatican II reminded Catholics that all the faithful are truly priests through baptism, but their priesthood differs from the ministerial priesthood in its essence “and not only in degree” (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, No. 10). Yet, “the one is ordered to the other” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1547).

A True State of Life

The ministerial priesthood, though it involves the power to define doctrine on the episcopal level, to govern the earthly Church and to consecrate the Eucharist, is only a means to the end of the holiness and consecration of all the faithful. The clergy are the means ordered to the end, which is the faithful.

Vatican II was very clear that the laity constitute a true state of life in the Church as their consecration is more general than priests and religious and oriented to the secular world. However, this recognition of a lay state is to be understood as referring to that state in a broad sense of the term. As the council fathers wrote, “The state of the laity is used in place of condition and mission (terms which occur a little further on) so that the honor of constituting a state is recognized for the laity at least in the broad sense” (“Doctrinal Commission on Lumen Gentium”).

Lumen Gentium’s definition of the laity looks at the lay faithful primarily as distinct from the rest of the Church, but the late Dominican priest and theologian Jordan Aumann, in his book “On the Front Lines” (Alba House, 1990), developed a more positive definition of the laity, one which seeks not just to set the laity off in relief from those with a special consecrated role in the Church, but also to identify their consecration.

To summarize his points: the laity, like all other members of Christ’s faithful, are baptized persons (sacramental aspect) who are thereby incorporated into Christ (Christian aspect) and made members of the Church (ecclesiological aspect) with the right and duty to participate actively in the mission of the Church (missionary aspect).

In addition to all that, the laity, by reason of their secular characteristic, are committed to the renewal and sanctification of the temporal order.

To Sanctify the World

The laity have a place in the Church which is characterized as “mission.” They are distinguished from both the clergy and religious because their true consecration in the Church is of a secular nature. The “world” here is taken not only to mean the world as a kingdom ruled by sin, but also, in a more positive sense, everyday life. The laity are called and gifted to sanctify the world from within.

Meanwhile, the sacred ministry of the sacraments and the separation from secular occupations and interests are part of the nature and mission of the clergy and religious. As the laity are to sanctify the world from within, it would be equally a mistake for clergy to become what Father Aumann called “hyphenated priests” occupied mostly in secular pursuits, or for laypeople to be clericalized so they take over all functions in the liturgy and the parish except actual consecration of the Eucharist.

Though the Church has encouraged the laity to enter formally into the ritual of the Mass by acting as lectors and extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, laypeople exercise their proper and characteristic dignity in transforming the secular world of the family and the professions, where they find their proper place. The laity live in the world and work in it; they sanctify the world against the evils which are present in it. In this they imitate Christ who had to act among ordinary people in an ordinary life in order to save us. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote: “It was in keeping with the end of the Incarnation that Christ should not lead a solitary life, but should associate with men. Now it is most fitting that he who associates with others should conform to their manner of living.”

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The laity are not, therefore, some stand-alone vocation in the Church. They are truly called to sanctity, along with priests and religious, albeit in different ways. They truly serve with the bishops and priests as brothers (see Lumen Gentium, No. 10).

This mission includes the threefold nature of the mission of Christ: priest, prophet and king. The teachings of Vatican II clarify this by holding it should not involve too rigid an application of this threefold mission, lest a tripartite theology be applied. Rather, the use of these terms means, more generally, worship (priest), witness (prophet) and service (king).

The priestly aspect of the laity is seen not in offering the sacrifice of the Mass by changing the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Laity are not in themselves ministers of the altar. Instead, it is seen in all the actions of their everyday life when viewed from God’s point of view. These actions are most fittingly offered with the victim in the sacrifice of the Mass. And so, Lumen Gentium teaches, “worshipping everywhere by their holy actions, the laity consecrate the world itself to God” (Catechism, No. 901). The consecration of the world through the actions of the laity is not due to the actions themselves, but rather to the attitude of the one who does them. This attitude is looking at the world from God’s point of view, under the aspect of eternity. At Mass, the laity truly offer what they are with the priest and receive the gift of Christ to transform their way of thinking and action to be that of Christ.

The prophetic aspect of the mission of the laity by which they witness to the truth includes their witness to the last things. Until the end of time, God fulfills the prophetic aspect of Christ’s mission not only in the formal teaching of the hierarchy, but also in the witness of the laity who teach the Faith. Central to this prophetic ministry is the instruction in the Faith which parents should give their children. This adds to the priestly role of the laity in marriage.

The Church has reiterated a long-standing teaching that marriage is itself holy because the ministers are the baptized couple, made holy by baptism. In the exchange of vows, baptized couples are the means of holiness for each other, so they truly are the ministers. The priest and the Church must be present as witnesses because it would be unfitting for Christians to exchange vows of love in any other context than that of Christ and the Church. The union of the couple is not merely religious, but supernaturally holy, because of the character of baptism present in the parties. Marriage is thus the prime exercise of the priesthood of the faithful, which was common to all the baptized.

The priestly character of marriage not only affects the unity of the spouses, but also relates directly to the procreative dimension. The purpose of procreation is not just realized in the existence of children, but also demands nurture and education. Since the body and the soul are the result of the marriage act, and the soul is created for union with God, St. Thomas does not hesitate to repeat with Aristotle that “there is something divine in human seed.”

This divine character of human seed can only be finally completed in the Vision of God, when man sees God face-to-face. Parents are the primary ministers who prepare their children for this mystery. Education does not end at Harvard or Yale, but in heaven. The child must be schooled for the cultus Dei, the worship of God. This schooling is an education in the virtues. This makes the home a domestic Church. St. John Paul II, in his famed apostolic exhortation on the role of the Christian family in the modern world, Familiaris Consortio, explains, “The Christian family constitutes a specific revelation and realization of ecclesial communion, and for that reason can and should be called a domestic church” (Catechism, No. 2204).

The kingly role is expressed in Christian service, especially in the virtue of justice. One must realize that the power to rule is expressed first in ruling oneself and one’s own inclinations to sin with the help of God’s grace. St. Hilary wrote: “There are kings in whom sin does not reign, who rule their own body…. These are kings and their king is God.” This is accomplished through the self-surrender to God brought about by the rule of the virtues and the gifts. The laity are called to bring forth the kingdom of Christ, first through the interior self-rule by which they can be a leaven in the secular professions. From this interior integrity they can seek to establish justice and mercy in secular life.

In a very real sense, then, the laity are priests, but by an essential difference in the participation in the character of baptism from ministerial priests. The consecration of the Eucharist and the forgiveness of sins together with leadership in the parish and true teaching are all meant to nourish the priesthood of the laity.

Father Brian Thomas Becket Mullady, O.P. is an author, retreat master and preacher.

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