by Peter Fairbanks
Archdiocese of Washington
1st Pre-Theology
“As a young priest I learned to love human love. This has been one of the
fundamental themes of my priesthood.” These words from St. John Paul II have had a profound impact on me. In a sense, they have been the
fundamental theme of my discernment and of my first two months of seminary.
At first glance, the life of celibacy to which a priest commits can seem to be a renunciation of human love--a relinquishing of the Christian love shared by men and women in marriage, in family life, and among friends. While the priest, of course, does give up a wife and a natural family, his life
overflows with human love in his relationships with his parishioners, brother priests, family, and friends.
This summer I was preparing to enter medical school at Georgetown University when I began to seriously consider entering seminary. It was precisely this human love that prompted it all.
I worked at a surgery practice for three years after graduating from the University of Maryland. During this time, some of my closest friends were married and engaged couples. As we grew in friendship, the presence of Christ in the love my friends had for each other began to stretch out to me. True love multiplies. The love of my married friends begets a certain spiritual generativity--it opened my heart to a spiritual reality. Their love and their marriage is, in a very real sense, for the whole world. Their love is not closed off to friends or others around them. It was accessible to me. Their marital love made visible, as Pope Francis writes, “the love with which Christ loves his Church.”
We often hear that pictures of the Grand Canyon do not do justice to its beauty. After visiting a few years ago, I agree. But even after seeing the beauty in person, I wasn’t satisfied. Looking at the Canyon sparks a further desire that this natural beauty cannot satisfy. We beg for another sense by which to enter into the beauty more completely. This hint of beauty ultimately points us to its Creator. The ultimate longing that this beauty creates is fulfilled in a relationship with God.
During my discernment, this same experience, this desire for God, came not from a beautiful vista, but from an encounter with love. The love of those around me, particularly the marital love of my friends, brought this beauty to me--it prompted a desire in me that has been answered in my relationship with God and now in my response to the call to seminary.
John Paul II once wrote about the courage of his fellow Poles in the 20th century: “the heroism of my contemporaries helped me to define my personal vocation.” The witness of heroic human love revealed to me by my family and friends has pointed me toward my vocation, and for this I am eternally grateful.
To human love! St. John Paul II, pray for us.
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