“In the World, but Not of the World”

“In the World, but Not of the World”

It was a chilly dark night in Philadelphia in the year 2018. I was 17 years old. The snow was falling around St. Charles Borromeo Seminary and the noise on the street had died down. I smelt the whiff of a city, snow, and restaurants as I made my way towards the ages old building. But it was not the coldness of the night, not the darkness in the ancient city, not the aroma of food, and not even the purely white snowflakes that drew my attention that eventful night that would change my life. A mysterious and massive power--something of a supernatural scale-- was commanding me to go to the Chapel of St. Martin of Tours. My own will was cast away as I opened the incense smelling wooden doors, and walked across the same precipice that St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. John Paul II, and just that year, Pope Francis crossed. Still, an inner voice bade me even louder, and my stable body shuddered as I paced even faster towards the church at the end of the hallway. Intuitively, I found the light switch and flipped on the lights to the beautiful building. In awe, I presently found myself kneeling on a floor laden with marble. I clasped my hands together and wondered aloud: “God, what am I doing with my life?” I had come to this Philadelphia trip initially to hang out with my friends and see Philly even though it was supposed to be a tour of the Seminary. I didn’t go for the latter. But all of the sudden I was questioning myself of my intuitions and started wondering about being a priest. When I was younger, I thought of myself as growing up and being a priest. Lately, I had been ignoring the call. Why had I been ignoring Jesus? In fact, what is a priest? The answer was all the too simple: being a priest means sacrifice.

The first step is the sacrifice from the world. A priest should be “in the world, but not of the world”(John 17:16). Following in the steps of Christ, a priest must learn to reject all forms of pleasure, possessions, and power that will not get him to Heaven. This first level is the base level, since it is learning how to reject sin in all of its disguised forms. Pleasure will come a priest’s way, and he will be tempted to feast every night, sleep unnecessarily, spend unnecessary time on the internet. Possessions will wriggle into the priest’s life. If he is single in the eyes of the world, he can afford that expensive BMW or the newest model of the iPhone. Though these objects are not evil in themselves, they can become a source of evil for others--especially for priests. Yet power, most of all, can corrupt the priest’s life. “Jesus therefore, when he knew that they would come to take him by force and make him king, fled again into the mountains, himself alone”(John 6:15). For the Priest will be put in power and be tempted in immersing himself in it, looking down on others with prideful eyes. The great writer C.S. Lewis once said, “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you”(Lewis, Mere Christianity). The world is alluring and cunning in all its evil forms. Even if one becomes a priest, he is still human and will constantly fight the most destructive and transcendent war in history: the war against Satan. “ I shall not lay the sword aside until he calls me before his throne” writes St. Maria Faustina Kowalska. “I fear no blows, because God is my shield. It is the enemy who should fear us, not we him.”

The second level is the sacrifice of the family. It is the sacrifice of a vocation that is not in itself evil--rather, quite the opposite. This level is harder to attain, because this has gone past the bonds of sin and now enters a new realm. A very hard level for any priest to achieve, sine he know that he could get married and lead a perfectly holy and devout life. The devil will often tempt him in this regard. In his early years as a seminarian and young priest, the devil will chide, “Look, you and this girl have been friends for a while. She is a great Catholic and wants to date you, so why don’t you just accept it and become a permanent deacon? Nothing is wrong with that, right?” Still, the old adage will occur in later years. “What if you didn’t make the right decision--what if you were really called to be a married person, living a perfectly holy life?” Priests must learn how to dismiss these little notions and keep their eyes fixed on one thing: the Church. It is his spouse and he must leave nothing in its way to love and serve her. He must learn to sacrifice everything for her. Though not listening to your vocation is not evil, however, “The infidelity of a soul specially chosen by Me,” writes St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, dictating what Christ said to her, “wounds My Heart most painfully. Such infidels are swords which pierce My Heart.”

Finally, the third level of sacrifice is the sacrifice of self: a complete self denial to do only God’s Will. This last level, if followed, gives God the most joy. You completely surrendered yourself to him. You trust him completely, and he trusts you. He rejoices knowing that if you really loved him you would give everything to Him and His Church. So much would you love God and His Church that you would fulfill the definition of love: willing the good of the other. Even in our fallen day and age, actions, books, and movies that are considered some of the best works of all time did not consist of other types of love, but this type of love. Our hearts yearn and long for this type of love. Though other types of love may give us immediate pleasure, this love is the “the water that I will give him” and he “shall not thirst for ever”(John 4:13). What does this mean to its fullest extent? Constantly dying, constantly sacrificing your life every day to serve Him and His Church alone. The Church does not need more priests--it needs better priests. Priests who will constantly be giving up their lives, and if called, die for the Church. That is true love to its fullest extent. That is the true life of a priest. That is Jesus Christ.

I fell down on the marble under the weight of this vocation. “Dear God, what is my vocation?” I asked again aloud. Words came as clear as day, almost if someone spoke the words directly to me: “Kolbe, I want you to become a priest” He thundered. I knew that this what no ordinary being--no one was in the sacred building with me. This was the Voice of God. And he was speaking to me. No other revelation that I have had resonated that strongly with me. I trembled, repeating the words back to him, “Lord, I will become a priest.”