In my first year of novitiate in the Legion, I heard these words from a very prominent Irish Legionary: “the reason there are so few vocations is because today’s youth lack the strength of will to follow a vocation.”
These words haunted me all my years in the order, and still do, to some extent, today. Did I give up? Did I simply go for the easier option, and then rationalize my actions with other reasons? Self-doubt was my Achilles heel, and kept me from questioning my Legionary vocation for years.
One day, about a year before I left, I picked up a book that began to change my mind. It had been listed on the world literature reading list almost as an afterthought, and I don’t know why I decided to read it. The book was “The Glass Bead Game” by Herman Hesse. Also known as “Magister Ludi”, the book was written by a man better known for his book “Steppenwolf”; that flagship novel of the Sixties. The main character joins an elite and secretive order at a very young age, and as he describes his life at the boarding school, all I could picture in my mind was my years in the Legion’s High school seminary in New Hampshire, and I began to identify deeply with this fictional boy named Joseph Knecht. At one point, he speaks about the boys who dropped out of the school and left the order.
“Every time a pupil was sent backfrom Eschholz and left us, I felt as if someone had died. If I had been asked the reason for my sorrow, I would have said that I felt pity for the poor fellow who had spoiled his future by frivolity and laziness, and that there was also an element of anxiety in my feeling, fear that this might possibly happen to me some day. Only after I had experienced the same thing many times, and basically no longer believed that the same fate could overtake me as well, did I begin to see somewhat more deeply into the matter. I then no longer felt the expulsion of an electus merely as a misfortune and punishment. I came to realize that the dismissed boys in a good many cases were quite glad to be returning home. I felt that it was no longer solely a matter of judgment and punishment, but that the ‘world’ out there, from which we electi had all come once upon a time, had not abruptly ceased to exist as it had seemed to me. Rather, for a good many among us it remained a great and attractive reality which tempted and ultimately recalled these boys. And perhaps it was that not only for individuals, but for all of us; perhaps it was by no means only the weaker and inferior souls upon whom the remote world exerted so strong an attraction. Possibly the apparent relapse they had suffered was not a fall and a cause for suffering, but a leap forward and a positive act. Perhaps we who were so good about remaining in Eschholz were in fact the weaklings and the cowards.”
The last three sentences hit me very hard. We never talked about those who left, as if they had died or failed…”many are called yet few are chosen”. And now this new thought: were they in fact the brave ones, the ones who were not afraid to face the truth. Was that nagging knowledge that I was simply not cut out for this life a reality to be faced rather than a temptation to be suppressed? When I found out later that this book was in fact one of Pope Benedict XVI’s favorite novels, I was emboldened in my line of thinking.
Self-doubt, self-doubt, self-doubt. It held me back for so long. ”Who am I to say that God doesn’t want me to be a Legionary, to be a Religious, to be a priest?” I resolved that I would never leave of my own accord, I would hang on until I was told to leave. Then the day came when I knew it wasn’t for me, and still no one was telling me to pack up and leave. It was then that I saw the courage involved in leaving. I had to be brave enough to admit I was wrong, to break my promise to myself that I would never go of my own accord, to face my superiors and tell them I was leaving, to risk being “dead” or a “failure” to my friends who stayed in.
So far in my blog I have pointed to two negatives in my experience of Legionary life: self-doubt and and the confusion of identity with vocation. I would like to thank you all for the helpful and supportive comments you have offered on my previous posts, especially Fr. Matthew Green, Fr. Cristian Borgono, LC, and Fr. John Stegnicki. A friend of mine told me that someone on another blog claimed they tried to post a comment to my blog and it was not approved. I will always approve all comments, so please try posting again, as apparently I never received that comment. As for those comments that very astutely pointed out that I described brainwashing and cult-like behavior while proclaiming I did not believe in those accusations against the Legion, for now I will just say: point taken. I suspect that I have a much narrower definition of the words cult and brainwash, and this is an area where I must broaden my mind. I hope above all that my blog can be a forum and inspiration for positive and constructive reflection on the Church, the Legion and Regnum Christi.
