'Call to consecrated celibacy ... is the call to love'
Daniel A. Keating, Special to The Michigan Catholic
Published January 5, 2007
Vocations Supplement
Sometimes a simple, unexpected remark can point to a vocation. At a graduation party in May of my senior year in high school, a good friend and I were chatting about our upcoming college careers, and how we were all scattering to many different universities. At one point he said rather whimsically: "I'll bet that after college we will all come back to Cleveland, find a girl to marry, raise our kids, and send them back to our high school."
Even as he said this, a clear conviction arose within me that this would not be true for me. Something else was in store for me, and it did not involve settling back home, raising a family, and sending my kids off to the Catholic high school I had attended. It wasn't that I found this prospect unattractive — I rather liked the idea of settling back home and raising a family. But somehow I knew deep in my heart that the "adventure" of my life would look very different.
Realizing that the more conventional future was not likely to be mine was both exciting and disturbing to me. Like the character Bilbo Baggins in "The Hobbit," I had both a deep desire to live a settled, domestic life and a profound longing for something more adventurous. And my heart told me that the latter course was what God had in store for me.
 Consecrated celibacy:
A person vows to abstain from sexual relations in order to be consecrated to the service of God and the Church, and to be able to live his or her life more closely to how Jesus lived. | I came to my vocation in stages during my undergraduate years at the University of Michigan. Through my older brothers I became involved with a Christian student group (University Christian Outreach) where I made many good friends of both sexes, and grew up into a more mature faith. Even as I was finding the prospect of marriage ever more attractive, I experienced Christ inviting me to consider a life of consecrated celibacy. In my junior year I took specific steps to investigate the brotherhood I am now a part of (The Servants of the Word), and as I walked forward I found a better and better "fit" with this way of life.
Conviction about my vocation did not come through sudden revelation or vision, but through the consistent experience of being "drawn," and of finding that I was somehow "fitted" for a consecrated life of celibacy. As my conviction grew, I left behind my long-term desire to become a medical doctor, and set myself to pursue the life I believed Christ was calling me into.
As someone who prizes predictability, order, and clear expectations, I was often uneasy with this "venture of faith" into an unknown and unconventional future. I was forced to trust God for my life and leave behind my own plans for what my life would amount to. This was perhaps the greatest "death" I experienced — placing my life and its outcome simply in the hands of God.
After 25 years of living consecrated celibacy, I am fully convinced that this was the "adventure" that Christ called me to embrace. The call to consecrated celibacy — like any true vocation — is a call to love. For me this means to set aside my life for Christ himself and those he has called me to love and serve. I live this vocation in the context of the particular charisms of the Servants of the Word — the renewal of Christian community, a dedication to make God's word known and loved, and a call to advance Christian unity. I am deeply gratified that I have been able to make use of my consecrated vocation to teach at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, to work for many years with university students, and to "make God's word known and loved" in many places around the world. And it is a special joy to be involved as a Catholic in the demanding work of advancing the cause of unity among Christians from many different traditions.
I am often asked why I am not a priest. The simple and decisive answer is that I do not believe God has called me to this. But I also see a specific role in the Church for consecrated celibacy outside of a priestly vocation. Because of the great need for vocations to the priesthood today, I believe it is difficult for men to hear a call to lay consecrated celibacy, and difficult for the Church to recognize the value of this specific grace. Alongside vocations to marriage and the priesthood, there is a role for the witness of lay consecrated celibacy as well. I hope that in some small way my own "unexpected path" will bear fruit for the good of the Church and for the advance of the knowledge of Christ.
Daniel A. Keating, Ph.D., is a professor at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit. For more information on lay consecrated brotherhoods, visit www.servantsoftheword.org and www.brotherhoodofhope.org.
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