Elisha left the oxen, ran after Elijah, and said,
"Please, let me kiss my father and mother goodbye,
and I will follow you."
Elijah answered, "Go back!
Have I done anything to you?"
Everyone who has entered a seminary, monastery, or convent remembers the Lord's reference to this story about Elijah and Elisha. When I first heard it, accustomed as I was to the Church's subculture of family, parish, and school, the way that lay ahead did not seem terribly unusual or challenging. A priest's future seemed predictable in the early 1960's.
So when I heard Luke 9:62 -- "“No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God,” I saw no reason for turning back. I had not left anything I should return to!
For young people invited to full-time ministry in the Church today, I don't suppose it's that way. They cannot enter a seminary or convent before graduating from high school; and by then they've experienced and considered many alternate ways of life.
Elisha apparently had little idea what following Elijah meant. The old prophet was unapproachable on his best days; Elisha could only expect many days of silence as he followed him. He had only Elijah's gesture with the cloak, which he might inherit someday. And he knew he must remain with the prophet even when told to go away.
Hearing, accepting, and following a call to full time, professional ministry in the Church demands that kind of commitment today. Aspiring priests, sisters, and brothers have to determine for themselves, using whatever intuitions they may have about an uncertain future. Living amid an AI Revolution, they will have to choose between efficiency and human dignity, and will often be wrong.
I have known more than a few peers who did turn back during the unsettled post-Vatican II/Vietnam/Watergate years, followed by The Scandal. I think many of them traded their birthright for a mess of pottage, but that is not for me to decide. As I face a transfer to another friary fairly soon, I hope that I will stay the course.
I am sure only that God, love, and faith make the impossible easy.
