To educate

35. "And he said to them, 'What is this conversation which you are holding with each other as you walk?' And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, 'Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?' And he said to them, 'What things?' And they said to him, "Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people...' And he said to them, 'O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?' And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He appeared to be going further, but they constrained him, saying, 'Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent'. So he went in to stay with them" (Lk 24, 17-29).

After the sowing, on the journey of accompaniment, it is a question of educating the young person. Educating in the etymological sense of the word, as a drawing out (e-ducere) from him his truth, what he has in his heart, even what he does not know, especially about himself: weaknesses and aspirations, to encourage the freedom of the vocational response.

a) Educating to knowledge of self

Jesus draws near to the two and asks them what they are talking about. He knows, but he wants them both to open themselves to him and, by verbalising their sadness and deluded hopes, help them to be aware of their problem and the real reason for their anxiety. In this way they are practically obliged to review their recent history, bringing to light the true reason for their sadness.

"We had hoped..."; the story appears to be going in a different direction from what they had expected. In reality they had had all the significant experiences in their contact with Jesus, "mighty in deed and word"; but it is as if this faith journey had been unexpectedly interrupted in the face of the incomprehensible event of the passion and death of He who should have liberated Israel.

"We had hoped, but..."; how can we not recognise in this unfinished story the plight of so many young people who seem interested in vocational dialogue, allow themselves to be provoked and show a good predisposition, but then stop when they have to make a choice? Jesus makes the two admit the discrepancy between their hopes and God's plan as it is concretised in Jesus; between their way of understanding the Messiah and his death on the cross, between their so very human expectations and interests and the sense of a salvation that comes from on high.

In the same way it is important and decisive to help young people to uncover the basic misunderstanding: the all too worldly and me-centred interpretation of life, which makes the vocational choice difficult or practically impossible, or makes the demands of the call seem excessive, as if God's plan were inimical to the person's need for happiness.

How many young people have not welcomed the call not because they are ungenerous or indifferent, but simply because they are not helped to know themselves, to discover the ambivalent and pagan roots of certain mental and affective plans; and because they are not helped to free themselves from their fears and defence mechanisms, conscious and unconscious, in facing up to their vocation. How many vocations have been cut short because of this educational emptiness.

Above all, educating means bringing out the reality of the I, just as it is, if we then want to bring it to what it should be: sincerity is a fundamental necessity for attaining the truth, but in every case an external help is needed in order to see well the interior. The one who educates about vocation, then, must know the depths of the human heart in order to accompany the young person in the building up of the real I.

b) Educating to the mystery

And here is the paradox. When the young person is led to the depths of himself, and can also see his own weaknesses and fears, he has the sensation of understanding better the reason for some of his attitudes and reactions and, at the same time, understands more and more the reality of mystery as the key to life and his own person.

The young person must accept that he does not know, that he cannot know completely.

His life is not totally in his own hands, because life is a mystery and, on the other hand, the mystery is life; or rather, the mystery is that part of the I that has not yet been discovered, not yet lived and which waits to be deciphered and realised; mystery is that personal reality that must still grow, rich in life and in existential possibilities still intact, it is the germinative part of the I.

And then accepting the mystery is a sign of intelligence, of interior liberty, of desire for the future and newness, of refusing a conception of life that is repetitive and passive, boring and banal. This is why we said at the beginning that pastoral work for vocations must be mystagogic and, therefore, begin from the mystery of God to lead to the mystery of man.

The loss of the sense of mystery is one of the greatest causes of the vocations crisis.

At the same time the category of mystery is becoming a propaedeutic category of the faith. It is possible, and in certain cases natural, that at this point the young person feels growing within him, like a need for revelation, the desire that the Author of life Himself reveals the meaning of and the place that he has to occupy in it. Who else, except the Father, can carry out this uncovering?

Moreover, it is not important that the young person immediately discover (or that the guide immediately perceives) the path he has to follow: what is important is that he discovers and decides in every case to locate outside of himself, in God the Father, the search for the foundation of his existence. An authentic vocations programme always and everywhere leads to the discovery of the fatherhood and motherhood of God!

c) Educating to read life

In the Gospel Jesus invites the two men on the road to Emmaus in some way to go back to life, to those events that caused their sadness, by means of a wise method of reading: capable not only of reconstructing the events around a central meaning, but of deciphering, in the mysterious fabric of human existence, the outline of a divine plan. This method could be called genetic-historical because it searches out and finds in one's own biography the steps and traces of God's passage, and therefore also His voice that calls. This method:

— is at the same time deductive and inductive, or historical-biblical: it begins, at the same time, from revealed truth and historical reality, and thus encourages the uninterrupted dialogue between subjective lived events (the facts recited by the two disciples) and reference to the Word ("And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself", Lk 24, 27);

— indicates in the normative nature of the Word and in the centrality of the Paschal Mystery of Christ who died and rose a precise point of interpretation for existential events, without rejecting any event, especially the most difficult and the saddest ("Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?", Lk 24, 26).

In this way the reading of life becomes a highly spiritual operation, not only psychological, because it leads us to recognise in it the illuminating and mysterious presence of God and His Word. (¹⁰¹) And, within this mystery, it allows the seed of a vocation to be discerned little by little; the seed that the Father-sower sowed in the furrows of life. That seed, even though small, now begins to be visible and grow.

d) Educating to in-vocation

If the reading of life is a spiritual operation, it necessarily leads the person not only to recognise his need of revelation, but to celebrate it, with prayer of invocation. Educating means e-voking the truth of the I. This evocation arises precisely from the praying invocation, from a prayer that is more prayer of trust than of request, prayer as surprise and gratitude; but also as struggle and tension, as an "excavation" of one's own ambitions in order to welcome expectations, questions, desires from the Other: from the Father who, in the Son, can speak to the one who is searching for the way to follow.

But then prayer becomes the place of vocational discernment, of education for listening to the God who calls, because every vocation finds its origins in patient and trustful prayer of invocation; sustained not under pretence of an immediate response, but by the certainty or hope that invocation must be welcomed, and, will in time, lead the one invoking to the discovery of his vocation.

In the Emmaus story all of this is revealed with an essential expression, perhaps the most beautiful prayer ever prayed by the human heart: "Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent" (Lk 24, 29). It is the supplication of one who knows that without the Lord darkness descends on life, without His Word there is the obscurity of misunderstanding or of confusion of identity; life appears to be without sense and vocation. It is the invocation of one who, perhaps, has not yet discovered his path, but perceives that standing with Him, he will find himself again, because only He has the "words of eternal life" (Jn 6, 67-68).

This type of in-voking prayer does not come spontaneously, but needs a long apprenticeship; and one does not learn it by oneself, but with the help of one who has learned to listen to the silences of God. Not anyone can teach this prayer, but only one who is faithful to his vocation.

And then, if prayer is the natural path of vocational searching, today as yesterday and before, we need vocational educators who pray, who teach to pray, who educate to invocation.