I am big on lists, schedules, and plans, and I really don’t understand people who simply coast through life with no forward-thinking or concrete plan for their lives.

Life truly is what you make of it and you often reap what you sow – for good or for bad.

Having a plan for your life is good preparedness.  It is not just enough to have faith and trust in God; you also need to put in the effort and work

“faith without works is dead.” – JAMES 2:26 

Coasting through life can make you remain in dead-end jobs and dead-end relationships if you are not careful, and that time lost is something that you will never ever get back.

Before you know it, you wake up aged 45, with nothing to show for it.

This is why discerning your vocation as early as right after secondary school (high school in the US) is essential.

This is also why I tell women who have discerned marriage to never waste your time on guys who keep you waiting and to always have goals in your relationship that you should be achieving and to regularly assess if your relationship is growing and going somewhere, or if it is stagnant and dead.

Good relationships don’t just happen; they are made, nurtured, and cultivated by the two WILLING participants.  The same thing with marriages.

If you are in a relationship where the other person is not as invested as you are, then you should walk because that is not a relationship – a relationship entails two WILLING participants, ACTIVELY working towards relationship goals.

However, this article is not for those who are married, in religious life, or even those who are courting.

This article is for the “forgotten” Catholic women – the women who are without a true vocation ie they remain in the single state of life.

As we know, the three vocations for women in the Catholic Church are marriage, religious life, or the consecrated life.

Singlehood is a STATE in life, NOT a vocation.  Sorry.

A vocation consist of three main features:

1. Making Public Vows: for those called to married life, public vows are made at the wedding.  For those called to religious life, vows are made as a postulant and for those called to Consecrated Life, vows are also made.
2. Life-long Commitment: once the vows are made, you remain committed to your vocation for the rest of your life. For example, you cannot get married and then decide you now want to be a religious sister.
3. Community: you gain a community or family in your vocation.  For the married, this is the family you create with your spouse. For those in religious life, the family is your religious community and something similar occurs for those called to Consecrated Life.

From the above, you can see why being single is not a vocation as it is lacking in all three features.

And herein lies the problem. As humans, we are built to connect with others, to have a family and close community.

This is not just for safety reasons, but also for security on many levels.

In one of his many talks, Fr. Ripperger mentioned that women who are single and 50+ would be better off joining a religious community in order to have that “family”.

And he is right.

In fact, in the past, this was the case for many Catholic spinsters, as well as Catholic women who were widowed, without children.

However, today’s modern society has forgotten this practice, leading to many women spending their old-age alone, forgotten, and very vulnerable.

To make things worse, the pandemic of personality disorders such as narcissism, sociopathy, and psychopathy makes it extremely difficult to find a suitable partner that you can trust with both your heart and your life.

The difficulty increases with age as the dating pool becomes increasingly smaller.

So let’s say you are single, never-married, and/or childless Catholic woman aged 50+, who despite your best efforts, prayers and discernment just haven’t found the right partner.

What do you do?

Do you just keep waiting forever?

What if you do not want to commit to religious life or consecrated life?

What are you now supposed to do??!

More in Part Two >>> HERE

Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, pray for us.

 

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ad Jesum per Mariam

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