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by St Alphonsus M. Liguori Cssr (Author)
The Choice of a State of Life, and the Vocation to the Religions State. COUNSELS CONCERNING A RELIGIOUS VOCATION. I. We ought to conform to the Designs of God in the Choice of a State of Life, whatever it may be. It is evident that our eternal salvation depends principally upon the choice of our state of life. Father Granada calls this choice the chief wheel of our whole life. Hence, as when in a clock the chief wheel is deranged, the whole clock is also deranged, so in the order of our salvation, if we make a mistake as to the state to which we are called, our whole life, as St. Gregory Nazianzen says, will be an error. If, then, in the choice of a state of life, we wish to secure our eternal salvation, we must embrace that to which God calls us, in which only God prepares for us the efficacious means necessary to our salvation. For, as St Cyprian says: "The grace of the Holy Spirit is given according to the order of God, and not according to our own will;" and therefore St. Paul writes, Every one hath his proper gift from God." That is, as Cornelius a Lapide explains it, God gives to everyone his vocation, and chooses the state in which he wills him to be saved. And this is the order of predestination described by the same apostle: Whom he predestinated, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified, . . . and them he also glorified. We must remark that in the world this doctrine of the vocation is not much studied by some persons. They think it to be all the same, whether they live in the state to which God calls them, or in that which they choose of their own inclination, and therefore so many live a bad life.
