Ty. It's not often we get any recognition. Most things are done for families and no one thinks twice about being a friend to us. Most of the time we're left out and we feel like we mean nothing to anyone.
Yes thank you so much for speaking these thoughts out loud!! I get the feeling someone is understanding this topic which somehow is not so much spoken about in the Church in these new times
Please dear friends, pray for me that God not only blesses me with men who could be my potential husband, and also that I improve myself and turn this extreme desire for marriage, into desires for God.
Thank you for discussing a topic that is so hard for priests or anyone to talk about. You can feel like God forgot you when you are single and time rolls by. Not feeling like you are being punished or unworthy can be really hard especially as you get older and the hope of marriage and kids begins to fade. So many times when speaking of vocations all the others get a nice long talk and at the end..."Their are those called to be single and be happy in that"...the end. No one wants to be alone and I think that is the real thing people just want to shout out loud to God..."Why does it feel like you have left me here to face this world alone? Thank you for taking the time to go into those small categories, you covered them well.
Because us single people who dont want to be single, and have never had a relationship before (25 year old man) are made just too short and ugly by God and we are being gaslit by everyone to love and accept our misery, even though we would love to be loving husbands and wives one day. If you are a guy and arent 6 foot tall or look like chad, you will never marry, now matter how painful it is, no matter how many people say “God has a plan for your future spouse,” they’re lying. God’s plan for you is to give up on women after constant rejection, finding the truthful blackpill gospel, being terminally online, wasting hours of prayer and self improvement to vainly find a wife, and dying alone with no family of your own, trying to cope in any way, but nothing helps, is the plan. If you don’t like it, you get to go to hell :) Isn’t God so loving when he gives you a desire for marriage and sex just to never let you act on them and hold them over your head like a carrot on a string in front of a rabbit on a treadmill?
Remaining single is my vocation and commitment for life.There's a lot you can do to live a religious life that way : sanctify your work, read spiritual books and lectio divina and the lives of saints, contemplation, pray the Rosary, follow devotions and novenas and the Pope's Monthly Intentions, and pray alone in your room, like Our Lord tells us to in Matthew 6:6. Get involved in parish life. Vacations, holidays ? Go on retreats or on pilgrimage. It's the sort of consecrated life I've fashioned for myself.
Single Life in itself is not a vocation. You have not taken any sacramental vows. Calling single life a vocation is an insult to actual real sacramental vocations
@@chrisobrien6254 You're wrong just read Matthew 19. Besides vocation means: a strong feeling of suitability for a particular career or occupation. So how is what Manuel describes not a vocation? Protestants en Evangelicals also don't have a lot of sacraments. Not all Christians are Roman Catholics remember.
@@chrisobrien6254 1 Corinthians 7:7 But I wish everyone were single, just as I am. Yet each person has a special gift from God, of one kind or another.
They are 3 types of Single Blessedness 1. The Searchers 2. The Sufferers or Miserers 3. The Self Concentrated, Commitment and Devotion - these person that father saids has a self vow of celebacy and self personal concentration, commitment and very strong devotion and love to Christ and the Mother BVM. The examples of these saints are? "Saint Catherine of Siena, St. Rose of Lima, St. Martin de Porres, St. Clare of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Teresa of Avila, Venerable Ignacia Del Espiritu Santo here in the Philippines and etc. Of saints" This is my Vocation as a Roman Catholic Christian and I'm proud to be Single Blessedness Self Concecrated, Commitment and strongly Devoted of love to Jesus and Mary. Thank you Father for your explanation regarding these topic all about my Vocation and our Vocation😇 God bless you and Mama Mary loves you Father😇
I don't want to be single for the rest of my life Father. Please pray that I will soon meet and Marry a faithful practicing traditional Catholic man who loves our Lord and the Blessed Mother and strives to do His will.
Same. Unfortunately, I left my faith and wasted a large portion of useful life, which I’m grateful for because it got me to return with a passion that I may not have had had I never left for the lessons I needed. But now I often feel like it’s too late for me and I’m trying to accept that I will probably never have the vocation I thought thought of my entire life. I try to offer my suffering to the Lord, it’s still a lighter cross to bare than His. I also have other ways to be helpful to others, God has been using me to help others recover from the life that I used to live. People who have seen the ways I’ve changed ask me about it and even strangers regularly approach me out of no where. I think most of my pain and loneliness is related to various fears, not having sufficient trust in Gods will, and moments of putting my will above His. It’s very clear that His plan is different than mine but until I completely give up on my plans, I will likely never find peace outside of any given moment when I’m present in the moment, which is where I belong anyway. As long as we’re present in the moment and at peace, we need not think about the future. As the moment is where we live and doing Gods will in every moment will create a better future without having to worry about it. I do hope you find what you need and will pray that you find the husband that’s best for you and that you and he are both able to discern it when you two meet.
Thank you so much Father for showing us the Elephant in the Room. This is a subject that very few Catholic speakers seem willing or able to address. Without a clear and specific sense of vocation and the presence of a strong and fully supportive church community, the single life is relentlessly horrible and a trap you can so easily fall into and never get out of. Be warned kids!
You only say that because it not your vocation. Not all people in different vocations are that you have think for. I hope you must open your mind and heart in different kind vocations. And no to negative visions about other vocation specially to the Single Life concecrated to the Lord. I respect your beliefs of your vision and your vocation. But you must also respect other vocations and there beliefs because not all Roman Catholic Christians are same Charism and Gifts the holy spirit gave to us. All of us has different beliefs of visions and Charism. The reason why they are different Vocations.
The major reason that many Catholics are single - or more likely, have left the Church to marry - is simple. In recent decades, parishes simply stopped caring about it. They didn't say "we must stop encouraging people to meet and marry", but they surely did stop providing the social opportunies in support of all that. In all my adult years, the parishes in my area have never held any social events and I can honestly say that I've never met any single Catholic women, not a one. And that's living in a large diocese in the US, not under a rock somewhere. So it seems doubly odd that young people are now being taught to see marriage as a "vocation" and are pressured to "discern" it, when parishes have become cold corporate institutions with no social basis whatsoever. The question of this video (is "being single" a vocation?) is a rather meaningless question to ask.
You're not single because the Church didn't hold enough Bingo Nights and someone who leaves the Church to marry is not just unfortunate, but an apostate whose soul is in danger. You won't get everything you want in this life. That is one of the very few guarantees you will ever get. The difference between Catholic and worldling is how you deal with this suffering. Do you whine about it and try to place blame? Or do you accept it as suffering and joyfully embrace the will of God, even when it doesn't conform to your own will? I know it's hard. But sainthood isn't easy. Our goal in this life is not to be happy. Our goal isn’t to get married or get a promotion. Our goal in this life is to know, love and serve God in order to be happy with Him forever in the next.
@@gray_mara Thank you for not really reading what I wrote. We have a survival-level crisis in the Church today. There are virtually no marriages, and very very few new families. In another generation, our parish populations will be at least another 50% lower than it is now. This cannot possibly be God's will. I do not "whine or try to place blame" that I am single well into middle age. It is what it is. But I do make the observation that I have no Catholic friends. Almost everyone else in my generation left the Church back in the 1980's. They didn't return, nor did their children. They're all gone. That's plain to see at any mass. And when I ponder why they left, I really believe it is because parish social life collapsed back then. There is no "suffering", and it is certainly not anything to be "joyful" over. Contemplating whether being single is a "vocation" is apparently all that some people have left. And that is a real shame.
@@gray_mara You're assuming things about him that Charity does not allow you to assume. You should either understand what he said and respond in a respectful civilised manner or shut up.
@@larrymelman I am praying for you, and for those who desire Catholic marriage and are counter cultural and lonely. Also for those who have conditions which may make marriage more difficult, or even unsuitable, like autism, mental health, and psychological conditions, and that they do not therefore leave the Church of their baptism for unmarried potentially damaging relationships. They suffer loneliness.
@@gray_mara Woah woah! You’re saying that the fact that the person you’re responding to is still single is because it’s out of some direct hand of fate?! No environmental or social cause whatsoever?! BS! If I’m obese would you say that it’s Gods plain that I haven’t gotten fit yet? If I’m unemployed would you say it’s because God hasn’t given me a job yet? Or is it more likely that I don’t have a resume set or because I haven’t gotten off my butt to actually get out there and apply?! If I don’t have a college degree is it because God hasn’t mailed me one yet or is it more likely because I haven’t even applied to a college or because I haven’t even finished high school yet? You’re making the classic argument that a persons state in life has nothing to do with societal environment or their own doing which is stupid. You’re logic is inept and sounds Calvinistic and craps on Free Will. You’re reply is foolish and misleading and if you applied any critical thinking you’d know that
Father, you seem like a great priest. couldn’t enforcing the notion that Single Life (in itself) is a noble choice be part of the reason that there’s a priest shortage and less children being born? And aren’t those 2 things that the devil wants?
The priest shortage has nothing to do with too many singles in the world, especially given our modern track record of fornication. It is, however, most likely a result of the across-the-board rejection of Humanae Vitae with the subsequent acceptance and use of contraception in almost every marriage today. No preaching of Catholic doctrines. Sterile marriages produce very little priests. God is chastising the Church by allowing us to reap what we've sown.
It isn't being 'exalted.' Rather, this priest is attempting to treat singleness with the sensitivity, respect, and inclusiveness which it never receives, but still deserves. Traits which you appear to lack. As for having more priests, if we, as both a society and a Church, stop 'exalting' marriage as the great hallmark of adulthood, more young men might waste less time searching for a wife and hear the call of God sooner.
@@mcjmj1624 in case you haven’t noticed our society does NOT exalt marriage anymore hardly at all. You sound out of touch with reality. Marriage is thought of as unnecessary and out of fashion now a days. Trust me I work with actors and artists. No one wants to be married anymore. Also I’d say that marriage should be thought of as a great hallmark of adulthood, as family is the backbone of society. Marriage is the rule, priesthood is the exception to the rule. The church does not force people or pressure people into marriage, if anything they over elevate clerical life which may be why there is such a problem with clericalism today. Society definitely does not pressure people to be married either, not even close. Also you think looking for a wife is a waste of time?? Wow you sound like a legionary 😂 or some other cult. I’d recommend that you get out more and get to know the real world rather than just living in a Catholic podcast bubble and pious echo chamber, and develop some critical thinking skills
Father, I think your initial instinct on this topic before you were “challenged” to discuss it was more correct. Having to call Single Life a vocation seems more a result of identity politics. “Gotta include everybody” sort of mentality.
If single life is a vocation then why isn’t unemployment a career?! Why isn’t baldness a hair style?! Can you imagine parents admiring their young boy, “yep he’s good, strong, smart young man; he’ll make a fine bachelor one day!!” 🤣
I appreciate father's thoughtful response to the single life. This was very helpful for me. Thank you.
Ty. It's not often we get any recognition. Most things are done for families and no one thinks twice about being a friend to us. Most of the time we're left out and we feel like we mean nothing to anyone.
Thank you so much Father! This is by far the best video that I’ve seen for singleness. God bless you, Father!
Glad it was helpful!
Yes thank you so much for speaking these thoughts out loud!! I get the feeling someone is understanding this topic which somehow is not so much spoken about in the Church in these new times
16:24 great advice Father. This is what matters: that we embrace the will of God in our lives and do all our works for love of Him.
Please dear friends, pray for me that God not only blesses me with men who could be my potential husband, and also that I improve myself and turn this extreme desire for marriage, into desires for God.
Thank you so much Father. In my case, being the only child, I cannot leave my parents, and I also want to live a religious life
Thank you for discussing a topic that is so hard for priests or anyone to talk about. You can feel like God forgot you when you are single and time rolls by. Not feeling like you are being punished or unworthy can be really hard especially as you get older and the hope of marriage and kids begins to fade. So many times when speaking of vocations all the others get a nice long talk and at the end..."Their are those called to be single and be happy in that"...the end. No one wants to be alone and I think that is the real thing people just want to shout out loud to God..."Why does it feel like you have left me here to face this world alone? Thank you for taking the time to go into those small categories, you covered them well.
I felt like this for years
Because us single people who dont want to be single, and have never had a relationship before (25 year old man) are made just too short and ugly by God and we are being gaslit by everyone to love and accept our misery, even though we would love to be loving husbands and wives one day. If you are a guy and arent 6 foot tall or look like chad, you will never marry, now matter how painful it is, no matter how many people say “God has a plan for your future spouse,” they’re lying. God’s plan for you is to give up on women after constant rejection, finding the truthful blackpill gospel, being terminally online, wasting hours of prayer and self improvement to vainly find a wife, and dying alone with no family of your own, trying to cope in any way, but nothing helps, is the plan. If you don’t like it, you get to go to hell :) Isn’t God so loving when he gives you a desire for marriage and sex just to never let you act on them and hold them over your head like a carrot on a string in front of a rabbit on a treadmill?
Right? It’s like us single lay people are at the kids’ table.
Remaining single is my vocation and commitment for life.There's a lot you can do to live a religious life that way : sanctify your work, read spiritual books and lectio divina and the lives of saints, contemplation, pray the Rosary, follow devotions and novenas and the Pope's Monthly Intentions, and pray alone in your room, like Our Lord tells us to in Matthew 6:6. Get involved in parish life. Vacations, holidays ? Go on retreats or on pilgrimage. It's the sort of consecrated life I've fashioned for myself.
Single Life in itself is not a vocation. You have not taken any sacramental vows. Calling single life a vocation is an insult to actual real sacramental vocations
@@chrisobrien6254 You're wrong just read Matthew 19.
Besides vocation means: a strong feeling of suitability for a particular career or occupation.
So how is what Manuel describes not a vocation?
Protestants en Evangelicals also don't have a lot of sacraments. Not all Christians are Roman Catholics remember.
@@mindbodysaul4382 if single life is in itself a vocation then how is unemployment not a career?
@@chrisobrien6254 1 Corinthians 7:7 But I wish everyone were single, just as I am. Yet each person has a special gift from God, of one kind or another.
@@mindbodysaul4382 have you studied the historical context of that verse?
They are 3 types of Single Blessedness
1. The Searchers
2. The Sufferers or Miserers
3. The Self Concentrated, Commitment and Devotion - these person that father saids has a self vow of celebacy and self personal concentration, commitment and very strong devotion and love to Christ and the Mother BVM. The examples of these saints are? "Saint Catherine of Siena, St. Rose of Lima, St. Martin de Porres, St. Clare of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Teresa of Avila, Venerable Ignacia Del Espiritu Santo here in the Philippines and etc. Of saints" This is my Vocation as a Roman Catholic Christian and I'm proud to be Single Blessedness Self Concecrated, Commitment and strongly Devoted of love to Jesus and Mary. Thank you Father for your explanation regarding these topic all about my Vocation and our Vocation😇 God bless you and Mama Mary loves you Father😇
Hi. Praise Jesus.
Is there any sainthood stories with single blessed vocation that i can read upon?
I don't want to be single for the rest of my life Father. Please pray that I will soon meet and Marry a faithful practicing traditional Catholic man who loves our Lord and the Blessed Mother and strives to do His will.
may the will of our Lord be done to you CJ7
Prayers 🙏📿
Same. Unfortunately, I left my faith and wasted a large portion of useful life, which I’m grateful for because it got me to return with a passion that I may not have had had I never left for the lessons I needed.
But now I often feel like it’s too late for me and I’m trying to accept that I will probably never have the vocation I thought thought of my entire life. I try to offer my suffering to the Lord, it’s still a lighter cross to bare than His. I also have other ways to be helpful to others, God has been using me to help others recover from the life that I used to live. People who have seen the ways I’ve changed ask me about it and even strangers regularly approach me out of no where. I think most of my pain and loneliness is related to various fears, not having sufficient trust in Gods will, and moments of putting my will above His. It’s very clear that His plan is different than mine but until I completely give up on my plans, I will likely never find peace outside of any given moment when I’m present in the moment, which is where I belong anyway. As long as we’re present in the moment and at peace, we need not think about the future. As the moment is where we live and doing Gods will in every moment will create a better future without having to worry about it.
I do hope you find what you need and will pray that you find the husband that’s best for you and that you and he are both able to discern it when you two meet.
Thank you so much Father for showing us the Elephant in the Room. This is a subject that very few Catholic speakers seem willing or able to address. Without a clear and specific sense of vocation and the presence of a strong and fully supportive church community, the single life is relentlessly horrible and a trap you can so easily fall into and never get out of. Be warned kids!
You only say that because it not your vocation. Not all people in different vocations are that you have think for. I hope you must open your mind and heart in different kind vocations. And no to negative visions about other vocation specially to the Single Life concecrated to the Lord. I respect your beliefs of your vision and your vocation. But you must also respect other vocations and there beliefs because not all Roman Catholic Christians are same Charism and Gifts the holy spirit gave to us. All of us has different beliefs of visions and Charism. The reason why they are different Vocations.
The major reason that many Catholics are single - or more likely, have left the Church to marry - is simple. In recent decades, parishes simply stopped caring about it. They didn't say "we must stop encouraging people to meet and marry", but they surely did stop providing the social opportunies in support of all that. In all my adult years, the parishes in my area have never held any social events and I can honestly say that I've never met any single Catholic women, not a one. And that's living in a large diocese in the US, not under a rock somewhere.
So it seems doubly odd that young people are now being taught to see marriage as a "vocation" and are pressured to "discern" it, when parishes have become cold corporate institutions with no social basis whatsoever.
The question of this video (is "being single" a vocation?) is a rather meaningless question to ask.
You're not single because the Church didn't hold enough Bingo Nights and someone who leaves the Church to marry is not just unfortunate, but an apostate whose soul is in danger. You won't get everything you want in this life. That is one of the very few guarantees you will ever get. The difference between Catholic and worldling is how you deal with this suffering. Do you whine about it and try to place blame? Or do you accept it as suffering and joyfully embrace the will of God, even when it doesn't conform to your own will?
I know it's hard. But sainthood isn't easy. Our goal in this life is not to be happy. Our goal isn’t to get married or get a promotion. Our goal in this life is to know, love and serve God in order to be happy with Him forever in the next.
@@gray_mara Thank you for not really reading what I wrote. We have a survival-level crisis in the Church today. There are virtually no marriages, and very very few new families. In another generation, our parish populations will be at least another 50% lower than it is now. This cannot possibly be God's will.
I do not "whine or try to place blame" that I am single well into middle age. It is what it is. But I do make the observation that I have no Catholic friends. Almost everyone else in my generation left the Church back in the 1980's. They didn't return, nor did their children. They're all gone. That's plain to see at any mass. And when I ponder why they left, I really believe it is because parish social life collapsed back then. There is no "suffering", and it is certainly not anything to be "joyful" over. Contemplating whether being single is a "vocation" is apparently all that some people have left. And that is a real shame.
@@gray_mara You're assuming things about him that Charity does not allow you to assume. You should either understand what he said and respond in a respectful civilised manner or shut up.
@@larrymelman I am praying for you, and for those who desire Catholic marriage and are counter cultural and lonely. Also for those who have conditions which may make marriage more difficult, or even unsuitable, like autism, mental health, and psychological conditions, and that they do not therefore leave the Church of their baptism for unmarried potentially damaging relationships. They suffer loneliness.
@@gray_mara Woah woah! You’re saying that the fact that the person you’re responding to is still single is because it’s out of some direct hand of fate?! No environmental or social cause whatsoever?! BS! If I’m obese would you say that it’s Gods plain that I haven’t gotten fit yet? If I’m unemployed would you say it’s because God hasn’t given me a job yet? Or is it more likely that I don’t have a resume set or because I haven’t gotten off my butt to actually get out there and apply?! If I don’t have a college degree is it because God hasn’t mailed me one yet or is it more likely because I haven’t even applied to a college or because I haven’t even finished high school yet? You’re making the classic argument that a persons state in life has nothing to do with societal environment or their own doing which is stupid. You’re logic is inept and sounds Calvinistic and craps on Free Will. You’re reply is foolish and misleading and if you applied any critical thinking you’d know that
this was very helpful
Good morning Father thank you... what can I use for the focus table on Sunday God willing for vocation Sunday please.
Father, you seem like a great priest. couldn’t enforcing the notion that Single Life (in itself) is a noble choice be part of the reason that there’s a priest shortage and less children being born? And aren’t those 2 things that the devil wants?
The priest shortage has nothing to do with too many singles in the world, especially given our modern track record of fornication. It is, however, most likely a result of the across-the-board rejection of Humanae Vitae with the subsequent acceptance and use of contraception in almost every marriage today. No preaching of Catholic doctrines. Sterile marriages produce very little priests. God is chastising the Church by allowing us to reap what we've sown.
@@mcjmj1624 but wouldn’t there be more priests if merely remaining “Single” was less exulted as an equally worthy or nearly equally worthy option?
It isn't being 'exalted.' Rather, this priest is attempting to treat singleness with the sensitivity, respect, and inclusiveness which it never receives, but still deserves. Traits which you appear to lack.
As for having more priests, if we, as both a society and a Church, stop 'exalting' marriage as the great hallmark of adulthood, more young men might waste less time searching for a wife and hear the call of God sooner.
@@mcjmj1624 in case you haven’t noticed our society does NOT exalt marriage anymore hardly at all. You sound out of touch with reality. Marriage is thought of as unnecessary and out of fashion now a days. Trust me I work with actors and artists. No one wants to be married anymore. Also I’d say that marriage should be thought of as a great hallmark of adulthood, as family is the backbone of society. Marriage is the rule, priesthood is the exception to the rule. The church does not force people or pressure people into marriage, if anything they over elevate clerical life which may be why there is such a problem with clericalism today. Society definitely does not pressure people to be married either, not even close. Also you think looking for a wife is a waste of time?? Wow you sound like a legionary 😂 or some other cult. I’d recommend that you get out more and get to know the real world rather than just living in a Catholic podcast bubble and pious echo chamber, and develop some critical thinking skills
I was always told that the single life leads us to a vocation. Religious or married life. Everyone is called to be married, spiritually speaking 😌☕🙏🏻
Not true
False
Father, I think your initial instinct on this topic before you were “challenged” to discuss it was more correct. Having to call Single Life a vocation seems more a result of identity politics. “Gotta include everybody” sort of mentality.
If single life is a vocation then why isn’t unemployment a career?! Why isn’t baldness a hair style?! Can you imagine parents admiring their young boy, “yep he’s good, strong, smart young man; he’ll make a fine bachelor one day!!” 🤣