Strangely enough, this is an idea that, in my experience, has never come from the young person himself who feels the vocation. It is always a thought someone else puts into his mind.  

Now, there can be good reasons to raise the point. Nobody wants a young kid to make a mistake, and it is important to ask the right questions. I am too young - for what? What kind of a factor is age? Is age the only thing that matters, does it matter at all?  

Age is only one aspect, and it is important not to reduce the whole vocation question down to just age, because we have seen that in the scriptures God calls at any age. 

prodigies 

Although a vocation is much more than a career, it can be sometimes helpful to compare it with one, in order to understand some aspects of vocation and response.  

In our world we are well used to seeing every four years a procession of younger and younger gymnasts, divers and skaters push the standards of their sport beyond what we used to think were the limits. It is strange then that we should be surprised that someone from an early age seems to know his way in life and be prepared to put in grueling dedication to excel at it. When a thirteen year old violinist takes the world by storm, we are caught up in admiration and adulation, ticket scalpers make a taking, and all we can say is "a prodigy." 

To these prodigies, God has given physical and musical genius which they have cultivated with a rare blend of dedication and purpose, with the simplicity typical of childhood, to the exclusion of many other activities kids of their age find attractive and indispensable, hours of TV and junkfood among them. As a matter of fact, because of their particular gifts, you will at times even hear them refer to the interests of other kids of their age as "childish."  

There are many other prodigies to whom God has given gifts of grace. They have felt the pull of a vocation from early years. They have often made options of surprising spiritual depth, simplicity and purity. At the age of twelve and in their very early teens they are prepared to do extraordinary things for God. They have a sense of and love for God that few others possess. And they can be tremendously single-minded about their goals in life.  

It is easy to scoff at this. That, however, might be a mistake.  

Wouldn't it make more sense to take something so beautiful, yes, and so fragile too, and preserve it, make it grow strong, make it reach its full potential? It has become somewhat of a trend to treat this as a betrayal and disservice to the young person. Is it wise, is it proper, to think like that? 

I think there is a lot to consider. 

What is there behind our seemingly instinctive, natural, contrary reaction to "young vocations?" 

rash decisions?  

There is obviously the desire to help a young person avoid making a mistake. His inexperience makes us want to exercise for him the caution he seems to be lacking or throwing to the winds.  

We are also quite correct in sensing that he does not know practically, experientially, all that is involved in the direction he is giving to his life. He has not yet experienced in his own self the pull of ambition, his heart has not yet discovered the almost overwhelming power of attraction towards another person. There are many life-questions he has not faced - after all, he is only a kid, or she's only a girl...  

How easy it is to forget that love (probably the area of life that we are most concerned about when we see a young person make the option for a vocation) is experienced as attraction and exclusion. As long as love is not exclusive it is a weaker form of love, not really true love at all.  

One does not usually discover love through a process of elimination (finding out you do not love anyone else and therefore concluding that the only person left is the one you love, that would make a flattering marriage proposal!) 

Actually, the process is usually the exact opposite: you fall in love and consequently you exclude everything, everyone else. That's the way it works. And if we forget that answering a vocation is primarily an exercise of (a falling in) love, we find it difficult to understand how it can be "exclusive" - excluding other options even before we know them. Just as the young man or woman in love normally does not fret over not having met everyone else in the world to be sure this is the right choice. Sure he knows there are richer and more glamorous people out there...but he is willing to give himself 110% to his chosen one and this is all that matters to either of them.  

A vocation, even a younger vocation, is no different. 

missing something?  

There is also the fear that he may be missing out on something. This is very ingrained in our nature, and due also to our culture. You cannot live in our world and not be strongly inclined to think in purely materialistic terms.  

By our nature we are geared towards the tangible; this is not something we have come up with recently, or of itself, an incriminating sign of decadence in our culture. What our culture today has added is the ready availability of incredible comforts and material possibilities. And it is harder to imagine giving up what you have than what you don't have. When there is so much around it is harder to see beyond it. 

Our culture today, by its very abundance, absorbs us in the material, and on top of that it enmeshes us in the material by telling us directly and blatantly, as well as in countless subtle ways, that it is all that matters. 

too impressionable?  

And there is the concern that he is young and impressionable, and will be influenced into something that is not right for him.  

This is rather a rash judgment about those who run the institutions for young vocations because it presumes that the young person's freedom is not going to be respected, that it will be run over roughshod. And it entirely avoids consideration of the other half of the equation: the young person will be impressionable no matter where he is, whether it be on the streets or in a high school for teenagers thinking of being priests. Where will his impressionability and his conscience be respected more? What role models will he be presented with? 

Granted, for most good families, where these vocations tend to arise, it is not a question of choosing between the seminary or the streets for their child. But keep in mind that the dangers are there.  

giving it serious consideration 

God calls in different ways, at different times.  

It goes without saying that not everyone sees his vocation early on in life. It is a gift God gives a select number for the benefit of the Church. For as the Church needs to have examples of conversion, penance and reparation, it also needs examples of the purity and totality of lives given to Christ with love from the innocence of childhood, through adolescence, youth, adulthood, maturity and persevering until the end. To have that call, and to have responded to it, makes for a very special relationship between that person and Christ. Can we deny him it? 

The question parents have to face if their child is thinking in this direction is what is best for him. It is no small or easy sacrifice. God seems to pick close and dedicated families to nourish these early vocations, and it often makes the separation involved more difficult from a human perspective, and also as a spiritual sacrifice.  

When the step into a high school for vocations is not the best for that individual, the parents have to renew their dedication to foster the vocation still under their roof and in their care so that it continues to grow and mature.