by-grace-of-god:

What about vocations for people who experience same-sex attraction?

“My vocation is clear: I’m called to become a saint. That’s the universal vocation, which is fulfilled in different ways. Some people fulfill that call of becoming holy as priests, religious, or in the married life, but that doesn’t somehow minimize or replace the universal call to become like Christ.

The key here is a problem with a myopic (if understandable) self-focus on “what about me?” To be honest, this sort of self-focus is one of the deep wounds I think is associated with SSA. There is a wounded Narcissism that was certainly something I’ve had to work to overcome. One of the biggest helps for me was when I realized that there are far more single men and women who desire to be married and never will be than there are people with SSA in the world.

The great vocation of us all is seen in Christ’s prayer in Gethsemane: not my will, but thine be done. For some people, that will be seen as a lifetime of self-denial. In some sense, I’ve always seen the call of holiness as a theology of “don’t.” Don’t put myself in the place of the Father. But of course, that “don’t” is in service of the great “yes” of saying, “Thy will be done.”

The Catechism has this which is a rich vocation to redemptive suffering: “These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.”

That’s a source of great joy.”

– Daniel Mattson, author of Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay