Can the Holy Spirit mislead us?

There must be many thousands of people who at one point appear to have a strong sense of calling, only to find that what they thought was a calling turns out to be a red herring.

This is particularly true of religious life, but can apply to other professions such as medicine or engineering. Someone may spend his or her time training to be an engineer, only to end up as the manager of a company that has nothing to do with engineering.

Of course, there have been cases of people who have exploited the calling to religious life in order to get a free education! There are, however, many who have genuinely thought that they are called to be priests, pastors or nuns, only to discover they are not called to that way of life at all. Does this mean that the Holy Spirit sometimes guides people along the wrong path?

Let me be take my own case. When I was in the last year or two of primary school I felt very strongly that God was calling me to be a priest. I spent a total of about six years entertaining the idea that there was nothing else I could do in this life except to become a priest, but at the end of those long years something of no gigantic proportions happened and my vocation to the priesthood fizzled out—just like that.

Once this thing happened I decided there and then that I was not going to be a priest. There was no agonising about it or feelings of regrets—the decision had been made and that was it! Did the Holy Spirit misguide me? I think not.

When I thought I wanted to be a priest, the only kind of priest I desired to be was to be a Jesuit. For me becoming a priest was synonymous with being a Jesuit. And so when I was disappointed with the Jesuits, the idea of becoming a priest simultaneously went out of the window! But were the six years of contemplating a future life as a Jesuit priest a waste of my time? Not at all! Were they spent usefully? Definitely!

This is what happened. In my last year of primary school the Jesuit Fathers advised me that if I wanted to be a Jesuit I should go to their new school, so that I would do my secondary and high schooling at a Jesuit school before I would join the novitiate.

Each time I look back at my history, I thank God for giving me the opportunity to spend six years at a Jesuit school. I believe that no other school could have given me the kind of education I received at St Ignatius College. The Jesuit Fathers have been among the best educators for the last 450 years or more, and I believe I am what I am because of the quality of education I received at St Ignatius College in Zimbabwe.

While I decided not to become a Jesuit priest, I have remained a Jesuit at heart and continue to admire the Society of Jesus, not only for its tradition of excellent education, but for the contribution its members have made to the work of the Church and to human advancement generally.

I believe that when God put the idea of becoming a Jesuit in me, he wanted me to receive Jesuit education in order to prepare me for my calling.

Let me perhaps cite a more deserving example. Mother Teresa did not begin her mission by forming the congregation of the Missionaries of Charity. She felt called to serve the people of India and joined the Loreto Sisters who were working in Bengal. For many years she served the Loreto sisters as a teacher. As it turned out, when she decided to form the Missionaries of Charity, her first recruits were students she had taught as a Loreto Sister.

When we follow God’s will, nothing we do in life is wasted. What may seem irrelevant to our calling is part of the training and experience we need to prepare us for our future mission.

The people we come into contact with, the experiences we go through, both good and bad, and the education we receive, is all part of the preparation we need for our future calling.