alph
of Framingham, MA, asks “What is ‘vocation’ anyway?”
The question is especially welcomed when it comes from a young person.
Because more than ever, the Church needs young people who know how to
discern God’s calling and respond to it with enthusiasm, generosity and joy.
For every person – man or woman – God has a project of life which is realized in time, through a personal and undeniable call. “I have called you by name: you are mine.” In the Sacred Scriptures there is a vast gamut of examples such as the stories of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Isaiah, and of Peter, and of the Twelve, of Paul, Barnabas, and of many disciples of the Lord. God calls them by name and at times God gives them a new name to signify also a new life: so Jacob becomes Israel, Simon, Peter, Saul, Paul… They are each called by God to a particular vocation, a mission.
Vocation, for a Christian, is much more than to like or to feel good in a profession or career. “Vocation” means ‘calling,’ and in this call it’s necessary to distinguish Who is calling, Why is he calling, and For What is he calling.
Who calls is always God. God called us from nothing to life. God called us from a common life of mortals to life in Christ through baptism. And God has also a unique call for those God wants to consecrate wholly to himself in the priesthood, in the missionary life, in the religious life.
Why does God Call? Out of love. Out of love God called us to live in this world. Out of a greater love God called us to be Christians. Out of love God calls those He wants for a particular mission. It’s never enough to remember that each intervention of God in the life of the world and of people is God’s initiative and love: God loves first. What joyful sense of security have those who believe in this love and have experienced it.
God calls for What? So that we may be happy. We can never forget that our God is a God committed to our happiness. So much so that to affirm that the suffering and the pain we experience and see in this world are God’s will, borders on blasphemy.
There
is no greater service to the human family than missionary service.
Pope
John Paul II
God, however, does not call us just to be happy. God needs us to help others be happy. So that the vocation to the Christian life received in Baptism is an invitation to all Christians to cry out to the world the good news of Jesus which is contained in this truth: every human being that comes into this world is a beloved child of God. And to say that in Jesus, the Son of God became one of us to make us, men and women, sons and daughters of God.
Of some of these sons and daughters God asks a special consecration for the mission of bringing the good news of Jesus to the world. It is the vocation, the calling, to the priesthood, the religious life and to the missionary apostolate. For these God demands a total life consecration.
Vocations are not just fruit of a vocational ministry which makes the community aware of the need for shepherds or of the various ministries, but are, above all, an answer of God to a community that prays, asks and appeals to the Lord of the harvest to send workers to His harvest, workers for His kingdom of justice, of peace and of happiness without end.
To our friend, Ralph, who occasioned this brief reflection, I ask “Do you wish to know more about vocation? Do you wish to discern together with other young people what is God’s will for your life? Write to us, give us a call, or come by for a visit, at any of our addresses. Visit us on our Website: www.xaviermissionaries.org.
“People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
(From Xaverian Mission Newsletter)