September 15, 2024- Pastor Message
December 21, 2024VOCATIONS (cont.)
VOCATIONS (cont.)
“After John was handed over, Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel of God and saying, ‘The time is complete, and the reign of God has approached; repent and believe in the gospel.’ Making his way along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting out into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.’ And immediately leaving their nets, they followed him” (Mark 1:14-18).
Continuing our reflection on vocations, we recall that a vocation is a call from God to a person to seek and fulfill their purpose in life. God creates each of us for a special part in his great plan for creation and salvation and calls us to fulfill that part. He has done this from the very beginning, as we saw in our look at the Old Testament last week. And he continued to do so in the New Testament, from the very opening of the story in the Gospel of Matthew, with the call of Joseph to be the foster father and protector of Jesus and husband of Mary (Matthew 1:18-25), who herself was called to be Christ’s mother (Luke 1:26-38). We see it in the call to Mary’s relatives, Elizabeth and Zechariah to be the parents of John the Baptist (Luke 1:5-25), and in the call of the disciples, as we read above. We see it in the call of Matthias to replace Judas among the apostles (Acts 1:15-26), and in the call of the first deacons (Acts 6:1-6). Time and again in the New Testament God calls people to serve the mission of the gospel in the specific way he has chosen for them, and time and again they respond with faith and commitment.
God did not stop calling people when biblical times ended or the last apostle died. We see this in the lives of the saints throughout the history of the Church: from ancient times with bishops, like Ignatius of Antioch, holy wives and mothers, like Monica, and her son, the great scholar Augustine; to medieval times with teachers and writers, like Thomas Aquinas, holy women, like Cathedrine of Siena, and kings, like Louis IX of France; to modern times with martyrs, like Maximilian Kolbe, models of forgiveness, like Maria Goretti, and servants of the poor, like Mother Teresa. These great saints show us that God continues to call people today to serve his plan for the world, because every vocation at its heart is a call to sainthood.
And God is calling us. He has created each of us with a divine purpose and calls us to fulfill it with the help of his grace. We may not be called to the world-changing work of the great figures in the Bible or some of the better known saints above, but we are all called to change our small part of the world, to sow and nurture the seeds of God’s saving love in the hearts and minds of all we meet and beyond by living the gospel. God alone knows how those seeds will grow; our task is simply to sow and nurture them in the way he has called us to do so until we too share the crown of the saints and hear those words every faithful Christian longs to hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter into your master’s joy” (Matthew 25:21). That is our vocation.
Fr. Marc Stockton
-
Current News