September 22, 2024 - Pastor Message
December 21, 2024VOCATIONS (cont.)
VOCATIONS (cont.)
“To my words be attentive, to my sayings incline your ear. Let them not slip from your sight, keep them within your heart; for they are life to those who find them, to a person’s whole being they are health…Let your eyes look straight ahead and your glance be directed forward. Survey the path for your feet, and let all your ways be sure. Turn neither to the right nor to the left, keep your foot far from evil” (Proverbs 4:20-22, 25-27).
Continuing our reflection on vocations, God’s call to each person to know and to seek the God-given purpose of our lives, we look today at the different types of vocations. While each person’s vocation is exactly that, personal, it is more proper to speak of each person’s vocations, plural, as God’s call comes to us on multiple levels, some more general and some more specific. On the most general level, God calls all people to faith in him and to love and serve him by loving and serving one another. This is what we might call the universal vocation of all people, and we serve it by living the ten commandments and the two great commandments: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind…You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37, 39).
On the next level, God calls each of us to love and serve him and others in a certain state of life. This has to do with the great gift of our sexuality, which is a far more complex topic than can be dealt with in this humble column on vocations, but which, at heart, has to do with how we love God and others. Our sexuality is that part of us that calls us out of ourselves into relationships with others. The clearest, fullest expression of this is the total bond of love between a man and woman called marriage, through which each spouse loves God and others, not only as individuals, but as spouses, each supporting the other and leading each other to sainthood. God calls many people to the vocation of marriage, but he calls some people to another kind of witness, another vocation, through which they love and serve him and others in a committed unmarried state we call celibacy. This may be only for a time, as is the case with widows and widowers, or for life, as is the case with priests and consecrated religious. In either case, the call to celibacy is a call to love, just as marriage is, but in its own, unique way.
Within the vocations of marriage and celibacy, each person has more specific vocations. Most married persons are called to parenthood, one of the great fruits of marriage, cooperating with God to create and raise up new human beings into the world. Some married persons are called to foster or adopt children as well. Some married men may be called to the diaconate, which means their wives are called to help and support them in that ministry. Within celibacy, some men are called to the priesthood, and both men and women are called to consecrated religious life. Some celibate persons are called to neither priesthood nor consecrated life but to dedicated single life, committing themselves to serve God and his people within the Church in ways free from the obligations of those vocations.
We can, and should, also consider people’s work as a vocation from God. God places human beings in the world to be co-creators with him, tending and building up creation as faithful stewards. Our work, whether paid or volunteer, is one of the key ways we do that. This is especially important as young people consider their careers or people consider career changes. As Christians, our jobs are not simply a way to earn a paycheck. They are a way we answer God’s call to make his world a better place, reflecting his own goodness and glory, and we need to consider them as such.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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