September 8, 2024 - Pastor Message
November 21, 2024VOCATIONS
VOCATIONS
“And the Lord spoke his word to me saying: ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I sanctified you and gave you, a prophet, to the nations’. I said: ‘Alas, Lord God! Behold, I cannot speak, since I am a boy’. And the Lord said to me: ‘Do not say, ‘I am a boy’, for you will go to whomever I send you and speak whatsoever I command you. Do not be afraid before them, since I am with you, that I may rescue you’ says the Lord” (Jeremiah 1:4-8).
A major theme that emerged from the most recent diocesan pastoral planning is the need for all of us, whatever our parish or role in the diocese, to do a better job promoting vocations. This is the motivation behind our practice here at St. Boniface of now concluding the prayers of the faithful at Mass with a prayer for vocations. But we certainly can, and should, do so much more. One of the major reasons we find it so hard to promote vocations is a lack of awareness of what vocations are and how to promote them. We will explore vocations and discernment here in this column for the next few weeks in the hope of fostering a deeper understanding of vocations and a renewed effort to help all our parishioners hear God’s call in their life.
The word, “vocation”, comes from the Latin word, “vocare”, meaning “to call”. By “call” we don’t mean a telephone call, though the directed nature of a phone call - communication from one person, to another person, for a specific purpose - gives us a good sense of the basics of the kind of call we mean when speaking about vocations. A vocation is a communication from someone, to someone, for a specific purpose. But a communication from whom, to whom, and for what? In the context of our faith, a vocation is a communication from God, to a person or persons, for the purpose of directing them to the specific purpose of their life.
From the very beginning, God has created each human being with a specific purpose or place in his master plan for the world and salvation and has called people to seek and fulfill their purpose. In Genesis, God creates and calls Adam to “cultivate and care for” the garden he had made and to enjoy its rich fruit, and he creates Eve as a partner and helper for Adam, such that the two of them would bond with each other so closely that they would become “one flesh” and the parents of “all the living” (Genesis 2:15-18, 22-24; 3:20). God calls Noah to preserve creation when God floods the earth to purge it of evil (Genesis 6:13-22), and he calls Abraham and Sarah to be the patriarch and matriarch of the people of Israel, through whom the whole world would be blessed (Genesis 12:1-4). God calls Moses to lead his people out of bondage to the Promised Land (Exodus 3:4-10), and David to rule over them with faithfulness and justice once they were there (1 Samuel 16:1-13). The pages of the Old Testament are filled with examples of vocations: God calls the person and directs him or her to seek and fulfill their divinely ordained purpose in his great plan, which, by doing so, moves the plan toward its fulfillment and draws that person into its creative, saving light.
Next week we will look at God’s call for the people of the New Testament and beyond. Until then, keep praying for vocations and keep listening for God’s call in your life!
Fr. Marc Stockton
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