Today, we celebrate the 4th Sunday of the Easter season. May is a very busy month for us. We had first communion last week. Our baccalaureate mass for the graduating seniors is this weekend. The school year is winding down for everyone. In the midst of our busy lives, we celebrate Good Shepherd Sunday today in the midst of the Easter season. Jesus, our Good Shepherd, calls his sheep to himself. He calls his sheep into union with his Father. Good Shepherd Sunday is also the World Day of Prayer for Vocations.
As disciples of Christ, we are called to hear the voice of our Good Shepherd: a voice that leads us, guides us, and helps us on our journey. There are so many roads we can travel down in life. There are so many voices call out to us. But there’s only one Good Shepherd. Our Good Shepherd and our Church are there to help us find our vocation in life and to nurture that vocation. However, this can only happen if we are engaged in that journey, if we commit ourselves to following Jesus as our Good Shepherd.
So what are some points we can ponder today on Good Shepherd Sunday in regard to vocations? Indeed, finding our vocation in life is important, whatever that vocation may be, but in our prayers for vocations today, we especially highlight the various vocations in our Church: to the priesthood, diaconate, consecrated religious life, and lay ministry. First, we can say that God calls us in the midst of both our gifts and our imperfections to serve in ministry. The late Father Henri Nouwen calls those in ministry in the Church "wounded healers", highlighting the way all of us are sinners and the way all of us have our faults. Again and again in the Gospels, we see Jesus calling different individuals to ministry in the midst of their imperfections and weaknesses. In our ministry, we don’t live our lives exactly as Christ lived his. Instead, those called to a vocation in ministry in the Church are called to live as authentically as Christ lived, with there being many ways and forms in which we live out our Christian vocation in faithfulness, service, and humility.
Another point we can make about our call to a vocation is that we give of ourselves in order to find ourselves. Pope Francis has said that the best way to discern a vocation in the Church is to go on a mission trip, to volunteer at a soup kitchen, to spend time with the poor, to visit the sick in the hospitals or in the nursing homes, and to be of service in our parish. When we go outside of our comfort zones to serve others, God can speak very powerfully to us indeed. Yet, this needs to be accompanied by our devotion to prayer and the Eucharist and the spiritual aspects of our faith as well. Our charitable works do not just come out of good intentions and altruism, but from our very faith itself. Our faith and good works must be intrinsically connected and must complement each other.
Finally, we could say, as we are called to discern our own vocation and to help others in their discernment, we are called to be messengers of mercy. We need to encourage others to go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, to find love and mercy in the loving arms of Mary, our Mother, and to reach out to others who have fallen away from the faith. Deacon John and I have have spoke often about the new evangelization that was advocated by Pope Francis, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict. We at St Jude want to evangelize ourselves in order to be able to evangelize others, to rediscover ourselves what it really means to be Catholic and to commit to that way of life.
We can hear Jesus, the Good Shepherd, calling out to us in many ways: through prayer, through reading his Holy Word, through our experiences in the Sacraments of the Church, and through our service to the people of God. In our faith, we are to respond to the vocation the Good Shepherd is calling us to, we are to help others make the choice to follow their vocation, no matter how hard or different or overwhelming this may seem.
No comments:
Post a Comment