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Easter week 4  - Called to serve- vocation Sunday

This week  is Vocations Sunday.  It is obvious that our Church today is in great need of good shepherds, totally committed to the Way of Jesus.  We are asked to pray today especially that our Christian communities will be graced with good shepherds and pastors.  It is a pity that we tend to narrow the term “vocation” to those who feel called to the priesthood or what we fall ‘religious’ life, as when we ask, “Do you think you have a ‘vocation’?”  Or say, “There are very few ‘vocations’ in our diocese.”

Yet we need to emphasise very strongly that every single baptised person has a ‘vocation’.  Everyone is called by God to play a specific role in the Christian community and in the wider community.  Unless we Christians see that ‘vocation’ is something that we are all called to, it is not likely that there will be enough people to meet the service needs of our Christian communities.  Our Christian communities can only grow and thrive when every member makes a contribution to the well-being of the whole.

Unfortunately, a large number, it seems, decide first on their ‘career’ and only then ask, “How can I be a good Catholic?” (that is, if they do ask the question).  It is absolutely basic for us to ask ourselves at all times, “What does God want me to be?  What are my particular gifts?  How can I offer these gifts in service to the wider community and to my own Christian community?”

If I live my life as a morally good person, “keeping the Commandments” and saying my prayers and “fulfilling my religious obligations” but do not in fact play an active and constructive part in my community, I am not really a Christian in the proper sense.  Yet, it seems that that is the way many people live their Catholic lives.

Unless we Christians see that ‘vocation’ as something that we are all called to respond to, it is not likely that there will be enough people to respond to the service needs of our Christian communities and, by extension, the needs of the wider community.  There is still among many, one fears, what can be called a ‘supermarket mentality’ where our Christian practice is concerned.  The Church is there to provide me with ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ ‘goods’ as I need them.  But there is a danger that, like supermarkets in some former Communist countries, there may soon be no ‘goods’ available and, worse, no one to distribute them!

Our Christian communities can only grow and thrive when every member makes his or her contribution to the well-being of the whole.  When all are giving, all will be receiving in abundance, the abundance that Jesus speaks about in today’s Gospel.

Today we are asked to “pray” for vocations.  There is a danger that, although many will fervently do so, they are praying for other people’s vocations and not their own.  To say this prayer with sincerity involves my reflecting on how God is asking me to make a meaningful contribution of myself (not just money) to the building up of our community, our parish.

In fact, one has to be deeply impressed by the number of people who do make a substantial contribution one way or the other to the running of our church communities.  Nevertheless, today, Vocations Sunday, challenges each one of us to reflect on how we personally are responding to the call that Jesus is making to each of us right now.  As a group or community, we respond to that call by seeing that all that is needed for the maintenance and growth of our community is being generously provided .