Monday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time: The transforming power of vocations

Today's readings

The vocational call is a call that is not about me, not about you, but only about the God who makes the call. Just as the ancient high priests that the author of our first reading speaks about did not take that honor upon themselves, and just as even Jesus did not take that honor upon himself, so none of us takes up our own vocation. That is, none of us takes up our own vocation if our vocation is really authentic.

The thing about a vocation, whether it's a vocation to the priesthood, or to religious life, or to parenthood, or whatever our vocation may be, is that that vocation comes from the God who created us. Our vocation comes to us at our baptism, when we are called from our old sinful life to a new life of promise, re-created to be the people we were supposed to be in the first place. Our vocation is a gift, the gift by which we are able to work out our salvation and see God at work in us, enabling us to do things we could never do on our own.

Our vocation is not primarily about us, as I said at the beginning. Our vocation is given to us, along with our gifts and talents, so that we can go out into the world and transform it to a better place, so that we can make a difference, so that we can glorify God in everything that we do. We don't have to have a vocations crisis: all we have to do is for each of us to take up our vocation and live it faithfully, so that our world is all covered with the glory of God.

If we all would make this the goal of our lives, we would be like that new wine poured into the new wineskin of our world, making all the earth new with God's love and mercy.