The Pauline Year is an ideal occasion to speak about the subject of vocations. A vocation is a calling that belongs to every Christian. Every baptized person has been called by God to fulfill a specific mission in the world. St. Paul understood his call to serve was not because he was deserving or gifted, but instead he said, “By the grace of God I am what I am and his grace toward me is not in vain.”
St. Paul was always surprised, in fact, at how God had called him, who as a fierce persecutor of the early Christians was perhaps the most unlikely from among his contemporaries to become an apostle.
Nevertheless, God called him in a totally miraculous way to become, as Pope Benedict XVI tells us, in “the thirteenth apostle” with all the rights and obligations of those personally selected by Jesus at the start of his public life.
Certainly, sometimes a person’s calling comes in a dramatic moment in life that leaves them changed forever; an event that wipes away all doubt and leaves us alone with the voice of God. However, I would expect that for most of us we begin to discern that call in quite ordinary ways in the daily routine of life.
When I was 12 or 13 years, I thought that maybe God was calling me to the priesthood. When I finished Catholic high school, I thought of going to the seminary, but my parents asked me to finish college before making that decision. While I was in college, I began to go to daily Mass and did what I could to strengthen my spiritual life so that my calling from God would not be lost.
I continued to try to discern what God wanted from me. “Did he really want me to be a priest?” I even resisted this calling at first, yet I still entered the seminary, continuing seeking God’s will for my life. God chose to call me through what most would consider ordinary ways. Something as simple as seeing my grandfather taking out his black prayer book with big pages and pray for a long time. That made a big impression on me and has stayed with me to this day.
However he chooses to call us, God is always seeking us wherever we are. It was God’s grace that allowed St. Paul to hear the voice of Jesus, calling him to something dramatically new in his life.
Pope Benedict invites all Christians, especially those who find themselves at the right time to discern a vocation, to exclaim, with St. Paul: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rm 8:31); and, we are to respond with the same words of the apostle: “NO ONE will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rm 8:39)
Therefore, as the pope says, “our Christian life rests on the most stable and safest rock we can imagine. From it we get all our energy, just as the Apostle wrote, ‘I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me.’” (Phil 4:13)
St. Paul had understood during his life what often we Christians do not understand: that through his calling, God does not take anything away or threaten anything we possess. On the contrary, he offers us everything, he offers us the fullness of existence, the only way by which we can exclaim as St. Paul did when looking back on his life, “I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. From now on the crown of righteousness awaits me, which the Lord, the just judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but to all who have longed for his appearance.” (2 Tim 4:7-8)
My priestly vocation has been one of God’s greatest blessings. I have seen and still see God’s action in my personal life and in my service to others. It truly gives personal meaning to the words of St. Paul, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” By welcoming God’s call into our lives, we agree to follow him on a journey that leads us to eternal life, and also — something many forget — the hundredfold in this life promised by the Lord himself.
Let us pray fervently that all the faithful of our archdiocese, but especially those young people starting to discern their calling, respond to the call of God with all the generosity in their hearts, and let us ask the Apostle St. Paul to intercede for us so that we will obtain the gifts of courage and joy.