My friends, each one of us is precious in God’s eyes. Each one of us is special. Each one of us is a unique expression of God’s love and creativity. In all the world there is no other person exactly like us. There never has been or never will be another person just like us! Besides being special and unique, we are not here by accident. We were sent here for a purpose. We have a mission. We have something to do here that can be done by no one else. Our responsibility is to find out what our mission is and then carry it out with all our might. Our purpose here is commonly called our “vocation” or “your call.” Because it is God who calls us to our special task, God will be there to help us carry it out. Our most important task may just have been in our younger years, but it may just be in the last days of our lives!
A few people enthusiastically “jump in head first” without counting the costs like the first would-be follower in today’s gospel and end up crashing and burning very quickly. Some people hear God’s voice directly like Jeremiah, Peter and Andrew, James and John, seems to have done. More people hear their calls as “a hunch,” “a quiet knowing” or “a small still voice” that never seems to go away. They just know in their guts. Other people hear God’s call through the invitation of others, those who say to them over and over again, “you’d make a good doctor,” “you’d be a great teacher,” “you’d make a good priest,” “you’ll make a great parent.” If they hear people saying one of those things, over and over again, they ought to listen to see if their heart agrees! Those voices just might be messengers from God himself!
What if we listen for God’s call? What if we don’t? God wants the best for us! If we do what he calls us to do, we will be ourselves, we will be what he created us to be. We will feel, and we will know, that we are in the right place. Our life’s work will fit who we are. When we follow our calls, we will be happy, not a “ha-ha” happy, but a deep-down satisfaction, in spite of challenges.
However, sometimes we know what we are supposed to do in life, but we don’t do it because we are scared of its demands, scared of what other people will think of us, scared of failure or scared of disappointing our parents, peers and friends and so we put it off “until our parents are dead” like the second of the would-be followers in today’s gospel. We pay a price for not listening to God’s call. We pay a price for pleasing others instead of becoming who we are. When people go against their call and do something else, their lives will seem to be out of sync, they will be frustrated, their hearts will not be in their jobs or professions. They will go through life with a low-grade depression, a restlessness that will follow them wherever they go! Then, when they are old and look back, they will be filled with regret, anger and frustration that life somehow passed them by!
Everybody has a vocation, a call from God, to do something for him, to help him carry out some part of his work in the world. A call is not so much about what we want to do, but what God wants us to do! The famous Albert Schweitzer put it this way, “The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” The famous Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?”
Some of us are called to help God carry out his mission by being teachers, doctors, scientists and food producers. Others of us are called to carry out God’s mission by being social workers, artists and scientists. Still others of us are called to help God carry out his mission by having children, by being a good husband or wife or by living the single life. Finally, some of us are called to be priests, sisters, brothers, deacons or full-time lay ministers.
Whatever our call, we are called to help God carry out
his mission in the world in some way! As
St. Theresa put it, “Anyone who realizes that he or she is favored by God will
have the courage necessary for doing great things!”
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