1 Sam 3:3b-10, 19
Ps 40 2,4, 7-8, 8-9,10
1 Cor 6:13-15, 17-20
John 1:35-42
Voco, vocare, vocatus.
To call. To name. To summon.
To call upon. To invite. To challenge.
The various translations for the root of the word ‘vocation’ overlap in meaning but each contains unique undertones and subtleties as well. The first reading, the psalm, and the gospel all consider vocation. Samuel’s vocation. The apostles’ vocations. And our vocations.
Voco, vocare, vocatus.
She heard a faint call the first time she visited. It became more insistent with time. The voice of God advanced the challenge more clearly. The urgency in the summons became more palpable. There could be no answer other than ‘yes’.Reflecting on it in her autobiography published over 40 years later she wrote, “Many people don't understand the difference between a vocation and your own idea about something. A vocation is a call – one you don't necessarily want. The only thing I ever wanted to be was an actress. But I was called by God.”
The woman is Mother Dolores Hart, of the Order of St. Benedict who was a rising star in Hollywood and on Broadway until 1963 when, at age 25, she entered the cloistered Benedictine nuns at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, CT. She remains there today, having lived her vocation for 60 years.
A vocation can be defined as: "A regular occupation, especially one for which a person is particularly suited. An inclination, as if in response to a summons, to undertake a particular career." A vocation may bea call to a particular way of living that is independent of one’s job, or it may definewhat other's might call one’s job. The vocations to which we may be called are multi-faceted including the vocation to marriage, to parenthood, to medicine, to the creative life, to teaching, or the vocation to religious life in one of the many orders and congregations.
We are all graced with a vocation. We all receive a call from God. The first challenge is to hear and discern God’s voice over the clamor of daily life. The second, and greater challenge, is to accept and live out that vocation, even when it periodically becomes difficult.
The first reading illustrates the challenge of recognizing one's vocation. It took more than one call for Samuel and Eli to realize that God was summoning Samuel. Poor Eli. There he was sound asleep when the kid wakes him up and says, “You called. I’m here.” Eli eventually understood what was happening and instructed young Samuel to reply “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”
Samuel was obviously rattled when God called him the third time. He replied,
“Speak, your servant is listening,” completely forgetting to address God as Lord as per Jewish custom. Samuel’s vocation was to be a prophet, to proclaim the Word of the Lord fearlessly, even when he knew that those who heard him were not going to like what he said. The vocation to which we are all called as Catholics is to proclaim the Word of God even if it makes us unpopular. Unpopular is the price of being a prophet, unpopular is the price of proclaiming the truth.
We are approaching one of the annual unpopular days for the Catholic Church here in the U.S. The 51st Annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. will step off this coming Friday, January 19. Those who are opposed to abortion, who decry killing the inconveniently ill elderly, or who state opposition to a government
that attempts to force physicians, nurses, hospitals and pharmacists to act immorally by participating in these and other acts of death—nowadays including the bizarre and immoral use of puberty blockers in confused children, completely changing their possibilities for normal cognitive development—are derided, called names, spat upon, and may face job loss.
It is amusing in a very sick way that the people who, when young liberals, hurled epithets of “baby killer” and threw dirty diapers at soldiers returning from Vietnam are now campaigning for and legislating baby killing, in the form of abortion, even after the point of viability outside the womb. Ohio has deemed killing one’s child
a state constitutional right.
Voco, vocare, vocatus.
John’s Gospel describes the call of the first apostles. Jesus gave Simon a new name Cephas—or Peter. His life changed at that moment, just as our lives change the moment we realize and accept our vocations.
Hearing the call to one's vocation and acting on it is a funny thing. There you are
going about your daily life, working, playing, relaxing, or praying, and something changes. The realization sometimes hits with the suddenness associated with the word epiphany, This is the one I am called to marry. This is the work I am called to do. This is the path I am called to follow. It may be a disturbing experience. Recall Mother Dolores' words, "A vocation is a call—one you don't necessarily want."
Like Samuel we may need to be called more than once. But, God’s voice is insistent. The call to our vocation does not, and will not, go away easily, no matter how much we wish we could simply continue with things as usual.
We heard in the first reading, “Samuel grew up, and the Lord was with him” When we accept the vocation to which the Lord has called us, be it to marriage and parenthood, to the single life, to teaching or life in a religious order, the Lord will be with us.
He will be with us and give us the necessary strength to live out that vocation.
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The photos are from an early AM walk one morning in May in Ljubljana.
Fr. Jack, SJ, MD
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