Fr. Roger J. Landry
The Anchor
Editorial
May 1, 2009
The Fourth Sunday of Easter, traditionally called Good Shepherd Sunday because each year at Mass the Gospel is about Jesus’ self-identification as the Good Shepherd, is the annual occasion of the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. It is an opportunity for the whole Church to reflect on how Christ gave his life for us and constantly summons us to imitate him in giving our lives for others. It’s a chance to recall that the Good Shepherd knows and calls each of us by name and that each of us must respond to that gift by knowing him in return, heeding his voice and following him.
Since Pope Paul VI established this day of prayer for vocations in 1964 during the Second Vatican Council, the Popes have issued a message each year to guide and deepen the Church’s understanding on the vocational reality of Christian existence as well as to lead the Church in prayer to the “Lord of the Harvest” to send out priestly, religious, and consecrated laborers to work his always ripe fields.
In anticipation of this year’s celebration on Sunday, May 3, Pope Benedict wrote on the theme of “Faith in the Divine Initiative: The Human Response” and asked all of us in the Church to reflect on it.
He begins his message with a profound thanksgiving to God for the “special gift” of vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life, both those he has called throughout the centuries as well as those he continues to call today.
The Pope implies by his title and throughout the letter that the “vocations crisis” plaguing some dioceses and countries is not so much a “calling” crisis — because the Harvest Master has never ceased to call people to follow Christ “more closely” as “his privileged ministers and witnesses”— but more a problem of “hearing” or “response.” The shortage of priests and religious in some parts of the world flows not because God has abandoned calling men and women to collaborate intimately with him in the mission of salvation, but because so many have stopped listening to him in prayer, or have never been trained how to interpret the vocational signs he gives, or have never really cultivated the habit of generous, loving response to God so as to be ready to “place their entire existence freely at his service” if in fact he calls.
This is the reason why, in order to cultivate the soil to bear fruit if in fact God plants the seed of a priestly or consecrated vocation, the Pope says the first step is to “appeal to the divine initiative with unceasing prayer.” Not only does the Lord of the Harvest respond to such petitions made with trusting faith in his providence, but such prayer also brings those whom the Lord may be calling to serve him in this way into prayerful dialogue so that they may hear his summons when he makes his plans for them clear.
Prayer is not the only thing that is needed, however. Pope Benedict says that three other steps are required for those who are called to be able to answer responsibility and with conviction.
The first is “careful listening and prudent discernment.” Young people in particular need to be trained in the art of listening to God and discerning his voice, not merely in prayer but also in the subtle signs God gives through personal talents, the events of life, and the intervention of others. God is speaking, but to those who have never learned how to listen and discern, he is often speaking a foreign language. The Church — by which the Pope specifies families, parishes, movements, apostolic associations, religious communities and “all sectors of diocesan life” — has the duty to help people decipher and understand this often faint and mysterious idiom.
The second step is a “serious study” of the reality that is proper to the priestly and religious vocations. The integral formation of every Catholic should involve exposure to and adequate understanding of the various states of life in the Church. The practice of “vocations awareness days” in Catholic schools and CCD programs is obviously a good one, and helps to open up young people’s minds to the various manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the Church. At the same time, however, they are no substitute for what the Holy Father calls “serious study,” which implies a sincere and mature effort on the part of each of us, as well as a recommended “plan of study” provided by pastors, parents, and teachers. Every young Catholic should be encouraged and helped to give serious consideration to each of the vocations in the Church, not merely to discern whether God might be calling him or her to one of them in particular, but also to be aware of all of them in order to assist those whom the Lord is calling. It’s obviously hard to be God’s instrument to promote and assist vocations to the Order of Virgins, for example, if one has little or no idea of what a consecrated virgin is.
The third stage that the Pope describes is “a generous and willing adherence to the divine plan.” When people seek the will of God in their daily life and strive to follow Christ faithfully on the path of love and holiness, when they are aware of the various range of possibilities to which God might be calling them, it is much easier both to hear what God is asking and to give a free and wholehearted “yes” to his invitation. All those in the Church — but particularly families, catechists and parishes— must help young people to make the often difficult transition from saying “my will be done” to “thy will be done,” and from asking, “What do I want to be when I grow up?,” to “What does God want me to do when I grow up?”
The Holy Father says that one great means to help us learn how to adhere generously and willingly to the divine plan is a deeper understanding of and participation in the mystery of the Eucharist. Jesus in the Eucharist, the Pope says, gives us the “eminent model of a ‘vocational dialogue’ between the free initiative of the Father and the faithful response of Christ.” He shows us in the Eucharist how to seek the Father’s will, to enter into a similarly “fruitful dialogue,” and to respond with loving trust and total surrender. “The awareness of being saved by the love of Christ, which every Mass nourishes in the faithful,” the Pope teaches, “cannot but arouse within them a trusting self-abandonment to Christ who gave his life for us. To believe in the Lord and to accept his gift, therefore, leads us to entrust ourselves to Him with thankful hearts, adhering to his plan of salvation.” In other words, the “amen!” we say to Christ in Holy Communion trains us to say “yes” to Christ freely and unreservedly when he asks us to follow him down a particular vocational path. The Communion brought about by the faithful reception of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Pope concludes, “thus becomes ‘co-responsibility,’ responsibility in and with Christ, through the action of his Holy Spirit; it becomes communion with the One who makes it possible for us to bear much fruit.”
As we come together on Good Shepherd Sunday to celebrate the Eucharist and pray to the Harvest Master to call more laborers to his fields, we ask the Holy Spirit to give all of us a deep sense of the specific vocation each of us has to be “co-responsible” with God in his divine plan and to make us docile instruments as well to guide others to discern how God is calling them to sacred co-responsibilities.