Vocations Newsletter

Friend,What gift is greater than the gift of life? I can’t think of one.Today we celebrate Mother’s Day, one of the most significant and memory-rich holidays in our calendar. Like you, I can’t help but recall the many celebrations in my home as I was growing up. Making Mom Queen for a Day gave us as much pleasure as it gave her! So we honor mothers everywhere today and ask God to bless them in their work of human creation—and for nurturing a new generation of believers, faithful to the Gospel and the abundance of life in Christ Jesus.In fulfilling their responsibilities to loved ones, mothers teach us an important life lesson: The work of creation belongs to each of us. As people of faith, each of us is charged with giving life, caring for life, and celebrating the abundance of life we talked about last week—the abundance we find in Christ Jesus.As we celebrate Moms everywhere today, let’s remember that each of us was called in Baptism to witness our faith as life-givers—no matter our title or station. Being a life-giver involves prayer and sacrifice to be sure. But the rewards are so great. I remember the women of…
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How you define “abundant life” depends a lot on your point of view. For some people it’s having security, even though we know security can be an illusion. For others it’s about acquiring things as though material objects are the source of lasting joy.Both of those ideas have little or nothing to do with creating the abundant life you and I know. The deepest and richest abundance only comes in one way: by caring for others—the way Christ did. Obviously, I’m not talking about an economic model! But the most radical form of enrichment that involves the soul. The more we give, the more we receive, the more abundant our lives.This might seem like an impossible riddle to some. But for people of faith, we know that giving in order to receive is the only way to experience God’s love. Our teacher is Christ himself. His sacrifice on the Cross was the supreme transformational act of all time. We imitate Christ each time we offer sacrifice, too—by setting aside our own needs and finding the time to care for others.Abundance and sacrifice always seem to work together. The lesson I learned long ago is that people who need help are…
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Sometimes our eyes are open, but we don’t always see… call it selective vision or just the pace of life getting in the way. Yes, our days can be filled with distractions.Today’s Gospel takes us on the road to Emmaus when two of the disciples, feeling the absence of their rabbi and leader, encounter a man whom they didn’t recognize—not at first anyway. Not until he broke bread with them just as Jesus had done at the Last Supper. And then, as Luke says, Jesus vanished.We have the benefit of prayer and the sacraments to open our eyes to many a sacred moment, although sometimes we can have selective vision, too. But it’s important to remember this: We’re on the road to Emmaus every day. The question we face is how do we recognize the risen Christ? He is here, even in the midst of the suffering caused by the coronavirus. Do we perceive his presence?I find consolation—and spiritual strength—in the fact that the Emmaus companions put aside their grief over the loss of Jesus and invited the stranger to come to their table for a meal. Their hospitality was amply rewarded when they realized they had been in the…
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Easter and divine mercy… these are sacred partners in the practice of our faith, and this time of crisis is a moment to recall the power of both gifts in our lives.Easter is God’s promise that through the Cross we are inheritors of the Kingdom—if we share Christ’s mercy with the world. That’s the plan! So today, we celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday, an observance started by St. Pope John Paul II who often preached about mercy at Easter time. That’s because of his spiritual closeness with Faustina Kowalska, a Catholic nun and mystic, whom he declared a saint of the Church in 2000.During her brief lifetime, Faustina received revelations from Our Lord who asked her to record her experiences. Known today as the Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, this is the saint’s message that touches me the most: “Humanity will never find peace until it turns with trust to Divine Mercy.”Today, in her honor and with St. Faustina as our model, we celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday, knowing that God’s mercy and forgiveness are beyond our imagination. Beyond understanding. But not beyond imitating in our own human way. A good meditation on mercy is to recall a time someone forgave…
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