You feel good when someone who loves you phones you. Your face lights up. Your voice becomes warm and tender.
Nice to matter to someone, right?
Great to be called, right?
Each of us is loved, remembered and CALLED.
Called before we were conceived in our mother’s womb.
Called into life. Called to be a woman or a man—our basic human vocation.
Most of us respond to God’s love through marriage and parenthood—a great and beautiful vocation.
A few of us feel called, while appreciating marriage and what our parents did for us, to embrace the larger human family and to give ourselves generously to anyone in need. Celibate priesthood and religious life make sense only if we experience it as a personal call from God that seems to respond to our deepest longings. To coax an unwilling person to stay unmarried to do some work with us is neither fair, nor is it “vocation promotion.”
Vocation is much more than joining a group or just staying in. As Fr Pascual Chavez Villanueva, former Rector Major (Superior General) of the Salesians, used to say, “Perseverance is not the same as fidelity.”
April 22, 2018—Good Shepherd Sunday—is “Vocation Day.” Hence this Special Issue devoted to this very practical theme: Vocation.
Kevin and Crystal Sullivan found that their marriage took a lovely turn when they started living it as a vocation.
David tells us what drew him to the challenging life of a Christian Brother.
Sharmila’s parents detested the idea of her becoming a nun. How did she become one?
Francis was a gifted violinist who later chose to play second fiddle to Christ.
Dolores Hart was a beautiful Hollywood actress when she shocked the world by becoming a contemplative nun.
For John Bartunek, the journey was from atheism to the Catholic faith and to the priesthood.
Jennifer Fulweiler, mother of six and a brilliant atheist married to a Baptist, found Catholicism more and more appealing.
Eight bishops and sixteen priests lay bare their personal journeys.
In the cover story, Sr Esme invites us to look at our personal histories, at what makes a choice good, foolish, wise or bad.
Many journeys. The same goal.
Different characters. The same underlying quest.
A variety of settings. The same Love.
Many hearts within the same Big Heart.
May these stories help you, reader, to look within, and around, and up—and clarify what it means to be thought of with love and INVITED to get closer to the One Love that placed us on this planet and find meaning by increasing the goodness in the world.
The settings matter very little. The sincerity matters. And the love. And the genuineness with which we listen and respond to that Silent Voice.
To the degree that we let our hearts hear that Voice and allow it to lead us, Easter will happen in our life.
Happy New Life!
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