Dear Friends,
Vocations Awareness Week may challenge us when we speak of ‘vocation’ - not a term we readily use in relation to ourselves though we’re probably comfortable enough with marriage and parenting as vocations, along with callings like teaching and the other helping professions. As Christians it’s essential that we expand our vocation horizons beyond religious life and priesthood even though the latter remain integral in the Church.
Our life plan unfolds with the help of God’s grace and in the belief that each of us has some call from God, not in terms of ‘passing a test’ but rather ‘accepting an invitation’ which may take us in many different directions as our life situation, faith, family life, career and personal circumstances change. That invitation is to an ongoing relationship with God.
Today’s reflection focuses on priesthood and religious life in the Church and in our lives. Our experience of priests and religious women and men is coloured by our age, our particular view of Church when we were growing up, and cultural factors too - some helpful, some a hindrance. Some of us may still hunger for what we perceive to be the ‘certainties’ of the Church before the Second Vatican Council, even though our understanding of the Church has expanded since then – helped by a more profound appreciation of the Scriptures, the teaching of the Fathers of the Church and the early Church Councils as the developing community of Christ’s followers ‘grew into’ a deeper awareness of its identity.
Every priest and religious needs time to ‘grow into’ his/her understanding of what their vocation means. Religious congregations enrich the Church by expressing a range of very diverse Gospel charisms, some based on the teaching of their founders, some inspired by the particular mission they embraced. Thankfully, the tradition, charism and ideals of the congregations which founded our schools and parishes are honoured today – in the case of North Harbour Parish, the Good Samaritan Sisters and the Augustinians.
The Church and priests today are often in the firing line – at times for good reason – but the picture is overwhelmingly positive. The era of priests being put on a pedestal is surely over, with the model of priest as servant far more authentic. Pope Francis’ advice to bishops to be shepherds who ‘smell like the sheep’ is surely applicable to priests too.
That being said, priests do not operate in a vacuum but need ‘pastoral care’ themselves. In an address at a symposium on the priesthood in Rome in February, Francis offered reflections on his own experience of more than 50 years in ministry and nominated ‘four pillars’ or ‘forms of closeness’ that he considered fundamental to the life of a priest. The pillars reflect the ‘closeness of God’ to us and are influenced by the memory of those priests who during Francis’ childhood and later life had shown him ‘the face of the Good Shepherd’, but tempered also by the reality of those ‘who had lost the fire of the first love.’
The Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary this coming Monday reminds us that Mary’s life embodies the best elements of vocation as wife, mother, disciple and model of faith in her own ‘closeness to God’ and the completion of her life assumed into heaven. Mary the Woman of Faith reminds us that every vocation grows and is sustained by the closeness of God, experienced primarily through friendship and prayer. Whether a lay, religious or clerical vocation, love in its many forms expresses, strengthens, heals and enhances our response to God as we say Yes to life in all its richness!! Fr Dave