Dream, believe, achieve: Is God calling you?

It is important to seek God’s will and to open to his plans. But there is a danger of becoming so anxious about vocation or call, so caught up in a future that does not yet exist that you miss the life that God has given you now.  So yes, it is important to put time and effort into considering your vocation-be open, be generous, be brave. It is a wonderful adventure but at the same time be grateful for the person you are now, and for the work God has given you to do today.

Blessed Charles de Foucauld: “God calls all the souls he has created to love him with their whole being, here and thereafter, which means that he calls all of them to holiness, to perfection, to a close following of him and obedience to his will. But he does not ask all people to show their love by the same works, to climb to heaven by the same ladder, to achieve goodness in the same way. What sort of work, then, must I do? Which is my road to heaven? In what kind of life am I to sanctify myself?”

The fundamental vocation of every human being is to love because every person has been created out of love. This is not obvious to everyone. Many people believe that human life is an accident, a chance product of evolution, a meaningless event in a vast mechanical universe. God made us so that we could know his love and share it with others. So whatever you feel about your own worth, never doubt that your life has a meaning. Every person is precious in the eyes of the Lord.

What is a vocation? From the Latin word ‘calling’. It is not just something that God calls us to do, it is also the person that God calls us to be. When Jesus first called his disciples by the Lake of Galilee it wasn’t just so that they could help him in this work, it was so that their lives could be transformed through this relationship of friendship and love. The Christian vocation is a call to share in the life of the Trinity.

One way of expressing this is also to say that the fundamental human vocation is the call to holiness, the call to  be saints. Saints are ordinary people who have tried to live their faith without holding back, to love God with their whole heart, to love those around them without counting the costs, to work at what is worthwhile with dedication and purpose, to be a people of joy, gratitude, prayerfulness and kindness

You have already a vocation –this is part of our lives through baptism. We are called to bring it to fullness (Jn 10-10),we are called to the fullness of life.

Vocation is also a call to a concrete state of life: often the word ‘vocation’ would have been used to describe the life of sisters and priests. But today, the word is rightly used of marriage, permanent deaconate, consecrated and single life.

With that there is often a personal vocation, we are called to be holy not just in a general way, but in the particular way that God has made you to do. This is a personal vocation. The more you discover who you are, the more you discover what lies deepest in your heart, the more you are able to discern what God’s will is for you and the direction He wants you to take in life. Now is the time to start the journey!