Today is Vocations Sunday, a day on which the church invites us to think about God’s calling to us. Often the word ‘vocation’, significantly when mentioned from the pulpit, means nothing greater than a recruitment drive by the church – wanting extra clergy or non secular or lay ministers or no matter. But it is important to do not forget that we’re all known as by God. We had been referred to as into being by God, our very existence is a response to God’s name. In reality the church known as ekklesia within the New Testament which means the community that known as collectively. So individually and corporately we’re called. Together and as people we now have a vocation.
It is indeed admirable to see priests who are doing their ministry everyday faithfully. In some particular occasions similar to Christmas and Lenten seasons, they offer much of their strength, time, and sacrifices in lots of liturgical actions. However, because the monks go through their ministry, they also recognize the need to avoid the tendency to have routinary and mechanical performances that can make them much less effective and less motivated in their mission.
I’ve seen so much damage achieved within marriages – via infidelity, the addiction of pornography, lies, greed, and many others. – but I’m by no means jaded concerning the vocation. I see marriage as an exquisite vocation… one that is in peril. My technology (the Millennials) have a fairly grim outlook on marriage which is why so many decide to not get married and easily live with their companions. Yes, we want devoted priests and non secular sisters but we additionally want faithful individuals (religion aside) to live their vocations of marriage faithfully. We want to raise kids in a fashion that can energy the Church instead of pull them away from it.
The name of individuals and communities overlaps in order that the circumstances of 1 are addressed within the vocation of the other. Similar to Erik Erikson’s cogwheel theory of human improvement, wherein the items of 1 stage of life intersect with the wants of one other, an ecological understanding of vocation leaves room for the possibility that the wants of some elements of the group to receive care might activate giving on the part of others called to offer care.
In a revolutionary age speak of equality may properly have represented a passion to offer full human dignity to those who had previously been denied it by techniques of political and financial domination; however within the current age it softens the spiritual requirements which are a necessary ingredient in human dignity. Thus the slogans of equality serve not a lot to elevate individuals to the dignity of being human as to free them from the responsibility of rising to this vocation.