Love for Our Vocation

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls. When finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Matt. 13:45-46).

This meditation is about love for our vocation.

The merchant was in search of fine pearls. He was looking for something.

At a certain stage in our life, God perhaps suggested to us or promoted us to look for a deeper meaning in our life.

We sensed there was something there, and God was asking something of us, something more that we were looking for.

We are like that merchant in search of fine pearls. He finds “one pearl of great value.”

Our vocation is like a pearl, like the “treasure hidden in a field” (Matt. 13:44). Our Lord wants us to have that sense of treasure, that sense of joy at finding this fine pearl.

There was just one pearl, perhaps among many, but it was very special, a pearl of great value. Somehow, he sensed the value of this pearl.

It was greater and better than all the other pearls that might have been there. He found something of great import. So that changed his life.

He went and he sold all that he had and bought it. It was worth everything. There was nothing to compare with it. It was just incredible.

It provoked this whole life change. Somehow, he was able to grasp the significance and the value of the pearl. He knew what it was all about.

So also, with our vocation. We need to have this sense of having found something great.

God has given us this great gift, something very special, a pearl, a treasure. He wants us to have a sense of treasure. There is nothing to compare in our life with this great treasure that God has given to us and which He hasn't given to other people.

That has a lot of consequences then. We have to love it, we have to look after it, we have to appreciate it, to take very good care of this great treasure and see how God wants us to look after it. “Where your treasure is there, your heart is also” (Matt. 6:21).

Our heart must also always be on the things of our vocation, loving everything that our vocation brings with it, loving the goals of our vocation: holiness, apostolate, family life, poverty and detachment, daring and selection, being “the grain of wheat that falls into the ground and dies” (John 12:24).

All these aspects of our vocation are important, and we come to love them.

“Yes, I will go further,” says St. Paul to the Philippians, “because of the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I count everything else as loss” (Phil. 3:8).

“I count everything else as loss.” Nothing compares to the greatness that I have, the spiritual wealth.

When we read the things that our Father [St. Josemaría] has written, or Blessed Álvaro, or Don Javier, the great treasures we have in our internal publications, the spiritual gold that we can never quite exhaust—it has to lead us back to that conclusion.

The great spiritual wealth that has been entrusted to us, the great legacy—we are spiritual millionaires.

We have been given something that many others have not been given, what “kings and queens longed to see and did not see; and to hear and did not hear” (cf. Luke 10:24).

So that love of our vocation leads us to go deeper each time, to discover those hidden treasures that are there—possibly, aspects of our vocation that we haven't seen before, or to go deeper in aspects of the spirit of the Work, or to see the beauty of our vocation in all its splendor, or to discover new aspects of the beauty of the teaching of the Church in so many areas that we are exposed to through our formation.

God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), is truth (John 14:6), is beauty (John Paul II, A Retreat on the Gospel and Art), comes to us in all sorts of ways.

Somehow that outshines all the other pearls that there might be in the world—pearls that might flicker for a while, or might be attractive for a while, or we see that's nice or that's beautiful, but nothing compares to the treasure, the pearl, that we have.

When Yahweh called “Samuel, Samuel,” he answered, “Here I am.”

“And running to Eli, he said, “Here I am; you called me” (cf. 1 Sam. 3:5,6,8). In the Old Testament and in the New, we see this response to His calling.

Our Lord invites us to a deeper, more mature response each time. He intervenes in the affairs of our life by invitation only.

The bridegroom comes and knocks gently at the door; doesn't barge in. “Look, I'm standing at the door knocking. If any one of you hears me calling and opens the door, I will come in to share a meal at that person's side” (cf. Rev. 3:20).

The bridegroom gently invites us to the wedding feast, the eternal wedding feast. He's continually placing this great gift before us, proof of the special love that God has for each one of us.

We love our vocation because we love the gift, because we appreciate the gift. We love every aspect of it, all its expressions.

We mentioned before how there was a meeting of priests in Singapore one time, and we were talking about vocation.

One elderly Belgian missionary priest stood up and said he learned the meaning of vocation from a young married woman in the States. It was on his first assignment as a 28-year-old priest, and he got to know a young couple.

They were having their first baby. The baby turned out to be a Down's baby. The mother's name was Nancy.

The doctor said to the mother, “Are you ready to accept this baby? I can't tell you it isn’t going to be easy, but I can tell you that for every ounce of love that you put into this baby, you're going to get a pound of love in return.”

Nancy said, “Yes, we're ready to accept whatever comes.”

He said, “I was really moved by that, because nobody gets married and says, ‘We want to have a handicapped child.’ And thinking about this,” he said, “I realized, that's really the meaning of vocation: to be ready to accept whatever comes.”

Whether it's a married vocation or a celibate vocation or whatever type of vocation, it means to be ready to accept whatever comes along—whatever God may send us or may ask of us, which will always be for something good.

There will always be a pathway to holiness. Therefore, we can always love it and thank God for it, even if initially, we might not see its wisdom or where it's leading, or there might be some great risk.

Following a vocation is like jumping off a cliff. You leave everything behind. Jump out into the air. See the crashing waves below.

But then Our Lady is there six meters out from the edge of the cliff. She's told us to jump. We jump and she catches us in her arms.

But sometimes, she may place us back on top of the cliff again and say, ‘Jump again. Show me that you love me. Show me that you're serious with your deeds. Show me that you're ready to leave all things.’ Relictis omnibus.

‘Show me that you love and treasure this pearl of great price that I've given to you, like you did at the beginning. Show me with your new generosity, a new self-giving, a new beginning again. Show me that you count everything as loss.’

“For him,” says St. Paul, “I've accepted the loss of all other things and look on them all as filth, if only I can gain Christ” (Phil. 3:8).

Our vocation is everything. Christ is everything—the pearl of great price, the treasure.

That priest said, “A few years later, I was asked to go and work in Rome and to work behind a desk and handle all the financial, legal, planning aspects of our organization all over the world.

“One day somebody came and said, ‘What are you doing here working behind a desk in Rome? You're supposed to be a missionary priest. Why aren't you off in Alaska or Brazil someplace?’”

He said, “I got my answer from Nancy. I didn't ask for this job. I don't particularly like it. I'd much prefer to be somewhere else, anywhere else but here, any other time but now, any other job but this. But this is what came along. And I try to accept whatever comes along.”

He said, “If somebody came to our organization and said, ‘I'm willing to join your organization as long as I can do all the jobs I like. I can work behind a desk in Rome and handle the legal and the financial and the planning aspects,’ they would be told, ‘I'm sorry, you don't have a vocation to our organization.’”

Part of the deal is that you have to be ready to accept whatever comes. Like Nancy, who lived out her marriage vocation so heroically, by living our vocation, we teach other people the meaning of vocation, the value of the pearl.

That lady probably didn't have a clue what her simple answer to that doctor was going to mean for the life of that priest.

How God uses each one of us to light fires! Then that priest grows up and he finds himself at a meeting in Singapore and I'm sitting there listening to him, and here I am repeating the same story to you.

This is how the Holy Spirit works around the world, inspiring profound truths in our soul, helping us to see the beauty of this reality of vocation, the treasure, the pearl.

What a joy to be able to have that disposition in our life, so that we love everything, we love every aspect, because we see that God is working in us and through us.

That pearl, that treasure, is a gift; it can't be earned.

If someone has some great treasure or pearl, often you see in the movies or whatever, they take it out from time to time and have a good look at it. They never get tired of looking at the treasure, the pearl, something of great beauty.

Maybe they place it in a prominent place that they can see it frequently, can be reminded of it, can reassure themselves that ‘I am the possessor’ of this great treasure, great fulfillment.

Our Lord wants us to take out that pearl regularly in our prayer, in our spiritual reading, in our family life, in our work, in all the aspects of the things we do every day—living this spirit and look at it, appreciate its beauty, our customs, our norms, fraternal correction, our expense account, Christmas—all the different customs that we have that are so rich.

We appreciate the gift. Si scires donum Dei–“If you knew the gift of God…” (John 4:10).

From time to time, we see new aspects of that gift, or maybe we read in Romana the stories of people who have gone before us—beautiful stories of fidelity.

Or we see some new aspect of the apostolate that has come to a new maturity. Or we suddenly realize the number of people that are in contact with our apostolates, that are learning and appreciating great aspects of this spirit, this treasure, that we have been given.

This leads us to a great, profound act of thanksgiving. The leper who came back to thank Our Lord—"he fell at his feet” (Luke 17:16). It was a profound act of thanksgiving.

He really appreciated it. He stopped where he was going, he turned back, he looked for the source of this great gift. Somehow, he appreciated, more than all the others, what an incredible thing had happened.

He appreciated the treasure of being cleansed. He shows his gratitude with his deeds. And Our Lord appreciates that.

The other nine were ungrateful (Luke 17:17). Ingratitude can be a frequent reality in our life—not appreciating the gift, the great treasures that God has given us: our sight, hearing, our health, our limbs.

We tend to have a lot of very beautiful things, wonderful things. We can't take them for granted either.

We have to try and thank Our Lord on a daily basis for this great treasure, and live every day with a sense of that treasure. This is something wonderful.

I have to appreciate the gift today and thank God for it by walking along the pathways of my vocation.

Our Father was told of a road that was built in Brazil through the jungle someplace. After a while there wasn't too much traffic on that road.

So, the bamboo shoots grew up through the bottom of the road and the undergrowth began to grow in over the side. Little by little the jungle swallowed up the road because there was no traffic on that road.

As on so many occasions, our Father took great supernatural lessons from this story that he was told.

He said, “The road of our vocation can't be like that. We have to walk along that road with all of its aspects, all of our customs. Take care of the treasures, take out the pearls and realize this is a pearl. I have to live it, incarnate it, pass it on to other people with my example, help them to discover the richness and the beauty of all of these things.”

Our vocation is a constant in our life. It's not a state of mind. It's not a feeling. It has to do with our being.

Every so often, every couple of years, or every decade, we have to go a little deeper; a new maturity in our vocation, so that we never lose the sense of treasure, the richness that God has given to us.

It doesn't depend on how our interior life is, on our progress, on our health, on our blood family, or a whole pile of other external things, because it's something deeper.

“You saw it quite clearly,” said our Father in The Forge, “while so many people do not know God, he has looked to you.” It's very personal. “He wants you to form a part of the foundations, a firm stone upon which the life of the Church can rest” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge, Point 472).

We don't know how many great things are dependent on our correspondence, and our daily fulfilling of the ordinary things of every day—how God wants to use that to plant seeds in many souls, to build great institutions that have to influence a whole society.

Our Father liked to say that a conference center sanctifies a city. We're not just doing this little job, or pushing this button, or laying this table, or taking care of this laundry, or mopping this floor.

We're doing something enormous. We're participating in something incredible. We're becoming that “firm stone upon which the life of the Church can rest.”

“Meditate upon this reality,” he says, “and you will draw many practical consequences for your ordinary behavior: the foundations made of blocks of stone—hidden and possibly rather dull—have to be solid, not fragile. They have to serve as a support for the building. If not, they're useless” (ibid.).

God wants us to be one of those stones at the basis of everything—a stone that perhaps is cut and made into the right size, or polished a little bit and then put in place, and supports something wonderful.

Because of us, the whole structure doesn't fall. He wants us to love being in that place, being that stone.

We can have a joy and a holy pride in the choice that God has made. Thank you, Lord, that you've given me this vocation. It's like a lamp in my forehead.

The lamp has been lit. The candle has been lit in my heart. I have to take care of that candle. Let the flame go strong. Protect that candle from all sorts of winds that may be blowing.

Help me to have this sense of bargain, this sense of calling. The star in my life. The morning star.

There might be times in our life when this great love of our life might disappear a little bit. Like the star of the Magi—when it came to Jerusalem, it disappeared. It was still there, but they couldn't see it.

What did they do? They used their common sense. They asked for directions. They asked questions.

They asked people who might know: “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?” (Luke 2:2). They got all sorts of answers.

But then they went on their way “and the star that they had seen in the east went before them…and they rejoiced exceedingly” (Luke 2:9-10).

There may be moments in our life when, after periods of certain darkness, we might see again that star in all its glory and beauty and prominence.

Thank God that after so many years, we've seen this again. We're reassured. I'm on the right track. This is the source of my joy and my happiness. The purpose of my life—and you've let me see it so clearly.

Every day we have to thank God for that vocation. Enjoy our vocation. Draw love from the source of love.

Enjoy our vocation as it comes to us in various ways: in get-togethers, in birthdays, in little details, in periods of rest, in our sleep, in other moments that we sort of stop what we're doing, and we have a contemplative gaze on what we've been achieving in the past period.

We're called to a committed love. Our Father loved that word “committed.”

“The privilege,” he says in The Forge, “of being numbered among the children of God is the greatest happiness there can be; it is always undeserved” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 905).

Lord, help me to have the humility to realize that I do not deserve the great things you've given to me, and therefore, I have to have a new humility to respond, to thank you with deeds, with a new generosity, a desire to give myself again and again, to realize that you give me great joys.

You also possibly permit trials or contradictions. The cross. The cross has to come. There is no holiness without the cross. But yet that's also a joy. I thank you for it.

We find our joy and our happiness in the roots of the cross (cf. J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 28).

Therefore, we love the crosses that God sends us, because also we realize, it could be worse. It could be more difficult. There are other people who have greater crosses than I do. Learn how to laugh at ourselves.

We can try and look and see: Where am I now on this pathway that God has given to me? How am I corresponding? Help me to have a fuller correspondence.

“I see myself,” said our Father in The Forge, “like a poor little bird, accustomed only to make short flights from tree to tree, or, at most, up to a third-floor balcony. … One day in its life it succeeded in reaching the roof of a modest building that you could hardly call a skyscraper.

“And lo and behold, our little bird is snatched up by an eagle, who mistakes the bird for one of its own brood. In its powerful talons the bird is borne higher and higher, above the mountains of the earth and the snow-capped peaks, above the white, blue, and rose-pink clouds, and higher and higher until it can look right into the sun. And then the eagle lets go of the little bird and says: Off you go. Fly!

“Lord, may I never flutter again close to the ground. May I always be enlightened by the rays of the divine sun—Christ—in the Eucharist. May my flight never be interrupted, until I find repose in your heart” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 39).

We are like that little bird that the Lord has taken, and lifted us up to fly so high, to do things we never dreamt of, to see the world from a completely different perspective—seeing the solutions to problems, or how things have to be, or how God wants us to put into practice the social doctrine of the Church, or a whole pile of other things.

Lord, help my love for my vocation, to lead me to have a greater determination to seek holiness, to focus on that goal, which is what it's all about; to take care of that candle in my heart, so that I don't allow the winds of the world to blow it out in any way, or to weaken it.

Help me to be aware of all sorts of things that could distract me—blind alleys, things that could take me away from that goal. We have the Good Shepherd to ensure that we get to where our vocation is leading us.

We know that God gives us the grace in all situations to be able to carry out the mission that He's given to us, in spite of our miseries and our defects, which may become more visible all the time.

St. Peter says, “But rejoice insofar as you share in Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Pet. 4:13).

Look to future things, to great things. That wedding feast—it's worth everything—to continually be going and selling all that we have, and buying that pearl, or getting that treasure, and remembering all the time that we are the ambassadors of Christ.

It's a beautiful statement that St. Paul makes. Ambassadors are impressive people.

“We are the ambassadors for Christ. It is as though we are urging you, as God will urge you through us, and in the name of Christ, we appeal to you to be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20).

Ambassadors are sent. They don't act in their own name. They represent the government that sends them. They speak on its behalf. They have a certain dignity, but it doesn't come from themselves. They're chosen.

If they're insulted in some way, it's where they've come from, their country, their government that's insulted. It's not personal. Very often they're fine people. You can be proud of them: learned, cultured, representative, reliable, pillars, talented.

Yet all their stature is on loan. They can go back to being ordinary citizens.

They fulfill their ambassadorial role in all situations. It's not a nine-to-five job. Wherever they go, whatever they say, they're representing their country. They're people with a message. They make a good impression.

In the world there are ambassadors for all sorts of things. Ambassadors for art, ambassadors for sport, goodwill ambassadors, all sorts of things.

We are the ambassadors of Christ, who carry that pearl and that treasure with us always, reflecting all the things that God wants us to bring to the world.

We can say to Our Lady, “O my Lady, O my Mother! I offer myself entirely to you. As proof of my filial affection, I consecrate to you today my eyes, my ears, my tongue, my heart; in a word, all that I am. Since I am entirely yours, my Mother, protect me and defend me as your property and possession” (Prayer, Act of Consecration).

Help me to fall more in love with my divine vocation every day. Mary, Queen of Opus Dei, pray for us.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

MML