How will I know if this is my vocation?
- Fr Raphael Ma, CR
- Matthew 5: 1 - 12a
A Resurrectionist Vocation Minute for February 1, 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time
How will I know if this is my Vocation?
The most common mistake people make when trying to find their vocation, is to try and “figure it out” without actually doing anything. They pray, they talk, they think about it, and sometimes they even arrive at a conclusion about it without even taking a single real step. It’s like someone researching a sport and watching videos about it, without actually trying to play the sport.
If you want to know if a sport is for you, it’s pretty simple – try to take real, concrete steps towards it, even play the sport, and as you do this, reflect on your experience. Do you actually enjoy this? Does it actually engage you and challenge you to something more? Are you actually able to play it?
The same is true for discerning a vocation. Instead of trying to “figure it out” before actually doing anything, we need to actually try to do something, and once we have experiences to reflect on, then we “figure things out” – or, discern.
And one of the signs that this might be your vocation is that you notice you are growing in the Beatitudes. St. Augustine, in Chapter 3 of Book 1 of his Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, describes the Beatitudes as stages of growth in Christian perfection and life.
At least for myself growing up, whenever I heard the Beatitudes being read at Mass, I thought they were like “goals” to strive for. But the Greek word that appears at the beginning of each Beatitude, that we usually hear as “Blessed Are” can also be translated as “Happy Are”. And if you think about your experience of happiness, most of the time, happiness is not something that we can attain by directly striving for it – as if one’s happiness (or vocation) could be planned ahead of time. Rather, it is by actually doing the things that are in front of us, by actually engaging in life, that happiness comes along – sometimes to our surprise.
So it is with the Beatitudes – they are descriptions rather than goals, of what will begin to take shape in us as we walk the path that Jesus has traced out for us, and is inviting us to walk with Him. We rarely get a glimpse of the whole path ahead of us, but we can always see the choices that are in front of us. And by reflecting on whether the choices we are making are resulting in the Beatitudes being more or less present in our lives – we can have a good indicator if we are on the right path, if we are pursuing our vocation.
“The local community meeting was an important element in the life of the community of believers which Bogdan Jański gathered together. At such meetings, the religious evaluate their life and mission in the light of the Gospel, of the Charism of the Congregation and of the signs of the times. Moreover, they will support, encourage and affirm each other and call each other to conversion through a more faithful response to the values of Jesus.”