Universal Love

The readings for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time tell us that true love of God demands a wholehearted response that shows itself in selfless service and profound humility. In the Gospel, (Mt 22:34-40), Christ commands us to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. Vocation—whether to the ministerial priesthood or the consecrated religious life—is precisely this kind of total, unreserved surrender to love. When a young man or woman encounters the merciful glance of Christ, it requires a willingness to drop the security of personal ambitions, leap up from the roadside of comfort, and dedicate every fiber of one’s being to serving the Risen Lord though his flock.

For a culture to foster and sustain vocations, we must cultivate the same interior disposition highlighted in these readings: radical hospitality, selfless love of neighbor, and joyful witness. As Saint Paul notes in the Second Reading (1 Thes.1:5c-10), a community that receives the Word with Holy Spirit-filled joy becomes a beacon that draws others to serve the living God. Schools and Parishes generate vocations when they become spaces where the young are encouraged to care for the resident alien, the widow and orphan, i.e., the marginalized.  For the call to priesthood or religious life is not a call to avoid the command to love. Religious and Priests are called to be love not in the particular way of loving a spouse and children but in a universal way of loving all the children of God, that God places in our path.