You Say

You Say

One of my favourite pieces of contemporary Christian music is the song “You Say” by Lauren Daigle.  I have a distinctive memory of hearing it and being moved to tears while in a car one afternoon. 

I had been sent to serve as an English language secretary at the 34th General Chapter of the Congregation of the Resurrection, over a period of two and a half weeks.  It was hard work.  Four one hour sessions every day, plus translating and compiling to make the minutes ready for the next day.  Rome in late June and early July is hot, and there was little air conditioning available.  It was also the first time I had spent an extended period of time in a place where very few people spoke English.  It was a very isolating experience.

Our Saturdays were free, so a group of us went on a day trip to Mentorella, a Marian Shrine entrusted to the Congregation of the Resurrection by Bl. Pope Pius IX in 1857, and then to Subiaco, where St. Benedict – whose life and teachings have had a profound impact on Western monastic life and society in general – first began to live the life of a hermit.  It had been a long day, and a number of things had been weighing on my mind, when the song came up, and it just broke open something inside me.

Young people today are searching for an identity.  It’s the question that decides everything – how you decide to live your life, who you spend your time with, what matters to you, etc.  But the difficulty is that in our consumer culture, we think identity is something you have to construct for yourself – which can be one of the most exhausting and isolating experiences in the world.  It can mean constantly feeling like you need to “prove” oneself, to keep up one’s “identity” – and all the anxiety and worry that comes with the fear that you’re failing at it.

But what if our identity is not something we construct for ourselves, but a gift we receive from a relationship?  Although Jesus asks his disciples in today’s Gospel: “who do you say that I am?”, have you ever asked the same question of Jesus?  “Jesus, who do you say that I am?”  The answer is your vocation.