Our Personal Vocation Looks For Us

I remember once in high school I wanted to make the basketball team. I was not that good, and I was told to go running all summer to improve my mobility. It did not seem to help much. Once I did try out, I ended up breaking my wrist. I could not continue. It is a silly example but sometimes, when some situation does not work out for us, we need to begin to look for the next possibility.

We ask where we fit in this life and I do not think it is a question we ask and answer in one sitting. It is something that we continually ask in our relationship with Christ. What do you want from me? Here I am Lord, I have come to do your will. Pope Francis says this about vocation,

God calls you to make definitive choices, and He has a plan for each of you: to discover that plan and to respond to your vocation is to move toward personal fulfillment.

Your Vocation is Hidden in God

His will is something very different from what we think we want or maybe even convince ourselves what we want. In my work with various groups of people, it seems a recurring question is asked. What is my path? I am not capable of answering that question for anyone and I never even try but what I do ask is – are you happy? It would seem that a vocation, the road that God wants for his is to follow Him. The form of that vocation is up to Him.

There are many examples that come to mind when we think of vocation but there are three individuals that have piqued my curiosity. I am thinking of some examples of great lives that would usually go unnoticed.

Three Unnoticed Lives

St. Giuseppe Moscati was a humble doctor from Naples who grew up in a big family. He went to medical school and the interns used to follow him around to learn his methods. He loved his work and his charity to others did not go unnoticed by the Church. When he was 34, he took a private vow because he felt called to it. Never marrying left him free to live a quiet life of prayer and service to Christ. Mass, his work, and charitable works drew others to Him. Yet he lived in the world. Pope John Paul II described the doctor’s method: “In addition to the resources of his acclaimed skill, in caring for the sick he used the warmth of his humanity and the witness of his faith.” He would sometimes not ask for payment and with a prescription, he wrote he would include a 50 lira note for them. There was more to being a doctor than just medicine. It must take into account one’s spiritual and practical needs, especially at this time.

Herman the Cripple or the Disabled as Father McNamara called him, had a cleft palate, cerebral palsy, and spina bifida. He was placed in a monastery at the age of 7. Possibly his parents and society at this time 1000 years ago would have written him off as a waste of space. His weak body was not a cage. He had a great mind and spoke several languages. He became blind in later years and died around the age of 40. Remarkably, he wrote the Salve Regina. This hymn is so beautiful yet it came from someone that society and possibly the faithful at the time had dismissed outright. God really does make crooked paths straight. We do not understand the Lord’s infinite wisdom though at times we like to think we do. Our pride interferes with our faith more often than not.

There is a very unknown story about a young boy who was 17 in Brazil in the early 1990s. Edimar was a killer several times over working for a gang of thugs. He went to school and had a teacher who in her face saw something beautiful. In Alberto Savorana’s book, The Life of Luigi Giussani, he writes about Edimar. He met that teacher and he was surprised, shocked, or pick your own word. He wanted what she had – faith. That light of Christ that transcends darkness. I always remember this story when I heard it the first time and it still haunts me. Edimar had met something beautiful and when his gang members saw him again, they knew he was different. They tested him by asking him to go and kill someone. He said that he did not do that anymore and told them no. He was killed by the gang for refusing. It was a sacrifice he made for the love of Christ.

Our Vocation Looks For Us

This is how vocations touch our lives. It is not something that we go looking for but something that looks for us. In some way it finds us. When I am asked my opinion, I do not give it. I tell them about my experience and what I have met. I cannot give any more than that. Because, the reality of it all, it is Christ who speaks. Only in silence can the Lord communicate. He cannot speak to us in noise that surrounds us or in the noise that we make. Who knows what beautiful hymn awaits for us or what difficult choice awaits us?

I can only say that this voice, this calling is Christ and the rest is up to Him. Saint Pope John Paul II urged us to seek our true vocation:

I invite you, dear friends, to discover your true vocation to cooperate in the spreading of this Kingdom of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice, love and peace. If you really wish to serve your brothers and sisters, let Christ reign in your hearts, let him help you to discern and grow in dominion over yourselves, to strengthen you in the virtues, to fill you above all with his charity, to guide you along the path which leads to the “condition of the perfect one”. Do not be afraid to be saints! This is the liberty with which Christ has set us free (cfr. Gal 5: 1) (Pope John Paul II, Compostella, Spain, 1989).

His words inspire all of us to continue to seek how God calls us each to serve in their own particular way.