Vocation Awareness
Happy New Year to everyone! Our Lord leads the way to a new year in his name, 2011 years of celebrating our Lord’s birth, Jesus Christ, who has come to save us from our sins and bring us into his eternal kingdom.
As we begin a new year a lot of people tend to be fixated on new year resolutions. I personally like new year resolutions because it makes us reflect on the path we have chosen in the past and then attempt to be resolute in redirecting ourselves for a better future. For example, last year I made a resolution to turn off the television as I was often wasting an hour our two in the evenings that I could have been doing something productive, spiritual, or relaxing. How did I do? I did better than most of my resolutions (chuckle). With God’s grace I have freed myself of a chronic habit and spiritual disease that was consuming and wasting a part of each day God had given me to do good. This year I am focusing on steadfast prayer throughout the day, attempting to form a habit of stopping whatever I may be doing (every three hours) and choosing to pray to make sure that what I am doing is glorifying God. I hope you make a resolution and hold to it as well.
This brings me to reflect on deeper issues I see with teenagers and young adults. By definition, as Christians our life must center on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Yet, the culture we live in can lead all of us myriads of miles away from Christ and can do so in the blink of an eye. Those most vulnerable to a path of perdition (loss of self/soul) are our own teenagers and young adults. Like a new years resolution it takes sheer determination and a strong will (and God’s grace) to remain a faithful disciple of Christ in a culture that has rejected its Savior.
In response to this problem the Church has a long tradition of helping adolescents find the right path of happiness (that means happiness already exists along the way) and to fulfill their calling from Christ to be a servant of the Lord and to share the Good News with others. Our culture gives off the impression that we will not be happy until some future event happens, such as completing high school, college, landing the big job that launches our career or maybe even the idea that we won’t be happy until we get married. Do we really have to wait to find meaning and happiness to our lives? The Church says absolutely not! We receive God’s grace, and thus inner happiness, when we respond daily to our calling from God to live holy lives. As Christians this call to holiness and the grace to follow Christ happens at the moment that we are baptized. Our life is already being fulfilled, and thus true happiness begins and resides within us as long as we follow in the footsteps of Christ in communion with our Church. With the support of family and the Christian community, teenagers should already be finding meaning and happiness in their life, learning how to live virtuous lives, how to serve others, and how to growing spiritually. We already know that we need a new group of vibrant and resolute young men and women to rise to the occasion to re-Christianize our nation and the world. Before considering marriage, every Catholic teenager and young adult should consider the possibility of being called to remain as they are (as single) in order to begin new ministries and aid where new problems have developed, where new needs exist, or even to make permanent their current state in life by considering the religious life. Yes, before the consideration of marriage, teenagers and singles should first pray for a few years over the idea of serving others in this unique and holistic manner as a vowed religious sister, brother or priest. We have an extreme shortage, right? Yes we do! We have excellent men and women set on fire with the Holy Spirit to bring Hope, Love, and Christ's Life to the world who are stepping forward, but not near enough. God is calling many more than those who are responding. If we want a great future for the next generation then we need to help create that environment that will guide them in the right direction during the most critical years of their life, adjusting from the faith of their parents to embracing the Christian faith wholeheartedly for their own life. To help facilitate this I have helped run the Lenten Vocations Awareness Program for the past five years for single men and women, emphasizing the age group from 15 to 30, though one can be older. We meet once each week throughout Lent and we help them see the meaning and calling in life by examining the Christian prayer life, discipleship, community, family, and careers as well as a real, side by side comparative of what daily life should look like as a single Christian, a religious Christian and a Married Christian. Do we not have a common goal, a common mission? In this way young adults can see more easily that what life is all about and to see the real options or avenues of happiness that fulfill the mission of Christ and the individual. Please help us spread the word about our Lenten Program as further explained in our ad. Happy New Year, 2011, Anno Domini, Year of the Lord Jesus Christ!
