Fr. Thomas M. Pastorius
April 5, 2014
Spiritual Ponderings
Exploring Vocations

For the month of April, I would like to take a closer look at what the Church means by vocations. As we enter into this month’s reflection, please note that I will not be writing about any one specific vocation in the Church but rather working on this radical idea that God chooses to let us be his co-workers.

As we begin our pondering of the idea of vocation let us look at Luke’s story about how Peter, James, and John became disciples of Jesus:

While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening to the word of God, he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret. He saw two boats there alongside the lake; the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon said in reply, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.” When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come to help them. They came and filled both boats so that they were in danger of sinking. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him and all those with him, and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners of Simon. Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him. (Luke 5:1-11)

The first thing I would like to do is point out that when Peter first encounters Jesus, he does not have a real clue to who Jesus truly was. Jesus probably appeared to Peter as somewhat of a jerk because the Lord barges into Peter’s boat and somewhat of a know-it-all because he instructs Peter in fishing despite the fact that Peter was the expert fisherman and Jesus was not. It turned out though that Jesus was more than he appeared because He was God. A true Christian vocation comes out of the realization that God knows better than us and that God’s “pushiness” comes from his desire to be with us. Secondly Peter realizes that he is a sinner and begs Jesus to leave. Jesus chooses not to leave but rather calls Peter to follow Him. Only when we realize like Peter that we are not perfect and that we need a savior can we then follow a savior. The fact that Jesus did not walks away lets us know that none of our sins will prevent us from becoming his coworkers. Finally Peter is at a moment in his life where he has everything he could ever dream of including wealth beyond imagination with the great catch of fish but Peter must have sensed that this wealth would not make him truly happy and so he decides to leave all of this wealth behind in order to follow Jesus. While we may never have all the wealth that we want like Peter at a certain point in our lives we have to decide to follow Jesus because we believe Jesus alone will lead us to happiness.

As Catholics we believe that there are three levels of meaning to the word “vocation”. The first level is what Catholics refer to as the Universal Call to Holiness. The call is universal because it is a call that everyone receives from God. To put is simply, Every Catholic is called to love like God loves. No matter what our state in life we believe that God has called us to bring and manifest his love in the world.

The second level of the vocation refers to how God desires us to manifest His love in the world. We are called to love in the world in one of four ways: priesthood, religious, married, or single. Each of these vocations is equal but each is different.

Finally the third level of vocation could better be defined as our career. What does God want me to do with my gifts and talents? Should I teach, enter the business world, or be a doctor? It is important not to get the second and third level confused. No one should ever say, “I do not want to be a priest, because I want to be a doctor,” because priests can become doctors. No one should say, that “I want to be a teacher therefore I should be a religious.”