Welcome back to my series of blogs titled, “Have you ever wondered?” In my last blog we explored why God created us. In brief, God created us to love as God loves by listening to and saying “yes” to God’s unique communal life call to each of us. But have you ever wondered, “Do I really have a purpose?” or “Does anyone care if I even exist?” The resounding answer to those questions is “Yes!” Ultimately God cares. In fact, “God chose us in him before the world began, to be holy and blameless in his sight, to be full of love” (Eph. 1:4).
God is a communion of persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; each person of the Trinity empties himself in love for the other because God is love (cf. 1Jn.4:8). Through our baptism God begins to draw us into this Trinitarian communion which is God’s kingdom of perfect love, joy and fulfillment. Because of our sin and selfishness God’s kingdom is partially hidden as a cloud partially hides the sun. The mission of the Church, and our mission as disciples, is to scatter the cloud of sin and reveal God’s kingdom of love and justice by our loving as God loves, each according to the unique communal life call given to us by God at our baptism. Another name for this unique communal life call is our vocation.
Vocation in the broad sense exists on three levels: 1) our universal call to holiness in which we are all called to become saints by loving as God loves; 2) our particular call to holiness through one of the three states in life; the lay state either in marriage or the committed single life, consecrated life, or the ordained priesthood; 3) our call to live out the duties of our particular state in life in love on a day to day basis.
We reach our greatest happiness here on earth and completely in heaven by hearing and responding to God’s call to one of the three states listed above. So through that state in life we transform our world and culture and reveal God’s kingdom one person at a time, day by day, by living the duties that each state requires. Notice that our career, job and/or ministry are secondary to our state and their effectiveness actually flows from the way in which we are living our call either to the lay state whether in marriage or the committed single life, or the call to consecrated life, or the call to the ordained priesthood.
In my next blog I will write a little about the states in life and their particular duties and show how each one is crucial for the life and holiness of the Church and for the world in which we live.