Congregation for the Clergy on Vocations: Hearing God's Call for Your Life

The verbs to 'search' and to 'find' acquire a special importance in the context of vocation

God's vocational initiative always develops through the human means in which He calls us.  Whilst He fully respects the time it takes us to respond, He calls us with perseverance and gentleness.A vocation fully completes the humanity of those who are called. When we let ourselves be found, He who has come searching and calling reveals our rightful identity.

P>VATICAN CITY (Catholic Online) - This Sunday's Liturgy of the Word is dominated by two vocation stories. 

Samuel is the protagonist of the first reading, called to be a prophet and a priest.  The Gospel is the story of the two brothers, Andrew and Peter, who were called to become Apostles.

The first significant aspect of the accounts is that God always takes the initiative to call, acting with sensitivity and perseverance.  The Lord called Samuel, repeatedly during the night, in the silence of repose, so that Samuel could understand and welcome His call.

In the case of Peter and Andrew, Jesus firstly engages them in a dialogue asking them: "Whom do you seek?", and then He proposed that they: "come and see".

Therefore, God's vocational initiative always develops through the human means in which He calls us.  Whilst He fully respects the time it takes us to respond, He calls us with perseverance and gentleness.

Another significant aspect that seems to emerge in the reality of God's call is His use of the senses.  God uses hearing to call Samuel.  The young man 'heard' God's call and, recognising a familiar voice, three times mistook it for that of his master, Eli. 

To call Peter and Andrew, the Lord had recourse to the sight.  Andrew 'saw' Jesus passing by and they followed Him.  Jesus saw them following and said: 'Come and see'. 

They 'saw' where Jesus lived.  Afterwards, when Peter joined them, Jesus fixed his gaze at him and announced his new identity: "You will be called Cephas".

The verbs to 'search' and to 'find' acquire a special importance in the context of vocation.  In the first reading it is clearly God who seeks Samuel, and Samuel is able to find God with the help of Eli. 

In the Gospel, by contrast, the future Apostles are searching for an encounter with Christ, moved by the call of John the Baptist who sees Jesus passing and recognises Him. 

Then Jesus, stopping, lets himself be found.  In this dynamic, we see that both stories have the figure of a mediator between God and those who are called so that they might be helped to recognise that call.

A vocation fully completes the humanity of those who are called. When we let ourselves be found, He who has come searching and calling reveals our rightful identity.  Samuel, in the first three calls, presents himself as the 'servant who listens'. 

However, when he recognises the voice of God and welcomes that call, he becomes a prophet and a priest.  It becomes apparent too that with great astonishment God's identity is fully manifested in the call. 

Andrew, at his first meeting with Jesus calls him '"Rabbi", but when he meets his brother Peter and invites him to meet Jesus, he says that it's the "Messiah" that has been encountered and found.

These elements highlight how every vocation is always an expression of a profound relationship between God and the one He calls. 

If the one who is called is guided by someone who recognises the God's voice and if he responds positively to the project God has for him, then that loving relationship radically transforms the way he sees God and how he is seen by God.

Most holy Mary, in whose vocation the fulfilment of humanity emerges in an unsurpassable way, guide and preserve the vocation of each one of us, so that we can 'see' and 'find' the Lord each day of our lives.

Citations of

1Sam 3,3b-10.19:   www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/9aevv0c.htm
 www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/9a3lnhc.htm  
1Co 6,13c-15a.17-20:  www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/9audf5f.htm  
 www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/9a0jeyf.htm 
Jn 1,35-42: www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/9bwd2da.htm

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