+(Intro) Today we are praying for vocations to the religious and priestly life. As we are all well aware, the greatest incentive is the authenticity of our own lives, the witness we give. So let us remember our sins and failings as we begin this Eucharist.
(After the gospel) St Paul had a clear sense of his own vocation as one entrusted with the Gospel, to be a bearer of the good news. And then he tells us of how he was determined not only to share the gospel but his very self in service of the Word. In doing so he stood out clearly as Christ’s messenger.
Paul lived what Jesus called the weightier things of the law: Judgment and mercy and fidelity. Our gospel is clear about God’s interest in what is going on deep down within in our hearts. Paul knew what it was to cleanse the inside of the cup, what it means to be gentle among his people, as gentle “as a nursing mother cares for her children.”
To live community life in this way, makes it attractive for whomever may come here so let us ask our loving Lord to transform our hearts so that they may become more and more like his own.
1 Thess 2:1-8; Matt 23:23-26