Vigils Reading – Office for Vocations

THE WORK OF TWO WILLS

From “No Man is an Island” by Thomas Merton

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Each of us has some kind of vocation. We are all called by God to share in

His life and His Kingdom. Each one of us is called to a special place in the

Kingdom. If we find that place, we will be happy. If we do not find it, we can

never be completely happy. For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary:

to fulfill our own destiny, according to God’s will, to be what God wants us to be.

In any case, our destiny is the work of two wills, not one. It is hopeless to

try to settle the problem of vocation outside the context of friendship and love.

God loves us more than we love ourselves, as if we were Himself. He loves us

moreover with our own wills, with our own decisions.

In planning the course of our lives, we must remember the importance

and the dignity of our own freedom. For our freedom is a gift God has given us in

order that He may be able to love us more perfectly, and be loved by us more

perfectly in return. Perfectly confident of being loved by God, the soul that loves

Him dares to make a choice of its own, knowing that its own choice will be

acceptable to love.

Every person has a vocation to be someone: but he must understand

clearly that in order to fulfill this vocation he can only be one person: himself.

We must be ourselves by being Christ. A person only lives fully when he knows

truth and loves what he knows and acts according to what he loves. In this way

he becomes the truth that he loves. So we “become” Christ by knowledge and by

love.

In order to be what we are meant to be, we must know Christ, and love

Him, and do what He did. Our destiny is in our own hands since God has placed

it there, and given us the grace to do the impossible. It remains for us to take up

courageously and without hesitation the work He has given us, which is the task

of living our own life as Christ would live it in us.

Our vocation is precisely this: to bear witness to the truth of Christ by

laying down our lives at His bidding. Our Father in heaven has called us each to

the place in which He can best satisfy His infinite desire to do us good. His

inscrutable choice of the office or state of life or particular function to which we

are called is not to be judged by the intrinsic merit of those offices and states but

only by the hidden love of God. My vocation is the one I love, not because I think

it is the best vocation in the Church, but because it is the one God has willed for

me. My vocation is at once my will and His. He chose it for me when His

inscrutable knowledge of my choice moved me to choose it for myself.

6 No Man is An Island – Thomas Merton – Harcourt Brace Publishers – New York – 1955 – pg 131f.13