Vigils Reading – Office for Vocations

A reading from

HENRI LE SAUX

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Vocations are as diverse as temperaments are diverse. More simply, we

could say that certain temperaments are more predisposed to the solitary life

and others to life in the world. Among the great vocations there are the Sages

and there are the Prophets. There are those whom the Holy Spirit compels to

withdraw within themselves and to meditate night and day on the Law of the

Lord, like the inspired scribes of Israel and those first hermits of Mount Carmel.

And there are those who are called to proclaim the Word of God to others.

In the world we must have people who testify that God is beyond all

symbol, people who witness to the absolute. We must have people who, in the

name of the world, place the world at the center and who live in this center

where God dwells. We needed some of them even in the Church to ward off

pragmatism which constantly threatens it, even under the finest outward

appearances of pastoral and missionary zeal. We need people who take literally

the call of Christ to poverty, to freedom from concern about the morrow, to

indifference to all but the one essential thing. We are so made that it is only in

fellowship, in collaboration and in one person complementing the qualities of

another, that we are completely capable of putting the Gospel into effect.

Indeed, alongside the people who witness to the immutability of God,

there must be people who witness to his activity. Alongside the people who

witness to his transcendence, there must be those who witness to his

immanence.

There must be people who enter with all their abilities into the Divine plan

for the development of the universe and for the growth of the mystical body of

the Lord. God did not intend everything in universe to be made all at once. He

chose to have his creation – and above all, humanity – working with him. It is

through secondary causes that God leads the world to find its consummation.

At the human level, this collaboration becomes freedom. At the same time it

becomes understanding.

This means that we are called to use our intelligence to discover how best

to improve the conditions of human life. We are responsible and intelligent

collaborators in the work of creating and of ruling the world. We cannot refuse

to take part in it without refusing God himself. That is inscribed in our human

birth and in the condition of communion (or koinonia), which is the condition

of our existence, human as well as Christian.

However, not everyone is called to collaborate in the same way. There are

kings and there are farmers; there are doctors and there are merchants. The

important point is that each one, wherever God has placed them, should always

work for the good of all. Selfishness is not only the act of someone who may

withdraw to the desert out of laziness or cowardice. It is no less present in the

one who has chosen to live in the world, but who uses the world for their own

exclusive gain. Every vocation is a service, both in the church and in the world.

Each of us is at the service of each other.