Instruments of peace

My sheep listen to my voice

Today, the Church celebrates the World Day of Prayer for Vocations.  This practice of designating one day a year for the dedicated prayer of all the faithful, asking the Lord to inspire within our hearts a deep desire to follow in his footsteps, to serve his people, was begun by Pope Paul VI during the Second Vatican Council.  In a radio broadcast which he spoke in April 1964, Pope Paul explained that the number of priests is an indicator of the vitality of faith and love present in individual parishes and diocesan communities, and an indicator of the moral health of Christian families (cf Message for World Day of Prayer for Vocations, 2013) .

These words, spoken almost five decades ago still hold true today, but they speak with startling frankness to our world, challenging us to ask some serious questions of ourselves.  When I entered the seminary, twenty-five years ago, there were twenty-five seminarians studying for the Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie.  Of that number, nine of us were ordained, and today there is one seminarian studying for this diocese!  In light of Pope Paul’s words, I wonder if the fact that there are so few vocations these days (in this part of the world) is truly an indication of a problem that we need to tend to.

On Monday of this week, we watched in horror as two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.  On Wednesday, there were reports of an earthquake near the Iran-Pakistan border, and on Thursday, there was a fire and an explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas.  There is such suffering in our world!  There are so many questions that go unanswered, and these are only the stories we have heard about.

At all moments of our lives, but especially when catastrophes strike, people want answers.  Some of the answers can eventually be provided through investigative reporting, but at a deeper level, other questions still linger – why is there such devastating suffering in our world?  How can we begin to understand, much less make sense of it all?  For the answers to these questions, and questions like them, we must look to faith, for faith is the source of our hope, and we all need to find a reason to hope, especially when there are questions that surpass our capacity for comprehension.

The proof of our hope is right in front of our eyes.  The liturgical season of Easter is a special time of grace.  The Risen Christ calls out to the hearts of all those who will listen: I am the good shepherd.  My sheep hear my voice.  I know them, and they follow me.  I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.  Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, calls out to the hearts of those who are suffering in these days: to those who are in hospitals recovering from shrapnel wounds, to those who are struggling to make sense of the fact that family members and loved ones were alive one moment and not the next.  Jesus calls out to all of us and reassures us that he has already overcome death, and in his Resurrection, we all have the promise of everlasting life.  This was the vision that John spoke about in the second reading today, but in order for us to believe that human suffering is not the end of the story, we must listen deeply and attentively for his voice, the voice that calls to us.  Since the Risen Jesus no longer has an earthly voice, others must speak his truth to us with words that we can hear and understand.

Before he ascended to heaven, Jesus confided the task of speaking words of comfort and truth to the apostles.  Strengthened by their faith, and by their personal encounter with the Risen Christ, they spoke with convincing arguments about the fact that Jesus had risen from the dead.  Since that day, Jesus has continued to call others to follow in his footsteps: to speak words of comfort to the sorrowful, to proclaim hope to a world that so often might be tempted to despair, to listen with compassion as we try to understand, to look with love on a world that needs only to know that love is still possible, in short – to urge God’s people to continue living in his grace, so that we might not lose the ability to listen for His voice.

 

Bearing witness to Christ in today’s world is not easy.  Even in the days of Paul and Barnabas, there were many who gathered to hear the word of the Lord, but not everyone.  The Jewish officials reacted to this word with jealousy, and their hardness of heart made it impossible for them to come to believe.  There will always be some who will not want to believe, but for the sake of those who do, Christ needs you and me to be instruments of his peace, to sow love in the face of hatred, to model forgiveness whenever we encounter injury, to choose faith even in the face of doubt, to be instruments of hope in times when others would rather despair, to be bearers of his light especially in places where there is deepest darkness, and to be heralds of his joy, a joy which can dispel the most profound human sadness.