October 2003

                                             

My Vocation, My Mission

 

     When it comes right down to it, there is something we all have in common, whether we are young or old, consider ourselves important, or not so important, whether we spend our day in the whirlwind of activity, or just sit around wondering.   We all desire to discover our mission in life.

 

     We know that St. Thérèse of Lisieux wrestled with this issue.   After much anguish and struggle, she found that she would be love in the heart of the Church, and love in the heart of the world.   With this discovery, she was ecstatically happy.

 

     There is something else, though, that Thérèse gave to this world.   She taught us how to receive.   In her writings, she points out that prayer does not consist in doing much but in receiving much.  

 

     We know that God is continually giving to us from the first moment that we awake, and even while we are sleeping.   When one ponders this gracious activity on the part of God, it would seem to be a sad commentary on life if there were no one available to receive what God is giving.   If one further reflects on this, one soon realizes that receiving is also apostolic, that is, a service for others.   How else do the gifts of God come into this world?   Furthermore, with Thérèse, we receive with a deep sense of emptiness, itself a tremendous act of self-giving love that leads to union with God, and union with all of life.

 

     On days when prayer, or life, are difficult, or we feel out of touch with our deeper selves, it can be a great help, and a solace, to ponder what God, through the intercession of Thérèse, might be wanting to give us, at any particular moment.   We all long for that traditional rose, the rose that appears in so many different forms.

Sister Mary Jo Loebig, O.C.D.