Homily for Sunday, 19 June 2022– The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

Readings of the day: Genesis 14:18-20; Psalm 110:1, 2, 3, 4; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Luke 9:11b-17

The Body and Blood of Christ, the Eucharist, the Mass: This reality we celebrate now has many names and many dimensions. And the readings we hear proclaimed from the word of God today, and the prayers of today’s Mass, each highlight particular dimensions of this celebration more than others.

The beauty, variety, and complexity of Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi, reminds me of the many different celebrations of this day I have experienced. Maybe some of us have participated in outdoor processions through the streets with the Blessed Sacrament. I have experienced this less here than in Colombia, where Corpus Christi processions are often quite elaborate.

Of course, Corpus Christi reminds me of first communions at which I have presided as a priest—the first one being the first communion of my godparents’ grandson, during my very first Mass as a priest. But I am especially remembering lately my many conversations at table with a brother Basilian priest I lived with in Rochester, New York, when I was just ordained, whom I especially loved and who was especially beloved of the whole Basilian community and people with whom he ministered. Fr. Joseph Trovato went to be with our Lord a couple of years ago. Quite often, though, when conversations with Fr. Joe would turn toward the Mass, the Eucharist, he would say, with his characteristic gentle voice, that the dimension of the Eucharist he found most difficult to live was that of sacrifice.

I was always somewhat surprised to hear Fr. Joe say this. When I think of priesthood (and not only the ordained priesthood but our common priesthood as baptized Christians), I think of one of my favourite prayers, St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Suscipe: “Take, Lord (Suscipe, Domine), all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will; all that I have and possess. You have given all to me. To you, O Lord, I return it. All is yours; dispose of it wholly according to your will. Give me your love and your grace, for this is enough for me.”

Another thing that would surprise me about Fr. Joe, when I would bring up Ignatius’ Suscipe, is how he would look me directly in the eye and, with all the sternness he could muster (which was not much), say to me, “I do not like that prayer.” When I would ask him why, he would say, “Because I find it such a difficult prayer to live out.” I think that, if Fr. Joe found Ignatius’ Suscipe difficult to live out, the rest of us are in big trouble! Instead of the Suscipe, Fr. Joe’s favourite prayer or saying was from St. Francis de Sales: “There is nothing so strong as gentleness, and nothing so gentle as real strength.”

There have been few people, let alone few priests, who have lived the sacrifice demanded of Ignatius’ Suscipe—the total surrender to God of liberty, memory, understanding, our “entire will” to our Lord who has “given all to” us—as well as Fr. Joe Trovato. He certainly lived the radical (and, dare I say, more than humble, but self-sacrificial) gentleness to which St. Francis de Sales’ saying invites us.

The self-sacrificial gentleness of Ignatius’ Suscipe, of St. Francis de Sales, or of Fr. Joe Trovato is a Eucharistic self-sacrificial gentleness. It is a gentleness and a self-sacrifice to which the Lord in his grace invites us. There are many moments in our Mass, every time we celebrate it, when we remember Jesus’ sacrifice of his entire being, his having “given all to” us, for our salvation.

Maybe the most important moment during our Eucharistic celebration when we remember Jesus’ self-sacrifice for us is when we pray the same words Jesus did at the Last Supper, on the night before he gave himself up to death for us: “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body, which will be given up for you… Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my blood.”

The earliest disciples of Jesus remembered Jesus’ sacrifice, his giving of his body and blood for us, at the Last Supper and on the cross, in Jesus’ own words. “This is my Body that is for you… This cup is the new covenant in my Blood. Do this… in remembrance of me.” St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, which we hear today, is an early witness to this way in which Jesus’ first disciples remembered his sacrifice for us and its meaning for our salvation.

The Eucharistic dimension of sacrifice is closely connected to its dimension of memorial: Of memory not of artifacts in museums, but memory that projects Jesus’ giving of self to us into our history, so that it becomes always and everywhere present. And it becomes a self-sacrifice we can and are called to imitate: “Do this in memory of me… You have given all to me. To you, O Lord, I return it.”

But how, through remembrance of Jesus, our greatest act of self-sacrifice, or otherwise, could we ever return such a sublime gift as Jesus has given to us: His Body and Blood; his life, on the cross? At Mass, in our Eucharistic prayers, we use a lot of language of sacrifice and of returning to God some element of God’s sacrifice of himself in Jesus for us. During our table conversations, Fr. Joe often liked to point out this language of sacrifice in our Eucharistic prayers that, like Ignatius’ Suscipe (so he would say) he had difficulty living out, much less understanding. Sometimes our Eucharistic language of sacrifice can be bold. We pray, for instance: “May this sacrifice of our reconciliation… advance the peace and salvation of all the world.” We still await with Christian hope, sisters and brothers, the fulfillment of this “peace and salvation” for which we pray every time we celebrate our Eucharist.

Sometimes our language of sacrifice in our Eucharistic prayers can be difficult to understand: “Look, we pray, upon the oblation of your Church.” What is an oblation? It is another word for sacrifice; for offering back to God what God has given us in this very celebration: The sacramental yet very real presence of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so, we pray, “We offer you in thanksgiving this holy and living sacrifice… May [Christ] make of us an eternal offering to you, so that we may obtain an inheritance with your elect.”

But can we ever offer God back what he has offered us; what God continues to offer us through our Eucharist: His very self, for our salvation? Can we ever match the sacrifice of self that Jesus offered for us on the cross? Without God’s grace, the short answer to these questions would be no. I have no doubt that Fr. Joe Trovato was on to something when he would say he had difficulty living out the meaning of the Lord’s sacrifice for us; the meaning of St. Ignatius’ Suscipe: “You have given all to me. To you, O Lord, I return it.”

I will go a step beyond Fr. Joe here: Without God’s grace, to remember and to live in imitation of Jesus’ sacrifice for us is impossible. Yet, should we ever despair of God’s grace, we need only to remember the abundance of that grace of which Jesus’ greatest miracles were a sign. We hear from Luke’s Gospel today how Jesus multiplied the “five loaves and two fish,” so that there was enough to feed “about five thousand men,” and women and children in addition to them, with food still left over.

In this way, God will multiply even our smallest efforts at imitating God’s self-gift to us in our lives. God will multiply even our smallest efforts at kindness; at the kind of hospitality and blessing Melchizedek, the priest-king, shows Abram, and Abram returns to Melchizedek, in our reading from Genesis today.

God’s abundant grace will multiply our “I find this difficult to live out” into more than enough to nourish the world. In God’s grace, all the dimensions of this great celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ come together: Sacrifice, memorial, hospitality. God’s grace enables us to celebrate here now, and then to bring God’s real, nourishing presence to our world by all we say and do. God’s grace “is enough for us,” so that all we have received, we now return; we now give to a world hungering and thirsting for peace and salvation.

Homily for Sunday, 19 December 2020– Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year C

Readings of the day: Micah 5: 1-4a; Psalm 80: 2-3, 15-16, 18-19; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-45

The “rags-to-riches” motif is one of the more common ones in storytelling, because it resonates, does it not, with our heartfelt human inclination to encourage the heroic underdog to overcome the odds against her or him. In reality, these kinds of scenarios may be less common than we would like them to be: So many poor, maligned, marginalized people remain poor, maligned, and marginalized in our world. But occasionally some people overcome all odds against them, or at least they become the heroes of their stories or of pivotal moments in the greater history of our world or a society, or they keep other people from suffering the same marginalization as they have.

From the word of God, we hear today from the prophet Micah. Maybe the most memorable verse from Micah, at least for me, is his admonition about what the LORD requires of his people: “To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” I especially love this verse from Micah because it does not only exhort the people of Israel (and us) to act with justice, kindness, and humility. The Hebrew words Micah uses, which are notoriously difficult to translate but that we hear in English as justice, kindness (or mercy), and walking humbly, apply attributes of God to the people: Do justice, because God is just; love kindness, because God is kind and merciful; and, maybe most strikingly, “walk humbly with your God,” who walks humbly with us.

This verse, Micah 6:8, portrays God himself, and God’s prophet Micah, as by nature just, kind, merciful, and humble. And Micah is known as just that: A just, kind, merciful and, above all, humble prophet. Micah lived and preached at the same time in Israel’s history as much more famous prophets than he: Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah. These other prophets were from Jerusalem (in Isaiah’s case) or small towns. Micah, though, was from the countryside, between the downslope of the Judean mountains away from Jerusalem and the Mediterranean Sea coast. Other prophets preached to kings; Micah was the prophet of the common people.

And the part of the Book of Micah we hear today, Biblical experts say, may not have been his but an interpolation or insertion of a text from another, even more anonymous prophet. How is that for a humble situation, that of the prophet Micah? And his message today is one of the humble becoming great. Not from big, showy Jerusalem, with its mountains and its temple, but from little Bethlehem, the “house of bread” in Judah, the economic “have not” region of Israel in Micah’s time, would arise a great king in David’s line: “One who is to rule Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.”

We Christians have traditionally understood this prophecy of a great ruler in David’s line from little Bethlehem in light of the earthly life of Jesus Christ. And that is fine. Our Gospels often connect Jesus with the Davidic line of kings of Israel. But Micah looks back into Israel’s history in order to look forward, too. Micah’s references to David today are clear: David was a native of Bethlehem. He was a humble, obscure shepherd before slaying the giant Goliath and inheriting the throne of Israel. The ruler of Micah’s prophecy, like King David, will be a shepherd from Bethlehem. And, Micah says, while the king of whom he prophesies rules, he will return to be on a level ground with the common people; he will rule precisely by shepherding: “And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God.”

The Psalmist carries on Micah’s shepherd-king contrast: “Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth.” Here God himself is depicted as a shepherd and, at the same time, a heavenly and mighty ruler. God is mighty in his humility, and humble in his might. If we are to be anything like God, we are called, as Micah once said, to “walk humbly with [our] God,” because our mighty God walks humbly with us.

Our mighty God was born, humbly, to us in Bethlehem yet again, in the person of Jesus. This Jesus, shepherd-ruler of the universe, was born into a stable; a manger where animals eat, in Bethlehem, as a vulnerable human baby. We are less than one week from celebrating the birth of this shepherd-king who has saved this universe, sisters and brothers, by choosing to walk humbly with us and inviting us to walk humbly, justly, kindly with him and among one another.

If God’s humility is shown to us in the Nativity of Jesus, it is shown that much more in Jesus’ giving of his life for us on the cross. When I was in my first parish as a priest, St. Kateri Tekakwitha in Rochester, New York, one of my favourite liturgical elements during this time of Advent and Christmas was the conclusion of the Prayer of the Faithful (or General Intercessions), which reminded us how “the wood of the cradle” was fundamentally connected to “the wood of the cross.” May we always remember this connection, sisters and brothers.

The letter to the Hebrews today reminds us, in a way, of this same connection of the wood of the cradle and the wood of the cross; of Bethlehem to Calvary. Hebrews draws on the Psalms and prophetic writings, especially those of Isaiah, and places them on the tongue of Jesus: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me… See, God, I have come to do your will.”

I admit that Hebrews’ reflection on sacrifice is challenging to me personally: Not only that Jesus made the ultimate, saving sacrifice of himself on the cross, but that doing God’s will, in an ambiguous sense in our reading, somehow replaces or “abolishes” the need and the value of religious acts of sacrifice. Even our Eucharistic celebration is often called “the holy sacrifice of the Mass.” I do not think, then, that Hebrews is saying that what we celebrate here is worthless. By no means! But any religious ritual, including our Eucharist, can only have meaning if it is God’s will for us. And Jesus, at his Last Supper, commanded his disciples, “Take and eat… Take this cup and drink from it… Do this in memory of me.” This is how we know that our Eucharist is God’s will for us. In our Eucharist, we celebrate a historical action by Jesus, his sacrifice of himself through his passion and death on the cross, that is finished and past. We make it perpetually real and present through our memorial of Jesus’ passion and death, Jesus’ once-forever sacrifice, but that sacrifice can never be replicated or outdone.

This is the surpassing humility of God that we remember and celebrate here: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired… See, God, I have come to do your will… Do this in memory of me.” It is the surpassing humility of God that impelled the preaching of Micah about a shepherd-king to arise from little, insignificant Bethlehem; a shepherd-king who would save Israel; humankind; the entire created universe. It is the surpassing humility of God that impelled the song of the Psalmist that called upon the LORD: “Stir up your might, and come to save us.”

And it was the surpassing humility of God, whom the Virgin Mary carried within her in human form, as she “went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country” to visit and care for Elizabeth, also pregnant, with John the Baptist. Luke’s Gospel gives us many sublimely beautiful words and images today. Luke gives us Elizabeth’s greeting, on which part of our “Hail, Mary” is based: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Elizabeth is described as “filled with the Holy Spirit,” as Mary was from the moment she conceived Jesus at the Annunciation. John leaps with joy in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary greets them.

But maybe the most moving moment of today’s Gospel for me is in Elizabeth’s question to Mary: “And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me”? Elizabeth was not lacking in humility, by any means. But this event, the Visitation and these last days of preparation for the Nativity of the Lord, are greater than Elizabeth. These events are greater than us. They are greater than a simple lowliness-to-riches scenario. We could ask the same question as Elizabeth does: “Why has this happened to us, that our Lord has chosen to be born as one of us, to come to us through the Virgin Mary, through a humble manger in Bethlehem”?

This event is all about God’s humility: That not only would God send his Son into our world in this way to save us, but that now God regards us, little and insignificant though we are (if we think about it), as fit to do his will: To feed his flock (that is, one another); to act with justice and kind mercy; to “walk humbly with our God,” if only because God has chosen to walk humbly as one of us.

Homily for Sunday, 4 September 2016

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Wisdom 9:13-18b; Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14-17; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33

This homily was given at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish, Rochester, NY.

What would we be willing to give up in order to be disciples of Jesus Christ? What should we reasonably expect being disciples of Jesus Christ to cost us?

We might imagine ourselves among the “great crowds” that Luke says “were traveling with Jesus.” At one point, where today’s Gospel reading begins, Jesus stops and speaks to these “great crowds” about the demands of being his disciple; of continuing to follow him. But here Jesus does not speak in terms of what is required to be among his disciples: Do this, go there, take this with you… No, Jesus speaks in terms of “non-starters”; of what any would-be disciple of his would need to give up in order to follow him. First, Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Even if we understand “hating” not as an intense dislike toward another person or thing but, in its rightful sense in Jesus’ time, to mean “to turn away or detach one’s self from” somebody or something, this saying of Jesus still sounds harsh. Who here would be willing to leave behind all our loved ones; our friends; our family immediately and forever, even if doing so were the only way to be a true disciple of Jesus? Who here would not hesitate to give up life itself to follow Jesus? 

I suspect that to leave behind the people dearest to us immediately and forever would be difficult for most if not all of us. And, as if giving up our loved ones and even our lives is not enough to be Jesus’ disciples, Jesus says that anybody who “does not carry his own cross and come after [him] cannot be [his] disciple.” Not only does Jesus expect us, in order to be his disciple, to leave behind the people dearest to us and even to give up our lives, but Jesus expects us to be ready to lay down our lives in the most shameful way possible. It is true that Jesus would go on to die this kind of shameful death on a cross, yet even Jesus, God in human flesh, would pray to our Father to “take this cup from” him,  “but not my will but yours be done,” so horrifying was the suffering he would undergo for us. Could Jesus reasonably expect the cross to be a minimal requirement to be his disciple?

Can we not imagine now the “great crowds… traveling with Jesus” beginning to thin?  After all, Jesus’ demands of any would-be disciple go against his earlier teachings on the dignity and value of human relationships;  of life itself.  And yet Jesus continues to speak:  “Anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

Already Jesus seems to be softening his message, if only slightly. If we are unable to leave behind the people we love most; if we are not quite ready to give up our lives for Jesus, then at least some of us may be able to part with our material possessions. Then again (I speak for myself and probably everybody who belongs to a religious order), I have not yet been able to detach myself from many material possessions, and I am under a vow of poverty.

And so what does Jesus truly expect of anybody who would be his disciple? Are our efforts to be Jesus’ disciples, those of us who attend Mass faithfully every week if not more often; whose worship so often inspires works of great love, justice, and mercy toward those most in need in our communities, not enough? Fortunately, in among Jesus’ three sayings about those who have not been able to leave behind loved ones,  are unprepared to give up their lives, or are unable to part with their possessions, and so “cannot be” his disciples, Jesus offers us two images of the process of weighing the cost of our discipleship. Jesus offers us the images of the builder of a tower and of the king who wages a battle against another king who has a much larger army.

Both of these images invite us to ponder prayerfully the important questions about our own discipleship of Jesus Christ: What is the cost of being a disciple of Jesus? What cost are we willing to pay? Our process of weighing these great questions is lifelong. And I propose that there are at least three kinds of answers to these questions. There is the premature, individualistic, and foolishly optimistic answer, which usually.  amounts to no more than mistaken pride: “Whatever the cost, I am willing to pay it. I am fully ready to be a disciple of Jesus. I am even ready to die for my faith in Jesus Christ, here and now. No matter the cost of building the tower or going into battle outnumbered, I will start building that tower now; march into battle now.” Besides exceedingly few Christians, let me suggest that most who, in this way, respond without weighing and praying over the cost of their discipleship are setting themselves up to fail.

There is also the pessimistic and even cynical answer: “The cost of discipleship is too high. There is far too much evil in the world for one person to conquer alone. The tower is too expensive to build; the opposing king with twice as many troops too powerful. Why even try”? This answer, I believe, is just as individualistic, proud, and foolish as the excessively optimistic approach to discipleship.

And then there is the patient, prayerful,  trusting answer to what the cost of discipleship is and how much we are willing to pay. This response requires of us the most time, the most effort, and the most prayer. This kind of answer places not ourselves but God first. Discipleship will mean putting God ahead of family, friends, and loved ones, and even my own life. It will mean service; intentional works of justice, love, and mercy. Discipleship will mean building unity; community; communion. Discipleship will mean risking misunderstanding and even ridicule for speaking and acting as Christ would speak and act. But God will make up for what we lack in strength; in courage; in knowledge; in wisdom. Not we, but God, will overcome the evil in our world, because by Christ’s death and resurrection God has already overcome it.

The same calling in our Gospel to patient, prayerful weighing and acceptance of the costs of discipleship with trust in God is present in the Book of Wisdom and in St. Paul’s letter to Philemon, from which we hear today. Wisdom speaks of the limitation of the human mind and body. Without God and God’s spirit within us, we are nothing. But with God’s spirit we become everything; the “paths of those on earth [are] made straight.”

And St. Paul gently calls the slave owner Philemon to accept his runaway slave Onesimus back willingly, “no longer as a slave, but [as] a brother.” St. Paul is aware of the cost to Philemon should he take Onesimus back as a free “brother” in Christ. St. Paul urges Philemon no longer to be a slave to the law that would have allowed him to punish Onesimus severely as a runaway, but to free himself to love; to free himself for following after Christ; for discipleship. And so St. Paul’s letter to Philemon offers us yet another image of weighing and acceptance of the cost of discipleship, trusting more and more fully in God.

Only by placing God first in this way is it possible to ponder rightly and to accept the cost of discipleship, slowly, patiently, and prayerfully, little by little over the course of our lifetimes.  Only then is it possible to give ourselves ever more fully to God; to Christ in loving service to one another. Only then are we made truly free, sisters and brothers and true disciples of Jesus Christ.

Homily for Saturday, 11 July 2015– Memorial of St. Benedict

Saturday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Proverbs 2:1-9; Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9, 10-11; Matthew 19:27-29

“Listen carefully, my child…” These are the first words of the Rule of St. Benedict, whose feast we celebrate today. Who is St. Benedict, and to whom does he ask us to “listen”? What is the goal of our listening?

St. Benedict founded the famous Benedictine monastery in Monte Cassino, in Italy, in the early 500s. He is often called the “father of Western monasticism”; the father of life in religious community as the Church has known it for most of its history. And so as a Basilian religious I have a special fondness for St. Benedict.

“Listen,” St. Benedict begins his Rule, which has influenced the rules of many religious communities including our own Basilian Way of Life. We might say, “Be obedient,” since words like “obedience” are from the same Latin root as to listen. And the Rule of St. Benedict continues: “Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving Father’s advice, so that by the labor of obedience you may return to him.”

“Listen”; be obedient. These words are for more than religious under vows. They are an invitation to all of us. To whom, then, are we to “listen”; to direct our “labor of obedience”? I believe we are all called not only to listen to the advice of wise people; children to their parents and grandparents; religious to their superiors (although I am sure Fr. Paul1 appreciates this), but first to God. And what is the goal of our listening; our obedience to God? Our goal (all of us, not only vowed religious!) is eternal life; that we “may return to” God.

This is Jesus’ promise to all of us who listen for God; who discern; who “receive willingly and carry out effectively” the will of God in our lives: “Eternal life.” But I have a slight issue with our Gospel reading today, from Matthew. Jesus reminds us that careful listening; obedience is a sacrifice. He hears Peter’s objection: “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us”? And we hear Jesus’ reply to Peter: “Everyone who has given up” material belongings; family “for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life.” My issue is not that following Jesus or particularly religious life does not involve sacrifice. It does. But every vocation involves some sacrifice. Might many if not most of us have had in the back of our minds the concern of Peter when discerning our vocation: “What will there be for us”?

My slight issue is that in my experience vowed religious life, poverty, chastity, and obedience, has been much more a joy than a sacrifice. But if we have discerned our vocation from God; God’s will for our lives well, I think it is well for us to enjoy living our vocation: A loving marriage; single life or priesthood given in service to God and our Church; the great community life we Basilians of St. Kateri; that many religious enjoy… These are signs to us now of our ultimate goal and joy, “eternal life,” which God promises to all who listen to and for God; who “receive willingly and carry out effectively” the “labor of obedience”; the vocation to which God has called us.
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1 Fr. Paul English, CSB, is Pastor and Rector of the Basilian Fathers of St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish, Irondequoit, NY.

Homily for Tuesday, 19 May 2015– Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 20:17-27; Psalm 68:10-11, 20-21; John 17:1-11a

How do we know we are in the right vocation? I am asked questions like this regularly, especially around important anniversaries like those of ordination to the priesthood or profession of religious vows: “When did you know for sure you were being called to be a priest”?

I would like to ask all of us the same questions: When did you know you were living the vocation to which God called you, if you have discerned this yet? How do you know you are in the “right” vocation?

Many will say to me how much of a sacrifice the priesthood must be, but is there not as much or more sacrifice in living out the vocation to marriage, in raising children, in living consecrated single life, or in taking religious vows as a sister or brother? And yet there is great joy in all these vocations if this is the vocation to which God is calling or has called you. There is great joy for me; greater than any sacrifice, to being a priest in a religious community.

So again, how might we discern the vocation to which God is calling us? In our readings today, we hear that Jesus’ first Apostles made great sacrifices to follow our Lord. In Acts, St. Paul recognizes that he is at the end of his life; that he may be “going to Jerusalem for the last time, to face death for his faith. St. Paul is also saddened for the people he has served so faithfully; those who will probably never see him again.

And yet Paul is convinced that he has lived the right vocation all along. How does Paul know this? He knows that he is in the vocation to which God has called him because his ministry has never been about him, but the people he serves. Paul says in his parting words to the Christians at Ephesus: “I did not shrink from proclaiming to you the entire plan of God.”

Jesus also knows that he has followed after “the entire plan of God”; he is convinced of the vocation to which God the Father has called him. Jesus prays in John’s Gospel, as he is about to die for us on the cross, “Give glory to your Son… so that your Son may give eternal life to all you gave him.” Jesus’ vocation has never been about him, but so that all whom God has called him; his disciples; we might have “eternal life.”

And Jesus asks, “What is eternal life”? What is the very purpose for God having sent us his Son, Jesus Christ? “This is eternal life,” Jesus says, “That they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.”

This is “eternal life.” This is why God has sent us Jesus Christ, God’s only Son. This is the very mark of our having discerned the vocation to which God has called us. This is how we know we are living the vocation to which God has called us: When our vocation is bringing us closer to God; when our vocation is leading us closer to eternal life; to knowing God; to this ultimate vocation to which we are all called.