2023-04-27 01:30:00
April 26, 2023 / 6:30 p.m.
The Vatican Press Office today published the full text of Pope Francis’ message for the 60th World Day of Prayer for Vocations, to be celebrated around the world on Sunday, April 30.
Under the theme “Vocation: grace and mission”, the Holy Father expressed his desire that “the initiatives of prayer and animation linked to this Day can strengthen the vocational sensitivity in our families, in the parish communities and in those of consecrated life, in associations and ecclesial movements”.
Below is the full text of Pope Francis’ message for the World Day of Prayer for Vocations 2023:
Vocation: grace and mission
Dear brothers and sisters, dear young people:
It is the sixtieth time that the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, instituted by Saint Paul VI in 1964, during the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, has been celebrated. This providential initiative aims to help the members of the People of God, personally and in community, to respond to the call and mission that the Lord entrusts to each one in today’s world, with their wounds and their hopes, their challenges and his conquests.
This year I propose that you reflect and pray guided by the theme “Vocation: grace and mission”. It is a precious occasion to rediscover with astonishment that the Lord’s call is grace, it is a free gift and, at the same time, it is a commitment to set out, to go out, to bring the Gospel. We are called to a faith that bears witness, that strengthens and narrows in it the link between the life of grace —through the sacraments and ecclesial communion— and the apostolate in the world. Animated by the Spirit, the Christian allows himself to be challenged by the existential peripheries and is sensitive to human dramas, always keeping in mind that the mission is the work of God and we do not carry it out alone, but in ecclesial communion, together with everyone. the brothers and sisters, led by the shepherds. Because this is, always and forever, God’s dream: that we live with Him in communion of love.
“Chosen Before the Creation of the World”
The Apostle Paul opens before us a marvelous horizon: in Christ, God the Father «has chosen us in him, before the creation of the world, so that we would be holy and blameless in his presence, for love. He predestined us to be his adoptive children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will »(Ef 1,4-5). They are words that allow us to see life in its full sense. God “conceives” us in his image and likeness, and wants us to be his children: we have been created by Love, for love and with love, and we are made to love.
Throughout our lives, this call, inscribed in the most intimate of our being and bearer of the secret of happiness, reaches us, through the action of the Holy Spirit, in an ever new way, enlightens our intelligence, infuses the will with vigor. , fills us with wonder and makes our hearts burn. Sometimes it even breaks in unexpectedly. It was like that for me on September 21, 1953 when, while I was going to the annual student party, I felt the urge to go into the church and confess. That day changed my life and left a mark that lasts until today. But the divine call to the gift of self makes its way little by little, through a path: when we find ourselves in a situation of poverty, in a moment of prayer, thanks to a clear testimony of the Gospel, to a reading that opens our mind, when we hear the Word of God and feel it addressed directly to us, in the counsel of a brother or sister who accompanies us, in a time of illness or mourning. God’s fantasy to call us is infinite.
And your initiative and your free gift await our response. Vocation is “the framework between divine choice and human freedom”, a dynamic and stimulating relationship that has God and the human heart as interlocutors. Thus, the gift of vocation is like a divine seed that sprouts in the soil of our lives, opens us to God and opens us to others in order to share with them the treasure found. This is the fundamental structure of what we understand by vocation: God calls by loving and we, grateful, respond by loving. We discover ourselves sons and daughters loved by the same Father and we recognize ourselves as brothers and sisters among ourselves. Saint Teresa of the Child Jesus, when she finally “saw” this reality clearly, she exclaimed: «I have finally found my vocation! Love is my vocation…! Yes, I have found my place in the Church […]. In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be love».
“I am a mission on this earth”
God’s call, as we said, includes sending. There is no vocation without mission. And there is no happiness and full realization of oneself without offering others the new life that we have found. The divine call to love is an experience that cannot be silenced. “Woe to me if I did not preach the Gospel!” (1 Co 9:16), exclaimed Saint Paul. And the First Letter of Saint John begins like this: “What we have heard, seen, contemplated and touched – that is, the Word made flesh – we also announce to you so that our joy may be full” (cf. 1,1- 4).
Five years ago, in the apostolic exhortation Rejoice and rejoice, I addressed each baptized man and woman with these words: “You too need to conceive the whole of your life as a mission” (n. 23). Yes, because each one of us, without excluding anyone, can say: “I am a mission on this earth, and that is why I am in this world” (Exhort. ap. the gospel of joy273).
The common mission of all Christians is to witness with joy, in every situation, with attitudes and words, what we experience being with Jesus and in his community, which is the Church. And it translates into works of material and spiritual mercy, in a lifestyle open to all and meek, capable of closeness, compassion and tenderness, which goes against the current with respect to the culture of discarding and indifference. Becoming a neighbor, like the Good Samaritan (cf. Lc 10,25-37), allows us to understand the essentials of the Christian vocation: to imitate Jesus Christ, who came to serve and not to be served (cf. Mc 10,45).
This missionary action is not born simply from our abilities, intentions or projects, nor from our will, nor from our effort to practice the virtues, but from a profound experience with Jesus. Only then can we become witnesses of Someone, of a Life, and this makes us “apostles”. Then we recognize ourselves as marked “by fire for this mission to illuminate, bless, revive, lift, heal, liberate” (Exhort. ap. the gospel of joy273).
Evangelical icon of this experience are the two disciples of Emmaus. After the encounter with the risen Jesus, they confide in each other: “Did not our hearts burn as he spoke to us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?” (Lc 24,32). In them we can see what it means to have “fervent hearts and feet on the way.” This is also what I wish for the next World Youth Day in Lisbon, which I look forward to with joy and which has as its motto: “Mary got up and left without delay” (Lc 1.39). May each one feel called to get up and go without delay, with a fervent heart!
called together: summoned
The evangelist Mark narrates the moment when Jesus called twelve disciples, each with his own name. He instituted them to be with Him and to send them out to preach, cure diseases, and cast out demons (cf. Mc 3,13-15). Thus the Lord lays the foundations of his new Community. The Twelve were people of different social backgrounds and trades, and did not belong to the most important categories. The Gospels also tell us of other calls, such as that of the seventy-two disciples that Jesus sends out two by two (cf. Lc 10,1).
The Church is precisely Ecclesiaa Greek term meaning: assembly of called personsto form the community of missionary disciples of Jesus Christ, committed to living his love among them (cf. Jn 13.34; 15,12) and spread it among all, so that the Kingdom of God may come.
In the Church, we are all servants and servants, according to different vocations, charisms and ministries. The vocation to the gift of self in love, common to all, unfolds and becomes concrete in the life of lay Christians, men and women, committed to building the family as a small domestic church and to renew the various environments of society with the leaven of the Gospel; in the testimony of consecrated men and women, totally delivered to God by brothers and sisters as a prophecy of the Kingdom of God; in ordained ministers (deacons, priests, bishops) placed at the service of the Word, of prayer and of the communion of the holy people of God. Only in relation to all the others does each specific vocation in the Church reveal itself fully with its own truth and richness. In this sense, the Church is a vocational symphony, with all the united and diverse vocations, in harmony and at the same time “going out” to irradiate in the world the new life of the Kingdom of God.
Grace and mission: gift and task
Dear brothers and sisters, vocation is a gift and a task, a source of new life and true joy. That the initiatives of prayer and animation linked to this Day can strengthen the vocational sensitivity in our families, in the parish communities and in those of consecrated life, in associations and in ecclesial movements. May the Spirit of the Risen Lord take away our apathy and grant us sympathy and empathy, so that we can live each day regenerated as children of God of Love (cf. 1 Jn 4,16) and we too be fruitful in love; capable of bringing life everywhere, especially where there is exclusion and exploitation, destitution and death. So that the spaces of love expand and God reigns more and more in this world.
May the prayer composed by Saint Paul VI accompany us on this path for the first World Vocation Day, April 11, 1964:
«Jesus, divine Shepherd of souls, who called the Apostles to make them fishers of men, attract to You also the ardent and generous souls of the young, to make them your followers and your ministers; let them participate in your thirst for universal redemption […]discover the horizons of the whole world […]; so that, responding to your call, they may prolong your mission here on earth, build up your mystical Body, the Church, and be “salt of the earth and light of the world” (Mt 5,13)».
May the Virgin Mary accompany you and protect you. With my blessing.
Rome, Saint John Lateran, April 30, 2023, IV Sunday of Easter.
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