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January 10, 2024Wednesday, 10 January 24
This evening, we celebrate the Holy Mass again with our priests, nuns, and lay people engaged in pastoral work. Tomorrow morning, the work of our annual meeting for all the Apostolic Vicariate will conclude.
We celebrate the votive Mass for the Holy Spirit because we know that our work cannot be helpful to the kingdom of God without the gift of the Holy Spirit. Everyone is called to respond personally, but the Holy Spirit animates the Church. If we do not welcome the gift of the Spirit within us, our pastoral action remains incomplete. We must never bury the gifts of the Spirit within us. Without the Lord, we cannot do anything. Without the Holy Spirit, our work remains soulless.
The Gospel shows us Jesus totally committed to his mission of healing and preaching, announcing the kingdom of God. Jesus appears totally dedicated to his mission. But we see Jesus reserves time to cultivate his intimacy with the heavenly Father who sent him. Jesus sometimes seems to disappear from the public scene. The disciples who go to look for him find him gathered in prayer.
From all this comes a crucial lesson for us: being dedicated to the mission. The mission is not something to do but a way of being, dwelling in the world, and living in relationships. We are our mission. Each of us is a mission in this world. This is a truth rooted in our baptism and concerns all the faithful. But it indeed concerns in a particular way priests, consecrated persons, and lay people who, with their work, make a decisive contribution to the life of the Church.
But to live the mission entrusted to us, we must always be in a deep relationship with the one who sends us: therefore, the example of Jesus is precious who, in living his mission, never neglects the relationship with the Father who gave him the mandate. To live our mission well, we must cultivate an intense missionary spirituality and thus continually rediscover the origin of our vocation: the relationship with the Father is the source of all the missions.
From this perspective, the first reading we heard becomes precious: it is the story of Samuel's vocation. He worked at the sanctuary with the priest Eli, and God called him several times at night. Until the priest himself helps him understand that the voice he hears is the voice of God, who calls him to belong to him totally for a special mission.
From Samuel's Call, we learn that each of our lives is a vocation. We are not on Earth by chance. Life is not even one's project to be carried out privately. Life is a vocation. This means that each of us, with our talents and gifts, is wanted and loved by God and is placed within the plan of God, who wants to realize his kingdom of Justice and peace. Every believer must live their life as a vocation and carry out the mission God calls us for. The Christian life normally finds its shape in the call to form a family, the vocation to marriage. We need families that are holy to transmit the Christian faith to the new generations.
Furthermore, the extraordinary vocation of Samuel, whom God calls in the middle of the night, reminds us of the vocations of special consecration: the vocation to radically follow Christ, the vocation to consecrated life, and the vocation to be a priest. The Church has an enormous need for young people who listen to the voice of God and make themselves totally available to the Gospel. I encourage all young people to listen to God's voice and respond generously.
In this celebration, I thank all our priests and consecrated persons for their generous response to the Lord's Call. May the Holy Spirit move the hearts of many young people to serve the kingdom of God.
We ask the Mother of God, who fully accepted the Lord's call, to be totally at the service of her son Jesus. She helps us to be docile to the decisive action of the Spirit and to respond generously to the Lord's Call, as the young Samuel did: speak Lord, your servant listens to you.
