Pastor's Corner

World Day of Prayer for Vocations

04-25-2021Pastor's CornerRev. Robert J. Deehan, V.F.

This Sunday is World Day of Prayer for Vocations. Its purpose is to publicly fulfill the Lord's instruction to, "Pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his harvest" (Mt 9:38; Lk 10:2). As a climax to a prayer that is continually offered throughout the Church, it affirms the primacy of faith and grace in all that concerns vocations to the priesthood and to the consecrated life. While appreciating all vocations, the Church concentrates its attention this day on vocations to the ordained ministries (priesthood and diaconate), consecrated life in all its forms (male and female religious life, societies of apostolic life, consecrated virginity), secular institutes in their diversity of services and membership, and to the missionary life. Please pray that young men and women hear and respond generously to the Lord's call to the priesthood, diaconate, religious life, societies of apostolic life or secular institutes.

Besides our prayers, we must actively invite our children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews to consider whether the Lord is calling them to a life of service in the Church. Give a compliment to those young people who show special qualities that would make them a suitable candidate for a religious vocation. We, the People of God, are co-responsible with God for replenishing the vocations the Church needs to continue its mission. It cannot be left to “others.”

Resources for promoting vocations can be found on the USCCB website: https://www.usccb.org/committees/clergyconsecrated-life-vocations/world-day-prayer-vocations.

Prayer to the Holy Family

O Holy Family of Nazareth, community of love of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, model and ideal of every Christian family, to you we entrust our families. Open the heart of every family to the faith, to welcoming the word of God, to Christian witness, so that it become a source of new and holy vocations. Touch the hearts of parents, so that with prompt charity, wise care, and loving devotion they be for their sons and daughters sure guides towards spiritual and eternal values. Stir up in the hearts of young people the light conscience and free will, so that growing in "wisdom, age and grace", they might welcome generously the gift of a divine vocation. Holy Family of Nazareth, grant that all of us, contemplating and imitating the assiduous prayer, generous obedience, dignified poverty and virginal purity lived out in your midst, might set about fulfilling the will of God and accompanying with far-sighted sensitivity those among us who are called to follow more closely the Lord Jesus, who "has given himself for us" (cf. Gal 2:20). Amen.

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