Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 12, 2008

From our gospel reading this evening, this Fourth Sunday of Easter takes it name as Good Shepherd Sunday. On this Sunday, the readings speak to us of how we have life through Jesus, and the gospel says that Jesus came – not just to give us life – but to give it to the fullest. In the second reading this evening, it speaks of suffering and how it is that through our sufferings at times, we will see that face of Christ. We will understand better some of the things that he himself went through as we ourselves suffer through various maladies, various times in our lives when things don’t seem to be going so well, other times in our lives when great tragedies have struck. All those situations call us to bear in mind that our God is with us and walks with us as we journey toward him and his presence.

This Sunday is also dedicated by the church to Vocation Sunday. Some time ago I was with a group of seniors in high school, and we were talking about vocations. They kept talking about things like being an accountant, or a doctor, or some type of job. So I asked them, is there a difference between a vocation and a job? They thought and no one really could come up with there being some type of distinction. I then asked them, are you going to do your job from tomorrow until the end of your life? They said, well probably not. Some even suggested that they might have two or three different jobs in the course of their lifetime. Some said that they would probably have more than that. Others thought that the one profession that they chose would probably be their life’s work. I said to them, well if you make a life choice that is a choice on how you’re going to live out your life, what would you call that? Some of them said, well, marriage or single life or…I didn’t hear too many priesthoods. There was one, however. There is hope.

And so I began to speak to them about vocation as part of our faith call. And living out that faith call in a lived situation in terms of our lives. For a long time, our church has only spoken of two – marriage and either religious life or the priesthood. I suggest to you today that there are at least three, and the third one being the single life; and there might be a fourth one called single life with ministry in the church -- for those who are not married, for those who are not religious.

It seems that in the course of the last forty years or so, we’ve seen this vista open. And this new vista of church ministry that has opened itself in our world is something different that what was experienced back – I’ll date myself – in the 1950’s. The type of experience of church life today from then is considerably different. And by our baptism we are called to service, whether that be as priests, as religious, as married, as single, we are called by baptism to service of one another. And if there is a single vocation that we can point to, it’s probably that – service to one another.

It takes different forms. And through time, those forms have changed to the point where we are now at a point in time where we see many different ministries growing up from the needs of the community. Fortunately we have people who answer that call. Fortunately we have people who prepare themselves to be able to answer that call. This past week we were talking in the office about some of the things happening that have just happened since Vatican II, and one of those things is the whole question of religious education and faith formation. Immediately following Vatican II, what we knew as religious education is something very different than what know it today. We also know that at that point in time, the largest number of lay ministers within our church were Directors of Religious Education, and that was their title. That’s what they were called – DRE’s.

Now we have a title called Pastoral Associate. Some of the areas are Pastoral Associates and some are not. Some Senior Ministers are Pastoral Associates and some are just Senior Ministers. So it depends on the situation and the calling from the congregation, in a sense, as to how those needs are fulfilled and what people are termed in terms of what they do within the church. But the big thing is, we need them all!

If we are going to continue to minister to the people, then we need all the helping hands that we can get. And thankfully, with the grace of God, we have been fortunate enough to have people who will step forward, who will take on the responsibility of helping to educate, of helping to work with our senior members, of helping to work with our youth and young adults – all of which are critical to us.

But there’s one little caveat. And that little caveat is we all have to tell the story. We all have to continually tell the children, the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren the story. I was with a group of Catholic women on Thursday, the Queens Daughters. One of the women there said she had gone to Fatima, and when she went to Fatima she bought the little shrine types of things and brought them back with her. When she brought them back, she brought one for each of her grandchildren. So when she got home, of course, they wanted to know what did grandma bring them. So grandma goes to her room, brings the sack, and takes out one of the shrines. And one of the children said, “What’s that?” And she said, well, it’s the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima. Well who’s that? And it started a whole process of discovery for the grandchildren because they had never heard of Our Lady of Fatima. And a whole process of discovery and understanding of what that means within our church by their grandmother. So grandparents, you’re on notice. You need to tell the stories. You need to keep the story alive. And the way we do that is by repeating it over and over again -–just as we repeat this Eucharist every single week. We continue to tell the story of salvation. We continue to tell how we have been saved. We continue to tell how God has blessed us and graced us and brought us here so that we can have that life to the full that the gospel speaks of this evening.

So as we gather around the table of the Lord this day, we ask God to be with us and to grace us with his presence, and to give us the grace and strength that we need to continue to tell the story – to celebrate the word.