KNOWING THE HEART OF GOD IS THE BASIS FOR VOCATION

20150715 KNOWING THE HEART OF GOD IS THE BASIS FOR VOCATION

Readings at Mass

First reading

Exodus 3:1-6,9-12 ©

Moses was looking after the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, priest of Midian. He led his flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in the shape of a flame of fire, coming from the middle of a bush. Moses looked; there was the bush blazing but it was not being burnt up. ‘I must go and look at this strange sight,’ Moses said, ‘and see why the bush is not burnt.’

  Now the Lord saw him go forward to look, and God called to him from the middle of the bush. ‘Moses, Moses!’ he said. ‘Here I am,’ Moses answered. ‘Come no nearer,’ he said. ‘Take off your shoes, for the place on which you stand is holy ground. I am the God of your fathers,’ he said, ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.’ At this Moses covered his face, afraid to look at God.

  And the Lord said, ‘The cry of the sons of Israel has come to me, and I have witnessed the way in which the Egyptians oppress them, so come, I send you to Pharaoh to bring the sons of Israel, my people, out of Egypt.’

  Moses said to God, ‘Who am I to go to Pharaoh and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?’ ‘I shall be with you,’ was the answer ‘and this is the sign by which you shall know that it is I who have sent you... After you have led the people out of Egypt, you are to offer worship to God on this mountain.’

Psalm

Psalm 102:1-4,6-7 ©

The Lord is compassion and love.

My soul, give thanks to the Lord

  all my being, bless his holy name.

My soul, give thanks to the Lord

  and never forget all his blessings.

The Lord is compassion and love.

It is he who forgives all your guilt,

  who heals every one of your ills,

who redeems your life from the grave,

  who crowns you with love and compassion.

The Lord is compassion and love.

The Lord does deeds of justice,

  gives judgement for all who are oppressed.

He made known his ways to Moses

  and his deeds to Israel’s sons.

The Lord is compassion and love.

Gospel Acclamation

Mt11:25

Alleluia, alleluia!

Blessed are you, Father,

Lord of heaven and earth,,

for revealing the mysteries of the kingdom

to mere children.

Alleluia!

Gospel

Matthew 11:25-27 ©

Jesus exclaimed, ‘I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do. Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’

KNOWING THE HEART OF GOD IS THE BASIS FOR VOCATION

SCRIPTURE READINGS: EX 3:1-6; 9-12; MT 11:25-27

Do you have a passion for life?  What are you living for?  More importantly, whom are you living for?  It is not enough to live for something, but passion ultimately must be to live for someone.  It is therefore necessary from the outset to make a distinction between a career and a vocation.  A career is an ambition to achieve something in life.  It is more focused on self rather than on others; on things rather than on people.  When we are concerned with a career, we think in terms of success, material and personal benefits from our hard work.  So one can be passionate in one’s work, be successful and feeling good about oneself and yet lacking in something.  Otherwise, why would Moses take the risk of going back to Egypt when he was happily married and settled at Midian!

That is why we must find our vocation in life.  The real cause of happiness is not just passion but a passion that is identified with the passion of God Himself.  This is what a vocation is all about.  Vocation is a call from within, and ironically, this call from within is also from without.  It is a call from God that takes place in the depths of our being.  When a person hears the call of God and is identified with God’s call, then he is being true to his vocation.  So to distinguish whether we have a vocation or simply a career, we must ask whether what we are doing is what the Father would want to do Himself.  Only when we are able to identify ourselves with Him and His passion, can we then speak of a vocation.

Isn’t this the case of Moses and Jesus in today’s scripture readings? We read that in the case of Moses, God revealed to him His passion when He said, “And now the cry of the sons of Israel has come to me, and I have witnessed the way in which the Egyptians oppress them, so come, I send you to Pharaoh to bring the sons of Israel, my people, out of Egypt.” Similarly, in the gospel, Jesus also said, “Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”  Indeed, if Moses were inspired to lead his people out of slavery from Egypt, it must have been because he was moved by God’s mercy and love for His people.  Isn’t this what the psalmist is saying, “The Lord secures justice and the rights of all the oppressed. He has made known his ways to Moses, and his deeds to the children of Israel. The Lord is kind and merciful.”  In the same vein too, it was Jesus’ identification with His Father’s love for His people that He, too, embarked on His mission to proclaim His Father’s love and mercy through His preaching, miracles and deeds, especially in forgiving sins, eating and drinking with sinners.

It was this personal identification with God’s voice spoken to him from within and without that Moses could say, “Here I am.”  In responding with such obedience and conviction, it clearly presumes that Moses’ heart is aligned with God’s heart.  He heard the voice of God from without calling him, but he also heard the voice of his people crying out in misery within his heart.  Vocation, therefore, is the combination of the calling of an external and internal voice.   One hears an external voice speaking and at the same time, this voice resonates with an interior voice within, like an imperative commanding him to act accordingly.

Similarly, Jesus, too, sought to do only the Father’s will.  He came not to do His own will but that of His Father’s.  “I have come from heaven not to do my own will but to do the will of him who sent me.  Now the will of him who sent me is that I should lose nothing of all that he has given to me.”  (Jn 6:38f).  And in Letter to the Hebrews, the author, citing Ps 40:6-8, wrote of Jesus saying, “Here I am!  I am coming to do your will.”  (Heb 10:10)  Not only was His mission identified with the Father’s but He, too, was moved by the people in His heart, for we read that “As he stepped ashore, he saw a large crowd; and he took pity on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he set himself to teach them at some length.”  (Mk 6:34)

Thus, the prerequisite of a vocation is that we are involved in the life of God.   We cannot identify with God’s passion unless we first know Him.  This accounts for why when God appeared to Moses, He revealed Himself as the “God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”  This was necessary; otherwise Moses would not know who this God is.  By identifying Himself as the God of his Fathers, God reassured Moses of His fidelity to the people.  In the same vein too, Jesus exclaimed, “I bless you Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the cleaver and revealing them to mere children.  Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do.”  For Jesus too, came to recognize His God as His Father.  It was His experience of sonship, being a child of the Heavenly Father, which gave Him the impetus to share His Father’s love with all of us.  It was this inexpressible joy of having received the Father’s love that stirred Jesus to share that love.

There is another reason why it is necessary for us to encounter God before we can discover our vocation and mission.  Unless we can recognize who we are before God, we will undertake the mission as if it is our personal ambition, relying only on ourselves.  The truth is that the success of God’s mission cannot be merely the fruits of human effort, but principally, it must be seen as the work of God rather than the work of man.  Moses’ encounter with God gave him a sense of unworthiness.  He needed to take off his sandals, be stripped of his complacency and self-sufficiency. The burning bush itself was not significant, as bushes often catch fire in the desert.  Rather, it was because of the fact that the burning bush “was not being burnt up.”  This experience enabled him to be ready for God’s call to free His people because Moses reckoned it was a job beyond his strength.  He could not speak well.  He had no weapons or armies.  “Moses said to God, ‘Who am I to go to Pharaoh and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?’”  Precisely, it will not be Moses but God who would lead His people out of Egypt, for He said, “’I shall be with you, ‘and this is the sign by which you shall know that it is I who have sent you … After you have led the people out of Egypt, you are to offer to God on this mountain.”

Jesus too, could accomplish His mission because He regarded Himself as a child of the heavenly Father.  Did not He pray, “I bless you Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children”?  If Jesus were so confident of fulfilling His vocation, it was because of His childlikeness, that total trust and confidence in His Heavenly Father.   It was this docile and humble attitude towards His Father that the latter could do great things through Him.  When we are like Moses and Jesus, realizing our total dependence on God for all we have and all we are, then we will not allow our anxieties to transform our vocation to an ambition.

But how is this possible?  There can be no question of discovering one’s vocation without prayer and a deep intimacy with God.  Finding one’s vocation is not simply a question of a rational analysis of what we want to do in life.  Vocation is not revealed to “the learned and the clever.”  Vocation originates from prayer life.  Like Jesus who not only taught us how to pray but revealed the content of His prayer life, we too must learn to relate with the Heavenly Father the same way as He did.  We too need to avail ourselves to the Burning Bush experience like Moses.  Only a personal intimacy with the Lord can help us to acquire the heart of the Good Shepherd.  Only in prayer, will the Lord reveal Himself to us mere children, who know Him and who share in His love.

Written by The Most Rev William Goh

Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore

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