Quotes

Quotes on Vocation

Psalm 139

O Lord you have searched me and you know me.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

You discern my thoughts from far away.

You search out my path and my lying down,

And are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue,

O Lord, you know it completely.

You hem me in behind and before,

And lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

It is so high I cannot attain it.

Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning

And settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

Even there your hand shall lead me,

And your right hand holds me fast.

If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me

And the light around me become night',

Even the darkness is not dark to you;

The night is as bright as the day,

For darkness is as light to you.

For it was you who formed my inward parts;

You knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works; That I know very well.

My frame was not hidden from you,

When I was being made in secret,

Intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.

In your books were written all the days that were formed for me,

When none of them as yet existed.

How weighty are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

I try to count them - they are more than the sand;

I come to an end - I am still with you.

Reflection on vocation - Pope John Paul II, Toronto WYD 2002

Dear friends,

The Church today looks to you with confidence and expects you to be the people of the Beatitudes. Blessed are you if, like Jesus, you are poor in spirit, good and merciful; if you really seek what it just and right; if you are pure of heart, peacemakers, lovers of the poor and their servants. Blessed are you!

Only Jesus is the true Master, only Jesus speaks the unchanging message that responds to the deepest longings of the human heart, because he alone knows "what is in each person" (cf. Jn 2:25). Today he calls you to be the salt and light of the world, to choose goodness, to live in justice, to become instruments of love and peace. His call has always demanded a choice between good and evil, between light and darkness, between life and death. He makes the same invitation today to you who are gathered here.

Reflection on love - Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

God has created each one of us, every human being, for greater things - to love and to be loved. But why did God make some of us men and others women? Because a woman's love is one image of the love of God, and a man's love is another image of God's love. Both are created to love, but each in a different way. Woman and man complete each other and together show forth God's love more fully than either can do it alone.

The Mission of my Life - John Henry Cardinal Newman

God has created me
to do him some definite service.
He has committed some work to me
which he has not committed to another.

I have my mission.
I may never know what it is in this life,
but I shall be told in the next.

I am a link in a chain,
a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for nothing.
I shall do good work.
I shall do his work.

He may take me away from my friends.
He may throw me among strangers.
He may make me feel desolate,
make my spirits sink,
hide my future from me -
Still He knows what He is about.

Luke 5:1-11

They left everything and followed him.

Jesus was standing one day by the Lake of Gennesaret, with the crowd pressing round him listening to the word of God, when he caught sight of two boats close to the bank. The fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats - it was Simon's - and asked him to put out a little from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.

When he had finished speaking he said to Simon, ‘Put out into deep water and pay out your nets for a catch.' ‘Master,' Simon replied ‘we worked hard all night long and caught nothing, but if you say so, I will pay out the nets.' And when they had done this they netted such a huge number of fish that their nets began to tear, so they signalled to their companions in the other boat to come and help them; when these came, they filled the two boats to sinking point.

When Simon Peter saw this he fell at the knees of Jesus saying, ‘Leave me Lord; I am a sinful man.' For he and all his companions were completely overcome by the catch they had made; so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were Simon's partners. But Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on it is men you will catch.' Then, bringing their boats back to land, they left everything and followed him.

An Excerpt from ‘Desire - The journey that we must take to find the Life God offers'

Don't ask yourself what the world needs...

Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go and do that...

Because what the world needs are men and women that have come alive!

John Eldredge