This Sunday is the Church’s annual Sunday for prayer for vocations. The immediate response by most Catholics is to think of vocation in terms of the priesthood or religious life. These are, of course, vocations that involve a life-time commitment, but they cannot exist nor develop in a vacuum. They are graced and specific ways of a more general vocation to which every believer responds when listening to the call of God.
The Christian understanding of God, is of one of communication, not isolation. The Bible is the sacred history of God’s communication with humanity, a communication that forms his chosen people, and which leads to the fullest communication possible, the birth of Jesus Christ, God made man. This long history of communication on God’s part is met with many different responses, responses that are grace filled, responses marred by sin and misunderstanding and responses that are antagonistic. Every positive response is the answer to the call of God, and so may be described as a ‘vocation’. In this way every Christian has a vocation by the very nature of his or her conscious and freely given response to the call of God. This vocational structure of belief is easily lost sight when attending Mass and saying our prayers becomes merely perfunctory.
This fundamental relationship between the revealing of the loving God and the believer does not remain something abstract but takes individual form in each believer’s life. The basic vocation is the call to holiness, which does not just apply to the few but includes the many. This call to holiness is universal. However within this call of God, lies a call to more specific vocations, whether it be marriage, or priesthood/religious life, and professional or artisan work. They all share common elements, firstly as a response to God, that is considered, committed and risk-taking. No vocation is ever fully certain in human terms, whether it be marriage or priesthood/religious life, or even in the choice of work, subject to study at University etc. This may be qualified as ‘good’ risk in that if one was completely certain in responding to a particular vocation, the element of trust in God, and commitment to struggle would be lacking.
Today the application ‘risk adverse’ culture normally refers to the requirements of ‘Health and Safety’ and bureaucratic overkill with regard to normal human life. However, more to the point, the ‘risk-adverse’ culture is alive and well much nearer home, in our own hearts. The incredible rise in the number of cohabiting couples, of quarter-life, half-life crises with regard to marriage, work and meaning to life, all go to show a lack of trust both in God’s call, and in our ability to make and sustain long-term choices. This is such an impoverished vision of humanity, and comes from the all too human aspiration to search for certainty where it cannot be found, in ourselves rather than in God. The Christina emphasis on Jesus as the Good Shepherd who initiates a dialogue out of love is good news indeed.
The crisis over MPs expenses is a classic case showing morality is more than just rules.
The newspaper industry could hardly have believed how lucky they have been over the scandal of MPs expenses. The acres of newsprint occupied by the lurid details of massage chairs, floating duck-islands and countless other more substantial payments have provided the backdrop to national life for the last three weeks. The more outlandish claims about the collapse of Parliament are well off the mark, because there are numerous MPs who have not laid claim to massive expenses.
The recent suggestion that independent candidates would do well at the next election fails to grasp that the functioning of any government, whether of one political party or many requires the sharing both of priorities and responsibilities. A governing group of random individuals with mutually conflicting interests and priorities would be the recipe for chaos. This understandable desire for less party and more individual candidates betrays an impoverished understanding of the interconnectedness of society, whether in the personal, social or economic spheres. Society would just cease to function if everyone acted in an utterly individual however idealistic manner. Family life, school, medical and work life would just fragment. Political parties might need to mutate, and listen more effectively to those for whom they govern, but they are here to stay as the only long-term guarantee of democratic life.
The issue raised by the scandal of expenses is not that of individual over party, nor of applying yet another set of more stringent rules, but is one of conscience. Indeed this issue is a textbook case on conscience. Just because it is within the rules to claim for something does not in itself make it right or moral. This understanding of morality leaves out any sense of personal restraint, of being able to say no to what might in itself might be permissible. The culture of making claims for expenses does not cultivate a sense of restraint. The weakness of the will makes it is all too easy to justify one’s own expenditure as necessary while to others it would look highly tendentious. Every society needs its laws, based on the first principles natural law of do good, avoid evil, choose life. This makes a shared life possible, especially with those who might have very different viewpoints and lifestyles.
However the Christian is unable to construct a holy life based on the rules alone. Certainly they must be followed. To break the Ten Commandments is always culpable, even if the circumstances might mitigate the guilt somewhat. The pursuit of holiness uses the Ten Commandments as a springboard from which to mould a life using the Beatitudes as a template. At the same time as one is moulded through the action of grace, and the positive embracing of the Beatitudes, the Christian discovers that the stretch of the Ten Commandments reaches ever wider. This explains the fact that so many saints were obsessed by Confession. From the outside their obvious holiness would seem to preclude them from needing to go to Confession. It also explains why so many Catholics mistakenly think they never make any spiritual advance. However hard they try to seek the good, the reality of failure and sin looks ever-present. This is because the bar is being quietly raised by Christ ever higher. The developing voice of conscience can see the multitudinous consequences of any action ever more clearly. Christ raising the bar not out of any vindictive motive, but out of love for us. The higher the bar the greater is our freedom to choose the good, in imitation of Him.
Human language without an opening to the Holy Spirit closes the door to God
According to a recent survey there are over 150 languages spoken by people living in London, making the capital a 21st century Babel. This huge number of languages is of recent origin though, throughout the history of London, immigrant and trading communities along the river and elsewhere have spoken their own languages. London still contains vestiges of these past cultures, their Churches and civic institutions, as well as those of today. The bond that links these languages and their communities together is by and large the desire to establish a life here, through work and family. However without the implied spiritual dimension of a shared civic society, these different languages, with their concomitant thought patterns, can become the tools of power and self-assertion implied in that first account of the Tower of Babel.
‘Then God looked down in horror at the presumption of humanity to make its name known by building a tower to reach heaven, so God destroyed their tower and confused their common language to forestall any further such attempts’. This confusion is still with us and, in a fallen world, this confusion can easily turn into hostility when language becomes a barrier of separation.
However, on the positive side, language allows for the expression of the deepest longings of the human heart. Everyone knows of the inability to put into words what they are thinking, but even this common experience cannot hide that it is only through words that anyone can communicate. Language does not flourish in a vacuum but is constitutive of the culture for which it is the common form of communication. The degrading of English though the introduction of text-speak, slang and a profusion of nouns turned into verbs shows a lack of care for something immensely precious. The consequent shrinkage of the scope of language makes preaching the Gospel so much more difficult. The concepts of the heart are pushed out by the impact words of contemporary commerce and street argot, and it is to the heart that the Church appeals.
The sound of the wind blowing and the arrival of balls of fire mark the descent of the Holy Spirit onto the Apostles in the Upper Room. The reception of the Holy Spirit is the experience of being loved by God, since the love of God dwells in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Along with this indwelling comes the forgiveness of sins, the gift of grace and the stable possession of the virtues of faith, hope and charity. The evidence for the descent was made visible through the ability of the Apostles to preach in the many known and unknown languages of the Jerusalem crowds. Pentecost is the reverse of the Tower of Babel. No longer is humanity bent on a scheme of self-aggrandisement; instead the works of God are being preached as one common message to all of humanity.
The many languages spoken indicate that the Gospel message has a universal destination and, because Jesus Christ is at the heart of the message, it can be heard everywhere. The barriers to communication erected after the collapse of the Tower of Babel are no longer absolute. The Holy Spirit breaks through the barriers of mutual incomprehensibility. There is now no place where the Gospel cannot be preached. The content of the Gospel is the reality of the love of God; a message that can so easily resonate with the longings of the human heart. The Gospel gives us the lexicon of love, the language to form our culture, not just on wealth and power but on the love of God that lies at the heart of reality.
