Student Daily Reflection

“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8

In today’s gospel from Matthew, Jesus called four fishermen to leave their lives behind and follow Him. These four men would later become a few of the most significant figures in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. How surprised and unsure they must have felt when Jesus said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Nevertheless, they rose and followed Him. They had received their call, their vocation.

For the past week, the lectures in my peace and justice classes here at Creighton have been strongly focused on discerning one’s vocation. Before doing any extensive reading or hearing any lectures on this topic, I thought of a vocation simply as a call to some professional career. I quickly found out I was merely scratching the surface. In his book, A Sacred Voice is Calling, John Neafsey writes, “Vocation potentially touches and encompasses every level and dimension of our lives.” In addition, Michael Himes, the author of Doing the Truth in Love, suggests three key questions to consider in vocational discernment; “joy, talent, and service; that is what we most enjoy doing, what we are good at, and what others most need from us.”

For me, one of the most powerful aspects of this new understanding is that the popular understanding that joys determine our hobbies, talents determine our careers, and service determines which charity we support, no longer holds as much truth. Not only those called to be priests, nuns, social workers or human rights activists can fulfill a deep and serving vocation, but those with calls to become chefs, mechanics, or accountants have a calling as well. We are all called to employ what we most enjoy doing, what we are good at, and what others most need from us into one unified vocation. As chefs we can dedicate our talents to serving the hungry in a homeless shelter, as a mechanic we can offer our services to the underserved who cannot receive it elsewhere, or as an accountant we can help the undereducated raise their income with knowledge they have never acquired. God calls every one of us, not to deny our sometimes perceived insignificant talents, but to develop them in ways which can serve others. Discerning one’s vocation can be a scary and intimidating process, but we must keep in mind that God made us passionate beings for a reason. Let us not be afraid to follow that passion.