Relying on the Father to live our vocation well.

December 23, 2024
Pattie Reynolds
Uncategorized

Jan-Feb. 2025

By Fr. Robert Mulderink

Priesthood, fatherhood, love, service, responsibility, stress. Being a priest is a great gift and joy! The responsibilities given to priests, though we receive them eagerly and willingly, can be overwhelming. This is equally true of being a husband or wife, a father or mother. Along with accomplishments in these roles and relationships come disappointments. Many of us have had this experience: you work hard, face stress, persevere through discouragements and feel like you’ve come up short. You continue, but without heart. We are made in the image of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who is self-giving love. Because of this, every man and woman is made for self-giving, life-bringing love through their vocation. So, if we are made for this, why is it often so stressful? Because we try to be fatherless fathers, and we cannot be fathers unless we are sons first. We cannot be mothers without being daughters first. What we first receive as sons and daughters, we pour out as fathers and mothers. Jesus gives his whole self in love, bears the weight of our salvation and gives life, but he does so as the Son, relying on and listening to his Father. We, too, must continue to turn to and obey the Father to live our vocation well. This is something I have learned many times over and will have to be reminded of many more times.

For many of us, the signal that we’ve become stuck in our vocation is when everything, even the small things, even restful things like prayer, start to look and feel like one more demand, one more obligation. For me personally, I may even avoid being vulnerable with the Father in prayer, because I do not want him to see me struggle. I want to have it together when I speak to Him. It’s good to want God’s affirmation, like a child wanting his/her parents to be proud, but if I only let God see me when I feel like I’m doing well, I have fundamentally misunderstood his love. He loves us while we are in the mess of sin, and we cannot get out without His salvation.

How good, how wonderful it is that God does not look at us as peers, but as little children! He works to break us out of pride and self-reliance by calling gently, “My son, my son.” In the middle of trying to keep up with responsibilities without God, we can become deaf to this call. However, he sees what we do not: our heart’s longing, for rest, for home, for our Father.

What seems paradoxical is that to become the great, dependable fathers and mothers we want to be, we must become small and shockingly dependent. We are made to give of ourselves but before we give, we must receive the gift of being sons and daughters of the Father, first and always. It’s good to want God’s affirmation, like a child wanting his/her parents to be proud, but if I only let God see me when I feel like I’m doing well, I have fundamentally misunderstood his love.”For further reflection

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