The discovery of one's personal vocation is the most important moment of one's life. One's own happiness and that of many others depends on a faithful response to this call. God creates us, prepares us and calls us according to a divine plan. "If today so many Christians live adrift, with little depth and limited by narrow horizons, it is due, above all, to the lack of a clear awareness of their particular reason for being and existing (...). What elevates man, what really gives him a personality, is the awareness of his vocation, the awareness of his concrete task. That is what fills a life and gives it content."
The first decision in the following of Christ constitutes the foundation of many other responses throughout life. Fidelity is made day by day, ordinarily in things that seem of little importance, in the little duties of the day, rejecting everything that can damage what is the essence of our life.
It is not enough to maintain our vocation; it is necessary to renew it, to reaffirm it constantly: when it seems easy, and in the moments when everything is difficult, when the attacks of the world, of the devil or of the flesh manifest themselves with all their power. We will always have the necessary help to be faithful. The more difficulties, the more graces.
And with a well-determined ascetical struggle - with a well-determined particular examination - love grows and is appreciated with the passage of time, and self-giving, far from any routine, becomes more conscious, more mature. "It is not a growth of a quantitative order, like that of a heap of wheat, but qualitative, as when heat becomes more intense, or as when science, without arriving at new conclusions, becomes more penetrating, more profound, more unified, more certain. Thus charity tends to love more perfectly, more purely, more closely, God above all else, and our neighbor and ourselves, so that we may glorify God in time and in eternity. This is the growth that the Lord asks of us.
To strive to grow in holiness, in love for Christ and for all people for Christ's sake, is to ensure fidelity and, therefore, joy, love, a life full of meaning.
St. Paul used a comparison taken from stadium races to explain that the Christian's ascetical struggle must be a joyful one, a true supernatural sport. And when the Apostle considers that he has not reached perfection, he struggles to attain what he has promised: one thing I intend: to launch myself towards what lies ahead of me, to run towards the goal, to reach the prize to which God calls us from on high15.
From the moment Christ entered her life on the road to Damascus, she gave herself with all her strength to seek him, to love him and to serve him. This is what the Apostles did from that day when Jesus passed by them and called them. Their defects did not disappear at that moment, but day by day they followed the Master in a growing friendship, and they were faithful. This is what we have to do: to correspond daily to the graces we receive, to be faithful every day. In this way we will reach the goal, where Christ awaits us.
Hablar con Dios