The Holy Spirit has willed, through Saint Luke, to point out to us the words to these three disciples so that we may apply them to the call we have received from God.
Man is defined by the vocation he has received. Each man is what God has created him to be, and human life has no other meaning than to know and freely fulfill that divine will. "Man is fulfilled or lost, depending on whether he accomplishes in his life the concrete plan that God has for him"10. We have all received a vocation, that is, a call to know God, to recognize Him as the source of life; an invitation to enter into divine intimacy, to personal contact, to prayer; a call to make Christ the center of one’s own existence, to follow Him, to make decisions always bearing in mind His will; a call to know other men as persons and children of God, and, therefore, a call to radically overcome selfishness to live fraternity, to carry out fruitful apostolate, and to make others know God; a call to understand that this must be realized in one’s own life, according to the conditions in which God has placed each one and according to the mission that personally corresponds to him
Fidelity to one’s own vocation involves responding to the calls that God makes throughout life. Usually, it is about fidelity in the small things of each day, loving God in work, in the joys and sorrows that all existence entails, firmly rejecting anything that in some way means looking where we cannot find Christ. Fidelity is supported by a series of essential virtues, without which it would be difficult or impossible to follow the Master: humility to recognize that — like that colossal statue mentioned in the Book of Daniel12 — we have feet of clay; prudence and sincerity, which are consequences of humility; charity and fraternity, which prevent us from closing ourselves off; the spirit of mortification, which leads to temperance, sobriety, the fight against comfort and bourgeoisie, and not seeking compensations, which would end up being bitter, as they distance us from the Lord; the spirit of prayer, which leads us to treat God as a Friend, as the Friend of a lifetime. "He who does not stop moving forward — teaches Saint Teresa — arrives late. It seems to me that nothing else is losing the way but abandoning prayer"1
We tell the Lord that we want to be faithful, that we desire nothing else in life than to follow Him closely in good times and bad. He is the axis around which our life revolves, the center to which all our actions are directed. Lord, without You, our life would be broken and disoriented.
Let us turn to the Virgin, most faithful, our Holy Mother Mary, at the end of our prayer.
HCD