Called

ONE basic and undeniable fact that we have to learn to correspond properly is that each one of us and all of us together are called—called by God, our Creator, our Father. We don’t live by our lonesome, with the option of connecting with others when some need arises. We are not meant to be a freelance, uncommitted individual.

            The rudimentary truth is that we are, from beginning to end, related to God and to everybody else. And this inherent relationship demands from us our conscious effort to engage with God and with everyone. That’s why we are told that God’s greatest commandment is to love God with all our strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

            We therefore have to wage an unrelenting battle against our tendency to think that as persons we are first and foremost an individual and that we in the end will just be by ourselves. We need to crush that tendency to fall into egoism.

            It’s true that a person is an individual, but it is also true that a person would not be a true person unless he is also related to others, with God as the first other. We have to process this truth more thoroughly since the dominant understanding is precisely that we are mere individuals and that our relation with others is just optional.

            Obviously, we are not forced to enter into any relation. As persons, we have to do things freely. But we also have to understand that entering into a relation is not optional. It is a necessity that we have to take up freely. It’s like the freedom to meet the necessity to breathe.

            In other words, entering into relations is part of our nature and design as persons. We have to conform ourselves to how we have been designed, since there are many things in our nature that do not come and function automatically. They need to be worked out.

            One of these things is precisely the fact that we are called. We have not been born and put into existence without this calling, first of all, from God our Creator, and then later on from everybody else.

            This kind of awareness is akin to that of spouses who are supposed to do things always thinking of the other spouse. That is why this awareness of being called can also be described as developing and having a spousal attitude toward life. We can truly say that we are married to God from beginning to end.

            This awareness of being called is what may be considered as our sense of vocation. Everyone has a vocation just as everyone has his own DNA. The vocation is like God’s program for each one of us and all of us together that extends all throughout our earthly life and beyond. It contains everything that our life is supposed to be.

            It is our duty to grow in our awareness and knowledge of our personal vocation, growing in love with it and in the generosity of living it in its fullness. This duty can start with a simple act of morning offering every day, as soon as we wake up, and then sustaining it all throughout the day by some regular reminders.

            The first thing we have to do is precisely to offer the day to God and to activate our attitude of living in God’s presence, ever attentive to his promptings which obviously he does since he is always with us, actively intervening in our lives.

            To be sure, God’s presence in us is never passive. His interventions are not of the supporting type only. He does not play a cameo role only in our life. He plays a prominent role, but he does it always with us, such that we can say that our life is and should be as much ours as it is also his.

            And this can happen if we keep and reinforce our abiding awareness that we are always called. We need to sharpen our skill to listen as attentively as possible to God’s calling, ever discerning to even the slightest insinuations that he may be making through the different events of our life, both the big, extraordinary ones and the small ones.

            What can also help are the continuing study of our faith, regular prayers or intimate conversations with God carried out in the mind and heart, recourse to the sacraments, the exercise and development of virtues.

            These will make Christ alive in our life. They nourish are awareness that we are always called by him.