Abbot Matthew Stark gave this homily at the School Mass of January 21, 2024. In it, he addresses the nature of vocation, drawing on John Henry Newman.

Abbot Matthew preaches at School Mass
(January 2024)

Today’s gospel is about Jesus calling the first apostles and giving them their vocation. They thought they were going to spend their lives in the family business of fishing. They were going to be fisherman. But no, they were going to be apostles. In the first reading, you have a lesson from the book of the prophet Jonah. In the Old Testament various persons are also given by God vocations. And the prophets in particular are given of a vocation not unlike that of being an apostle: of speaking God’s word to his people. Jonah was given a job by God which he did not want. He did not like the idea of being a prophet to the people of Nineveh and he ran away. And God, by not very gentle means, brought him back and essentially made him do what God wanted. The apostles, probably, were happy to be invited by Jesus, whom they knew was a very different kind of a preacher. And maybe they suspected that he was the Messiah and that they would be in his kingdom great and important, wealthy, powerful persons. It did not turn out that way for them.

Cross Hill

All of us, who have been baptized at any rate, but maybe all of us, have a job or vocation that God wants us to do. A man said this to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, “Mother, you have the vocation of helping the poor, and I have a different vocation, different from yours.” And she said, “No, we both have the same vocation, which is to become saints.” To become holy. To belong entirely to God, and to do his will. The other vocations are secondary and ways, perhaps, of doing that first vocation. If you know your vocation, or think you do, that is a good thing. If you don’t know your vocation, you should pray to know it. For those of us who are already following what we hope and think is God’s will for us in our vocations (our secondary vocations), we have to pray that we do the job well, and in fact do what he wants us to do. This is not necessarily easy. You may be following God’s vocation for you but find it’s not all that easy. Or you may be doing a job and doing it well, but then run into great difficulties.