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.

Cardinal John Henry Newman

There was a great man in the 19th century, John Henry Newman, who began life as a Protestant in the Church of England. He became by his preaching and writing, as a young man, very important in that church. But then he came to feel and to think that the true church was the Roman Catholic Church. He became a Catholic, with much suffering to himself personally to himself, and great disappointment to friends and followers. And then, as a Catholic, he became a priest and he worked in the city of Birmingham, and among the poor, poor Irish Catholics. But he also had, and continued to have, a great reputation among Catholics. He moved in upper class circles as well as in helping the poor. In his time in the Catholic Church, he eventually was made a cardinal, but it definitely had its ups and downs. Some successes, and some of what for him were very great disappointments. At one point, I guess he could be said to have been in a state of depression about his lack of what he thought was success. And he wrote this as a memorandum to him himself about his vocation:

God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. [We could all say that, probably] I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. [In other words, he is saying, “I think I know what I am supposed to do, but maybe it is something else about which I have no clue] I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. [That is important. He has not created you for nothing] I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be a [messenger] of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments. Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, if I am in perplexity [perplexity is mental confusion], my [mental confusion] may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. [That is: God does nothing to no purpose] He knows what He is [doing]. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. [And that is what he did in converting to Catholicism] He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is [doing].

So, that’s a message for each of us. God knows what he is doing. We should pray that we do his will and do it as well as we can.