Devotional Thought of the Day!

²³  Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as though you were working for the Lord and not for people. Colossians 3:23 (TEV)

This is the definition of a vocation! A vocation is an encounter with God’s love, which gives a new horizon and a decisive direction to one’s life. A vocation is a concrete path of loving, a concrete and fundamental response, a choice of love, of making the sincere gift of self. It is the way we are to beget—to generate life, to give abundant fruit—as Jesus calls us in the Gospel of St John, chapter 15.
Therefore, a vocation is always an orientation of the human heart to find the fullness of love and to dedicate oneself to the service of love. A vocation will always imply the free and total response to love, the total giving and surrender of self for the cause of the beloved and to find the full realization of self in this free and total donation of self. Love is a fundamental decision. Love is our vocation, our dignity, our gift, and our task. ‘Love is now no longer a mere command, it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us’ (Deus caritas est, 1).

Many people are not satisfied with their lot in life.

They might not like their job or their role in their family. They might fight their role at church unfulfilling, They may find the people they interact with tiresome, antagonistic, boring. They may tire of the repetitive nature of their work or the constant changes they endure.

We change jobs, or desire too, hoping the next job will bring about the happiness we think is our right. We do the same thing with marriages, with our friendships, with our churches and the other groups we play a part in, which cannot satisfy.

We look to these outside influences to provide us what we need, and we miss the inner life, the place where peace and joy find their origin, as we walk with God. It is there, where the breath of the Holy Spirit not only brings us to life but refreshes and sustains us, that we begin to realize that one can find contentment, peace, even joy in the midst of anything we are involved in, even in our own martyrdom.

That is why we are told by Paul to see God ss the final benefactor of our work, of our toil, Joy comes when we have poured out all we are before God, submitting it all to Him, allowing Him to guide each effort, to heal each brokenness.

That is how we respond to His love, which is beyond measure> We let Him love us, and transform us. He builds in us the ability to trust Him, to depend on Him, and as we do, everything we are is transformed. And in everything we do, we know His hand is there.

So we love in return, showing that love in our families, in our work, in our churches, and as we take Christ into our communities.

You want contentment, you want joy? You want a job that has meaning? You want to know this in situations you don’t like?

Find it all in your first vocation, your first calling,

For you are a child of God.

Galindo, A. (2012). Loving Jesus in the Eucharist with Mary: The Foundation of Religious Life. In A. Reid (Ed.), From Eucharistic Adoration to Evangelization (p. 42). London; New York: Burns & Oates.