MESSAGE OF POPE FRANCIS FOR THE 2021 WORLD DAY OF VOCATIONS (25 April 2021)
[The following text is taken verbatim from the Pope’s message. The complete document is found on the Net.]
Through his ordinary life, he [St Joseph] accomplished something extraordinary in the eyes of God.
God looks at the heart (cf.1 Samuel 16:7), and in Saint Joseph he recognized the heart of a father, able to give and generate life in the midst of daily routines. Vocations have this same goal: to beget and renew lives every day. The Lord desires to shape the hearts of fathers and mothers: hearts that are open, capable of great initiatives, generous in self-giving, compassionate in comforting anxieties and steadfast in strengthening hopes. The priesthood and the consecrated life greatly need these qualities nowadays, in times marked by fragility but also by the sufferings due to the pandemic…
Saint Joseph suggests to us three key words for each individual’s vocation. The first is dream. Everyone dreams of finding fulfilment in life. We rightly nurture great hopes, lofty aspirations that ephemeral goals – like success, money and entertainment – cannot satisfy. If we were to ask people to express in one word their life’s dream, … the answer [would be]: “to be loved.” It is love that gives meaning to life… Indeed, we only have life if we give it; we truly possess it only if we generously give it away. Saint Joseph has much to tell us in this regard, because, through the dreams that God inspired in him, he made of his life a gift.
To read the entire article, click Subscribe
