Monday, January 12, 2009

Vocation Awareness Week

In case you didn't hear about it yesterday, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord (the day of Our Lord's own vocational "confirmation") opened Vocation Awareness Week. Mom and I went to St. Anne's yesterday, and the whole assembly prayed a vocation prayer after Communion. I thought it was pretty ingenious that the parish pasted clear plastic holders in all the hymnals so that the prayer card could be kept there and presumably changed as various seasons introduce new prayer intentions.
Today's first-day-of-Ordinary-Time Gospel is also a "vocational" Gospel: the call of Peter and Andrew, James and John. What is impressive is that in Mark's telling, Jesus doesn't really call these men to "do" something: he called them to "follow" him. To keep their eyes on him. To live for him.
In the book of Revelation, John wrote of those who "follow the Lamb wherever he goes." Is that what Mark is saying, too?

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