‘You did not choose me, no I choose you and I commissioned you to go out and bear fruit, fruit that will last’ (John 15:16).
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you came to birth I consecrated you” prior to being told “You must go to all to whom I send you” (Jer. 1:4-7).
“I know who it is in whom I have placed my trust” (2 Tim. 1:12)
‘He called to him those he desired and they came to him’ (Mark 3:13).
“God has created my heart only for himself. He asks me to give it to him that he may make it happy”.
St John Vianney
“Only in friendship with Christ is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in his friendship do we experience beauty and liberation”.
Pope Benedict XVI, Opening Homily as pope.
“God has created me to do him some definitive service; he has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission.”
St John Henry Newman
“I have done what is mine to do; may Christ teach you what is yours to do” St Francis of Assisi (From Thomas of Celano, First Life of St. Francis, 214).
‘Convinced of Christ: yes, I feel the need to proclaim him, I cannot keep silent. «Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!» (1 Cor. 9: 16). I am sent by him, by Christ himself, to do this. I am an apostle, I am a witness. The more distant the goal, the more difficult my mission the more pressing is the love that urges me to it (Cf. 2 Cor. 5: 13). I must bear witness to his name: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. 16: 16). Pope Paul VI, Manila, 29 November 1970.
‘The call of God is one of the most beautiful things on earth. Think of the interweaving of divine and human love involved in a vocation. When God calls us to a particular way of life, he looks on us with his love; the moment we become aware of it a new life begins for us. Even before we were born, God was looking at us and loving us in the setting he had always planned for us, In fact, he brought us into being to put his plan for us into operation…
Anyone who hears his call often feels fear, and even doubts or terror, but when he discovers its implications, he also feels joy. So the most beautiful moment is not when a person hears the call, but when he says ‘yes’ making God’s call real, his will clinging to God’s. It is an allegiance for life, a continual ‘yes’ to God who repeats the invitation forever’.
Pasquali Forest.