Blessed John Henry Newman answers Mr Badger’s question about which part of the reality of God we are meant to reflect:
God has created me to do him some definite service:
He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another.I have my mission – I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.
Somehow I am necessary for his purposes.
I have a great part in his work; I am a link in the chain, a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for nothing.I shall do good. I shall do his work: I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I but keep his commandments and serve him in my calling.
WordPress informs me that this is post number 500. Just sayin’
Don’t let the bastards grind you down they say. And after five hundred posts we still haven’t ground you down. Thank goodness. Keep it up and congratulations!
Thank you.
I don’t know that the great Newman has answered my question. The quotation is a statement of faith I suppose, and it is a faith that is a spur to action, and to the good life. But the sense of vocation is the thing is it not? It is the belief that he has been assigned a purpose not the fact of the matter either way that drives him. Chris has said that in the extraordinary lives of the saints we see evidence for the faith. That makes me think of a young chef who has been promised that the great and famous chef he most admires will be in tonight to taste his dish. Think of the intensity and passion he will draw on, and the inner resources he will discover. But suppose the great chef was never coming, had never heard of him, — the belief is the thing.
Imagine that your young chef believes that the great and famous chef travels incognito from restaurant to restaurant, so that any night might be the night he comes. His belief drives him night after night, causing him to surpass himself. The intensity and passion you speak of make his dishes sought after, and people begin to trek, line up, book months ahead, to eat at his restaurant. In time, he becomes himself the great and famous chef he has it in him to be.
Then, perhaps, in the twilight of his career, he learns that the story of his hero’s anonymous visits was built out of whole cloth. It was, in fact, in the common sense of the word, a myth. Do you think he will regret the belief that has given him the life he most wanted?
But the sense of vocation is the thing is it not? It is the belief that he has been assigned a purpose not the fact of the matter either way that drives him.
Not really.
The fact of the matter is that if one steps up to the plate and lives one’s vocation then the fact of the matter is that one has been assigned that vocation.
Perhaps that is easiest seen in one’s vocation to be the spouse of one’s husband/wife.
God Bless
Jerry is the same person as Mr Badger. 🙂
The fact of the matter is that if one steps up to the plate and lives one’s vocation then the fact of the matter is that one has been assigned that vocation.
Well ok then, that sure cleared things up for me.