Mass for Vocations

Our May monthly conventual Mass was celebrated as a votive Mass of the Holy Spirit for vocations to our Order, and especially vocations to the Professed life within the Order. The Prelate in his allocution to chaplains of the Order in Lourdes particularly encouraged all members to pray for this intention.

Mass was celebrated by our chaplain Fr Christopher Colven, who preached beautifully on the fruitful effects of the Holy Spirit, who, dwelling within, cries out ‘Abba, Father’, bringing us within the living love of the Holy Trinity.

We can reflect also on the words of Fr Gary Dench, who, giving one of his spiritual conferences during one of our recent Days of Recollection, said this:

“Centuries before the Second Vatican Council spoke of the universal call to holiness, the order provided the means and opportunity by which men and women could pursue that holiness through the Order’s particular charism. All members of the order participate in the same charism, the tuitio fidei etobsequium pauperum, a charism lived out with fuller intensity by the professed. And it is, of course, a lay order, by charism, spirituality and governance, something to be protected and treasured.

For centuries the eight pointed cross of the Order of Malta has symbolised the courageous living out of the Beatitudes, testifying to the faith handed down by the Apostles, and committed to easing the suffering and the hardship of our lords the poor and the sick. This was the case for the early members of the order who, ‘searching for a tangible response to the love of Christ. . . recognised and served the Lord in the sick pilgrims to the Holy Land.’ It remains the case in the chaos of our own world.

This, it seems to me, is the vocation to be a knight or dame of the order. A vocation lived out by thousands of men and women across the world, and for a thousand years. A vocation recognised as such by the law of the Church and the Constitution.

To defend the faith and to serve the poor.

To live out what is set before us by Christ in the way that the order allows us to do and, in doing so, find the sanctification of our own lives." […]

It is the life of the professed which helps to provide direction to the charism of the order, and to link the order’s work with its religious identify. To ground its works of charity, in prayer and in contemplation, to root them in the love of God and love of neighbour.

Pope Benedict, in his address to members of the order ten years ago, praised the Order’s great achievements, its fine history, its heritage and its patrimony.

And he reminded all those involved with the order’s work and charism, that it is the evangelical counsels which are the core of the Order’s life.

These counsels are the vows made by the professed. Poverty connects us with those we serve and with Christ. It connects with Our Lord, and our lords. Chastity focuses the mind on the Kingdom of Heaven. Obedience with the freedom of the Christian soul to choose only what is good, and to forsake ourselves for love of God and neighbour. It is in the lives of the professed we might see this lived more radically, so that all might generously share in it.”

Please remember this intention in your prayers, and, if you are pondering a vocation to the lay religious life, please contact us to explore what you may be able to find in our Order.

Let us pray: O God, who sent the power of the Gospel as a leaven unto the world, rouse up new recruits in Thy Church in the spirit of the Military Order of Jerusalem to serve Thee by charity towards the sick and poor and to confess without flinching Thy Holy Name. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who lives and reigns with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.