Mass for Vocations - Report

On Tuesday last the annual Mass for vocations to the Religious life within our beloved Order was celebrated by Father Gary Dench, of the Cathedral in Brentwood. We are deeply indebted to him for his generosity, and grateful for his keen grasp of the singular religious life of our Order. We give below the text of his formative and inspiring homily.

Acts: 8:14-17; John 14:23-31

ONE OF THE MARKS of recent conversations about vocations, whether that is to the Priesthood, to Religious Life, or Marriage, is one of crisis or shortage. We talk about a lack of vocations to the priesthood. A crisis in marriage. Religious orders are desperate for vocations. And I don’t want to minimise the urgency we face in any of these callings. Fewer people are getting married. Fewer men of solid faith are putting themselves forward for ordination as priests and fewer men and women are offering themselves to live the Religious Life. The Order of Malta faces similar challenges. With fewer than forty knights of justice, it is the time to pray and to pray ardently.

But I want to move beyond the language of crisis and I want to move beyond numbers. It’s worth reminding ourselves, and especially in the West where secularisation has led the Christian faithful to live in a semi-permanent state of ecclesiastical crisis and decline, it’s worth reminding ourselves that we have no victory win. Christ has accomplished that already.

That should not lead us to become complacent either. It should serve to give us hope and courage. Hope in the promises of God for his Church. And courage as we seek to serve him in this life, in order that we may be forever happy with him in the next.

Each of us is called to do God’s will.

Each of us called to do his will in the particular way he plans for us to.

In that, one might say that each of us has the same vocation. In that, one might also say that each of us has a radically different vocation.

This evening we pray that we and others may have the courage to respond to the Lord’s call in our own lives, wherever that may lead us, and that this call may also be clearly discerned.

Some of us, of course, have discerned that call, and that vocation has been accepted and confirmed by the Church formally. Yes, your priests but, above all, your professed, have all responded to the Lord’s call. And they still need prayers to live out that vocation faithfully.

This is necessary for the professed because they seek to live in a more way. Religious life has long been associated with the way of perfection. This brings many graces and consolations but it is not without the Cross. Through the profession of vows of poverty, chastity and obedience the Knights of Justice seek to follow Christ more closely and more intimately by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so that they may be totally dedicated to God, so that they truly may become living sacrifices, modelling themselves on Him who offered Himself as a Sacrifice upon the Cross.

This is for their own salvation which, like all of us, and like St Paul, they work out with fear and trembling, but also for the building up of the Kingdom of God, in the service of the Church which confirms these vows, and so that in their lives of prayer and service they may ‘foretell the Heavenly glory of the world that is to come.’

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 et obsequium 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.

And I say ‘our’ because I feel very much a part of the order’s extended family.

This charism unites all members of the order, a charism particular to the Order of Malta itself, but which is shared by all members, whatever their grade.

A thousand year old heritage which remains relevant, and needed, today.

Blessed Gerard assured us that this enterprise will last forever, ‘because the soil in which it is rooted is the misery of the world, and – if it should please God – there will always be those who will labour to diminish the suffering and make the misery more endurable.’

In this sense, the Order has plenty of vocations. Nearly 13,000 knights and dames, living out their vocation, and sharing in the one charism of an order which continues to flourish and alleviate suffering across our world.

And while all share in this one charism, there are some called to live it in its purest and most radical form through the profession of the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

To live that charism with greater intensity and to seek to model more fully their lives after the manner of the Apostles.

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.

Yes, the order is abounding with vocations. And yet perhaps, among those, there are still others whom the Lord is calling to live out that same vocation, but in a more intense way through the order’s Religious Life.

May the Holy Spirit continue to pour his gifts into the hearts of those who need them.

May the prayers of Our Lady of Philermo assist those called in finding the courage to respond to the Lord’s call.