Vocations

I just read the article below and beneath it is the comment I wrote.  I walked away from this conversation for a while just to take a breather and check and see how I really felt about all of this and to see if I was in line with what I practice and teach.  Well,  I apparently feel pretty solid about how I see this topic because the comment spilled out of me. In all of these meetings about linking communities because there is a priest shortage, have any of us been afraid to speak about what really needs to be done in our church?  I don’t know and maybe. Perhaps we need to pull up our bootstraps and get to work because what needs to be done is that people need to be served. What this woman (who I am sure has taken a lickin’ because she had the temerity to believe in the mission of service) has done has been to remind me that this fight is worth having.This is not about equal rights to me, I have always felt equal, (color me arrogant?) it is about letting the seed of our past fall and die so that something new and wonderful and timely can happen.  It is about  the kingdom of God coming and having a better chance at it when everyone is on board.  It is about believing that after going through the appropriate paces we can all speak with some authority because God dwells in every heart.  It is about everyone understanding that God has blessed us with “charisms” and we are to use them.  It is about healing the Body of Christ and about the resurrection of our church. But mostly, for me, it is about being like Mary, who only through her knowledge of scripture and her inner wisdom was able to understand in all the confusion of the moment that God was in charge and that God keeps his promises…always.Ah, to be more like Mary.The Catholic Church Needs Women PriestsComment:  

We have been praying for vocations to the priesthood since I was a child.  I am at the edge edge of 49, I will not pray for vocations anymore. Instead I pray for the open heart that can see when God is answering our prayers.  I pray for the Holy Spirit to help our institution, for the sake of the whole body, to employ courage and wisdom in seeing that our prayers have been answered.  What Jesus intended, in my very humble opinion, was for people to be cared for and tended to and that it really didn’t matter who got it done.  In his time the power was only in the hands of men but that is not the case any more, and I am convinced that it was never intended to be or the chain of events in the history of women’s rights would have never happened.  We must believe enough in God’s promise for all of humanity to go outside our own comfort zone


What do you think?