Last week, at our Faith-CAFÉ, we spoke of the danger of reducing vocation to simply the question of “state of life” or “the work I do”, of giving priority to doing over being. This idea – that “what I DO with my life must follow from who I AM” – is expressed in a maxim attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas: agere sequitur esse, action flows from being. So the question remains” Who am I? By what name does God call me? How do I listen for the inner voice which reveals my best self, and yet is also far more than myself? In Psalm 139, we learn that even before we were formed in the womb, God has searched our heart and knows our name. There are so many voices telling us who we are, what we should be, what we should do with our lives, where we should invest ourselves. Which one will we follow?

This learning to listen and respond is a process. For most of us, it does not happen all at once, with dramatic visions and voices. God speaks through the ordinary events of my daily life: families, jobs, relationships; challenges, disappointments, successes, failures; in the books we read, the movies we watch, the websites we visit, the songs which won't leave our heads. In this regard, it is often useful to have someone – a friend or mentor, a teacher or spiritual guide – who can help us in the task of listening to and honouring that deeper self, and to translating that into a meaningful investment of our life. But ultimately, I don’t just sit down and “figure it out”; I allow God, in the silence of my hearts, to reveal my name to me.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus asks two would-be disciples: "What are you looking for?" Their response indicates a desire not just for a teaching, but a relationship: "Master, where do you live?" So Jesus responds simply: "Come and see." (John 1:38-39) They came, they saw, and they spent the day … and the next … and the next after that! From this time spent together, as friends getting to know one another, the foundations were laid for their life as disciples. They came to know Jesus of Nazareth not only as teacher and mentor, but as Saviour, as One who came "that they might have life, and have it in abundance." (John 10:10) Out of that relationship, out of that experience of abundant life, the first disciples of Jesus joyfully embraced as their primary mission to share the Good News of the life and teaching, the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, with "all the nations."

What about you? What is the name by which God has called you? Where do you feel God's pleasure? How have you been gifted, and how are you sharing your gift with the world? Where do your deepest desires and the needs and hungers of your world meet? Pay attention: for this is where you discover your mission in life, your personal vocation, God’s name for you.