Ask any Christian to name some religious obligations, and you will likely hear “going to church on Sunday” high on the list. Beyond that fundamental “duty,” many people will speak of the important duties to pray regularly; to receive the sacraments appropriate to each person’s state of life; to keep and to respect the Ten Commandments and the disciplinary traditions of the Church; to offer appropriate financial support to the ministries of the Church.

A smaller number of people might indicate a particularly significant Christian duty – the one greatest Commandment – that of loving God and one’s neighbor as oneself.  Finally, an even smaller number might mention the prophetic call, and duty, to do justice and to live in peace.

But what about the call to become the person God created each of us to be?  What about fulfilling our purpose and potential, what used to be identified as discovering our vocation?  It’s not the simple shell game we once imagined it was: that God has hidden a special mission in each of our hearts and it is up to us to uncover and enact it.

This sounds too much like predestination.  Also, it also could be an excuse to imagine that only few of us are called to heroic deeds, great sacrifices, or remarkable holiness, while the rest of us will find only simple, normal lives assigned to us.

What is more consistent with what the Bible says, is that each one of us, no matter how mundane and tedious our lives might seem, has the potential for great and surprising things. Hidden in every young shepherd boy could be a king, and every teenage girl might bring Christ into the world.

Any thief could buy his way into Paradise at the eleventh hour with a single act of kindness. A very old couple might well be the parents of a new and blessed nation, even though their lives seem almost over. A forsaken single mother could encounter an angel and through that experience learn that God sees and knows her, and is preparing a way for her and her rejected child.

It would not be wrong to say that we have a religious and human obligation to believe these things, and to bring these divine surprises to life within us.

Prepare the Word and Lloyd Baugh, S.J.