Vocation Sunday 2013

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In the fourth Sunday after Easter, known as Good Shepherd Sunday, we celebrate the Word Day of Prayer for Vocations. This year it has special relevance because it is the 50th anniversary since it began, and because it takes place in the fruitful and grace-filled context of the Year of Faith. It was the far – reaching pastoral and ecclesial vision of Pope Paul VI who proposed to the universal Church in 1964, the institution of the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. He defined it as a day of choral invocation to God the Father to continue to send workers for His Church. The Pope emphasized then that “the problem of a sufficient number of priests touches all the faithful, not only because on it depends the religious future of Christian society, but also because this problem is the precise and inexorable index of the vitality of faith and love of each parochial and diocesan community, and testifies to the moral holiness of Christian families. Where numerous vocations to the ecclesial and religious state blossom, there life is lived according to the Gospel with generosity”.
The theme this year, indicated previously by Benedict XVI, is the following: “Vocations – the Sign of Hope Founded on Faith”. Hope, a theme that is more than ever timely for our contemporary society, does not only look to the future, but sustains the present, and is based on God’s fidelity, on His love that questions the existence of every person. “It asks for a response as to what each one wants to do with their life, on what they are ready to play it out for its full realization”, Benedict XVI reminds us in his message. What would our life be like without this love? The personal response calls to those who have already discovered their own vocation as well as those who are searching for their life plan.

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