Casey Cole, OFM

Francis never wanted anyone to follow him, he wanted them to follow the one he followed. “The Lord has shown me what is mine to do. May he show you what is yours.” In this humility, we realize that it is not our strength, our ingenuity, our love, or our care that is going to shape the world. It is Jesus that the world needs, working through us. The world does not need us. It needs someone who will bring it Jesus. Thank God. Because, really, we could never do anything well on our own. As hard as we try and no matter the intentions we have, the truth of the matter is that sometimes we fail.

While a vocation does bring us joy and should be something that we are good at, it is not primarily concerned with either of these things. As the word indicates, a vocation—from the Latin vocare, “to call”—is something that comes from outside and for the sake of something other than ourselves.

Maybe what the world needs is more Franciscans. More people to live with the radical love of Saint Francis, to leave everything behind and “rebuild” the Church with humility and joy. In consecrated vowed life, cloistered contemplative life, and even in married secular life, the Franciscan charism has found a home in hundreds of thousands of people over the years. Maybe now is time for another rebirth of that charism. If  we are to be followers and imitators of Saint Francis, then the thing we need above all is the humility to know that people do not need us: They need Jesus.

We can never know who or what God is going to use to teach us something new. If we truly want to build up the kingdom of God, we must have the eyes and ears of that kingdom, and the humility to accept that we do not always have the answer. If what we do allows us to do that, we might be well on our way to a vocation. 

— from the book Called: What Happens After Saying Yes to God

In its fullness, prayer is an encounter with God that transforms the way we see and interact with the world. As so many saints have suggested, it is like a bright light that reveals what we otherwise do not see.

With a life in Jesus as our foundation, God’s call to us and our ultimate purpose in life tend to look very different. Thinking less about the decisions themselves and more about the life those decisions effect, we realize that what matters most to God is ultimately not what we choose but the amount of love that those decisions create in our lives; where we go to school, what we do for a living, and our familial life matters to God only to the extent that what we choose enables us to live as Christ-like as we can.

Against the values of the world, Jesus gave up his power in heaven to live as a poor outcast on earth. Loving his people as a shepherd loves his sheep, he led with mercy over judgment, justice over greed, reconciliation over exclusion, and humble service over heavy demands. He associated with the weak and the lowly while criticizing the rich and haughty, announcing a kingdom turned upside down in which the last shall be first and the first shall be last. In his final act of humility, he laid down his life so that others might live, telling his disciples to do the same.