Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling

See also: Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling 2 for info about the hymn

A friend of mine once said “There must be something really powerful in feeling that you have discovered what God wants you to be doing with your life and living that life fully and unapologetically.” These are very powerful words. Satisfaction in life should boil down to one thing Vocation. God creates each of us to love and to serve him, He has laid out his “Golden Path” for us, each of us, having the courage to step onto that path and follow it to the end frees us to find honest joy.

This Lent I am reading St. Therese, Story of a Soul, for much of my life I have struggled with the idea that I should be successful in the world’s notion of success, that somehow I need to do more and be more. I am learning slowly and painfully that I need to trust more and be little and follow quietly in my path. I don’t care right now in this time and place if anyone outside the sphere of my family and friends knows my name or when I die if the world mourns my passing. I will be content if I raise godly men and women from the children I have been entrusted, if I do good work, if I love my husband. Those things are my vocation, my role and the end and beginning of my happiness. It is a small path, a little house, a simple garden, but it is crowded with joy and lovely things that Christ is waiting for me to take pleasure in.

Speaking of Vocation, The Anchoress has a link to something joyful. The Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist started ten years ago with four sisters. They now number seventy with an average age of twenty-eight. They made the television. I wish, on occasion, that I had that calling. Though it is not mine I respect it very much. As others before me have observed those Orders who have kept their habits, their poverty, the life of obedience are the ones that have survived. They are the ones currently growing. The “Elvis style nuns” are dieing off – quite literally. These nuns are cool, and traditional, and alive.