Bishop celebrates Vocation Sunday during televised Mass
BISHOP Denis Brennan celebrated a televised mass in Dublin recently to celebrate Vocations Sunday.
The mass which was celebrated in the RTE studios in Dublin Mass featured music from the choir from the National Centre for Liturgy, Maynooth. It was attended by a number of priests, seminarians, religious and friends.
In his sermon Bishop Brennan who is a member of the Bishops’ Council for Vocations said Vocations Sunday is often known as Good Shepard Sunday, ‘a day when the Church asks us to reflect and pray about vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life’.
He went on to say it is important to appreciate and thank those who have already heard the call for a vocation and answered the call.
‘Some years ago a little book came out called Letters to a Young Priest. It was written by a German priest who some years earlier had left the ministry. Looking back now he could see clearly what he could not see at the time. He could see that he had an inferiority complex about his priesthood.
‘He was ministering in an affluent, largely secular society. All his contemporaries were making their mark in business and the professions and he seemed to be going nowhere.
He wrote: ‘our society differs from Saint Paul’s time in that external persecution is rare. Yet the priest of today can still suffer deeply ... for some ... his particular office and service are regarded as superfluous; there are those who look upon him as a species of pious fool ... I hope, he says, ‘you are prepared for this’.’
‘Looking back now he can see that he was allowing the world to define his vocation. He wrote the book to help those in ministry now who might feel as he felt then.
‘Addressing priests he wrote, ‘ we greatly need you to live your particular form of life; it accompanies the Word you preach and, indeed prepares the way for it. We need that Word for it has the power to change us, to change the world’.
Bishop Brennan went on to say: ‘He references what he calls ‘ the anguished loss of meaning’ that many people experience today. ‘By living as you do,’ he says to priests ‘you sustain a world of meaning for many people’.’
‘A few years ago a French painter called Dubuffet died. He described his approach to his work in this way, ‘in my paintings’, he said, ‘I try to reveal the beauty of that which convention regards as negative. I try ardently to celebrate scorned values.’
‘I believe these words could well be applied to priesthood and religious life today, many of the values we celebrate and represent are looked upon by the conventional wisdom of our time as scorned values.
‘ This realisation is difficult for priests and religious to accept. This is where our vocational choice becomes very personal, perhaps even painful. This is where the Gospel engages with the world. This is in Bonhoeffer’s phrase ‘ the cost of discipleship’.
‘On this, Good Shepherd Sunday, I salute and thank priests and religious everywhere for what you do, and for what you are, and I pray that you will continue to joyfully celebrate the values which you love and represent in your life and ministry.’
The mass is also available to view on the RTE Player for the coming days.