What is your calling?
On May 8, 1898, a 20-year-old young man joined his fellow law student undergrads at the University of Malta in paying homage to Our Lady of Pompeii, venerated in the Jesuits’ church just opposite the old University in Valletta. During that moment of prayer, this man, Joseph De Piro, son of Maltese nobility, felt he needed to do something different with his life in response to a deeper calling. He quit the law course, and went on to become a priest, and later the founder of the Missionary Society of St Paul. Each year, the MSSP celebrates this moment of the founder’s calling as a foundational moment which ultimately led to the birth of the Society in 1910.
It is one thing to celebrate someone’s great calling, another to actually reflect on your own. What is your calling? We live in a particular moment in history where meaninglessness and disillusionment are rampant. Whether through the collapse of belief in major institutions – from politics to the Church – which gave us a sense of belonging, to a more personal sense of angst and loss, it seems we struggle to name and find our calling today.
Add to this a deeper fear of callings that imply long-term commitments, such as marriage and the priesthood, and you end up with a flotsam of ideas, with many people drifting along meaninglessly, driven only by what is immediately attractive.
The recent articles highlighting the low numbers of seminarians in Malta and Gozo shone a spotlight on religious vocations and how these callings seem to have become more difficult. Speaking of this phenomenon in the context of marriage, Pope Francis notes that today, there are those who say that marriage is out of fashion... “They say that it is not worth making a lifelong commitment, making a definitive decision, ‘for ever’, because we do not know what tomorrow will bring. I ask you, instead, to be revolutionaries, I ask you to swim against the tide; yes, I am asking you to rebel against this culture that sees everything as temporary and that ultimately believes you are incapable of responsibility, that believes you are incapable of true love”.
The fear of committing to a cause, to respond to a calling, is not exclusive to young adults. In the Gospels, people like Nicodemus represent all those who continue to seek their true calling. This holds true also for older people in our society. Pope Francis is similarly scathing in his analysis of a culture that sees the very young and the very old as dispensable, as people with no purpose or meaning: “Old age, is where wisdom is woven, which in turn illuminates the lives of younger generations and the entire community.”
Irrespective of age, what do I feel called to? The Servant of God De Piro made his the words of the Gospel “Master, I will follow you wherever you go”. His was a sense of purpose, mission and outreach which gave meaning to his life and his followers. Even in this age of influencers and multiple online voices, the question becomes more strident: what do I feel I have been really called to? What am I really, really passionate about in my life? The answer to that question might indicate a deeper call, which is still unfolding like the flowers of spring.
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