Vocation and the Paschal Mystery

Your primary vocation is become a human being. Not just any human being, but the human being God created you to be. You are, afterall, created in the image and likeness of God. So am I. My primary vocation, then, is to be Kristina Marie DeNeve. At his talk at Santa Clara University last month, Fr. Michael Himes suggested that the book title, The Imitation of Christ is perhaps the most misleading title in all of Christian history. God doesn’t want another Jesus Christ. He already created (ok, begat) a perfectly fine Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ. No, God wants Christians, and all human beings, to become the persons he created us to be. Jesus was to be Jesus. Michael Himes is to be Michael Himes. I am to be Kristina. You are to be you.

In Genesis, by the time humans are created “in the image and likeness of God” we know two things about God. God speaks and God creates. For us to be created in the image and likeness of God, at the very least, suggests that we share God’s ability to speak and especially to create good out of chaos. And, thanks to revelation throughout the rest of Scripture, we further come to learn, “God is love.” 1 Jn 4:8. But, not just any love - the Greek culture had seven words to connote love. God is “agape,” or pure self-gift. Therefore, to be human, to be created in the image and likeness of God, has something to do with talking, creating, and giving of ourselves freely and in totality.

I mention this now as a context for moving into the Paschal Mystery of the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As Christians, we believe that the Paschal Mystery points to what it means to be a human being, and simultaneously, to be the fullest embodiment of God made flesh. “At the moment of death, Jesus is most clearly himself and therefore most clearly the revelation of who God is; it is the moment when Jesus is most clearly, most perfectly who he is” (Michael Himes, Doing the Truth in Love).

Jesus shows you and me how to know and live our vocation – it is by freely giving ourselves, self-gift, agape. “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Mt 16:25 If you give yourself away, you will find yourself and also, everlasting life. To “find” your vocation, give your very self away. To “find” out who you are, who God created you to be, what you are meant to do with your life, give yourself away. Freely. Truly. Clearly.

My prayer for you this Easter Triduum is that you enter more fully into the Paschal Mystery, discovering more who God is and who God created you to be.