Father Peter Coughlin – A Call to Love
The Lord is Present
God is everywhere. God is present, living in you and me. When I was born I owed God “thanks” for the gift of life. When I was baptized I owed God ‘love” because he made me his child by adoption, filling me with his love and making me an heir to the kingdom of heaven.
The Lord calls each of us to serve him through a particular calling in a vocation tailored to our particular talents and gifts and our spirituality. Our call may be to marriage or the single state of life, to holy orders or the consecrated life. We follow our particular calling or vocation through love, loving God with the totality of our being and sharing that love with all those entrusted to our care and those who in any way are part of our daily life.
Living within me is the presence of the Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit who guides me and leads me on the journey through life. The love of the Lord fills me and works through me to draw people to come to know and love the Lord. God is not at a distance. He is very near, in my heart, my mind, on my lips. With St. Paul we are continually moving from glory to glory because Christ lives in us. He never leaves us, never stops loving us. He is constant, his love never fails, is always seeking intimacy with us. The more room we make for the Lord in our life the more aware we become of his presence with us, within us.
Our vocational call is built on love and the more the love increases the stronger the call and the Lord’s presence within. People don’t fall in and out of love. They can stop loving but the Lord never stops loving, no matter how far we turn away from him. The Lord is always ready to forgive when we repent, ready to restore us to his favour and to lead us closer and closer in the love he has for us.
Really, the vocational call each of us have, even though it may be different from one another, is the call to love, to be great lovers who spend time with the Lord, communicating intimately with him. This is our first priority- to love and worship the Lord- to listen to him- serve him in our brothers and sisters- to produce the fruits of love- peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, joy, all the good fruit of the Spirit.
Published with permission:
The Bread of Life
May/June 2018
ISSN No. 0821-168X. All Rights Reserved.
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