Reforming ("week" 1), Our Human Vocation (step 2), session 3

Up until now I have just used the "week" number in my post title, but this first phase ("week" in the traditional terminology for the Spiritual Exercies) and the subsequent ones also have a title or a focus into which each of the named steps fits. Since the first phase is called Reforming, so I presume that each step will deal with some aspect of allowing God to reform our lives out of our self-centered tendencies and into his greater will for us.

The first step of this process was recognizing that we need to listen actively to God's voice, that we must choose to hear his often quiet leading amid the cacophony of this world. The second cannot come before the first: how are we to hear our vocation to respond to God's call rather than the world's if we do not first accustom ourselves to listen for him?

We tend to think of our specific vocation for a particular station in life, as a priest, permanent deacon, religious, single lay person or married person. But this Step reminds us that

God creates every man and woman out of love and for the same human vocation: to love and praise God with their existence and serve him with reverence. Living this way they will find the fulfillment of their life and collaborate in their salvation and that of all humankind. - the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, “Principle and Foundation”

It is in this long overdue context that I continue along this journey.

Listen to me, O coastlands, and hearken, you peoples from afar. The LORD called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. - Is 49, 1

Is it not true for each of us that the Lord has called us into our place in him from before we were born? God is not surprised by my struggles, and he has an answer for them, if I will but seek his will instead of insisting upon my own.

But Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me."
"Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have graven you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me." - Is 49, 14b-16

We are not abandoned by the Lord. No matter how alone we may feel, God is ever with us. His greatness and glory I shall proclaim!