Vocation: no spectators allowed

I love this Sunday's reading from Mark's gospel (1:29-39). It shows us that Jesus was a busy guy, doing what he was called to do. He went to synagogue to pray with his community, healed Simon Peter's mom in the afternoon, and cured people of illnesses and cast out demons later that evening. Then I'm guessing he snatched a few hours of sleep before getting up while it was still dark to converse with God in a deserted place before continuing his efforts to spread God's love. He lived his vocation, his God-given call to love and serve, to the fullest, and he encouraged his own disciples to do the same. They weren't allowed to be spectators very long before he sent them out to do as he did.

I think we all know what it is to be busy, but how often do we recognize our busy-ness as part of God's plan for us? Do we see it as our vocation, or is it just how life is? Are we living our vocation to the fullest, using all our gifts and talents the way God wants, or are we weekend spectators?

I don't know about you, but I often feel that, while I am doing my best to live my vocation during the week, balancing busyness with prayer, I am often relegated to being a spectator when it comes to my participation in church.

That's not the case at the Emmaus Inclusive Catholic Community I belong to, which continues to meet monthly even though we lost our Roman Catholic Woman Priest, Ruthie, to cancer on Easter Sunday last year (for a simple version of Ruthie's story, click here). Ruthie's vocation inspired us all to commit to the Emmaus community, to make it part of our own vocation, our God-given call to love and serve through a deeper participation in liturgy itself.

When Ruthie joined the heavenly Easter Celebrations a year ago, our Emmaus Community faced many questions -- the main one being, how will we continue without our Roman Catholic Woman Priest friend? Ruthie had tried to plan for her succession, but none of her community felt called to the priesthood as she was. So we had to come up with an alternate plan for our monthly Sunday gatherings. And what has happened is that we've all been called to live our own vocation to the priesthood of believers more deeply.

One of our group wrote a beautiful agape liturgy of thanksgiving. Agape is a Greek word referring to the love of God for us and our love for God, the highest kind of love that exists. So now we share a simple liturgy of the word (using Sunday's scriptures) and a liturgy of thanksgiving with unconsecrated bread and wine. I like to think that what we are doing is what the earliest Christians did in memory of Jesus; to tell the stories, break the bread, pour the wine, and celebrate our relationship with God and those God calls us to serve.

What I appreciate most is that our agape, while it incorporates basic traditional liturgical prayers, is much simpler than what happens in most Catholic churches on a Sunday. We use the Sunday readings, and one person offers a 'homily' that invites others to share as well. We pray the prayers of the faithful, asking God for the world's needs and our own. Before we break the bread and share the wine, we participate in a simple giving of thanks to God -- we each name those things and people in our lives for which we are grateful. We pray the Lord's prayer. No theological training or liturgical expertise is required for our prayer service -- anyone can 'preside,' and everyone else can respond. We take turns.

And it strikes me that perhaps this is what Jesus was trying to show us with his life -- that our God-given call to love and serve requires us all to use our gifts, and none of us should be held back from living our vocation because we aren't one specific gender or have a specific education. Each of us carries certain wisdom, gifts, and talents from our own lives, and we are meant to share them in community. Some of us like to sing, some like to preach, others bake delicious bread, and everyone has ideas about and experiences with the scriptures. We know our gathering is not a full mass, but it feels richer when we all actively share our own vocations through participating more fully in different aspects of the liturgy. No spectators allowed.

February has long been designated as Vocations Awareness month, and this year, I would like to challenge the Church to broaden its understanding of vocation, to do more to incorporate the priesthood of all believers into Sunday liturgies that could be far more participatory and much less a spectator sport. Present liturgy, while it holds a certain familiarity and comfort for many, allows for too much passive participation. Annie Dillard said we shouldn't wear hats to church, but crash helmets. Just think what might happen if the people of God were invited to step out of their pews, time-worn habits, and prayers to answer their God-given call to love and serve -- as Jesus did in the Gospels -- on Sunday mornings and beyond.

No spectators allowed, and maybe the world would change!

Happy Anniversary, Sister Jeannette!

When I met Sister Jeannette almost 30 years ago, I had several nuns in my life, all of them good women, so the title Sister told me that she was someone special, someone I could trust... and that has been the truth. My friend celebrated her 50th anniversary as one of the Filles de Jesus yesterday. She is a small woman with a big laugh, a wonderful sense of humour, and a heart as big as the world. Unfortunately, she and her kind are becoming really rare.

My youngest daughter, Julia, has always had a special friendship with Sister Jeannette, so we kind of invited ourselves to the Golden Jubilee mass, and once we were there, the woman being celebrated was so happy to see us that we got invited downstairs to the banquet, too. It was a lovely celebration of Sister Jeannette and Sister Frances, whom I didn't know. The two joined the fjs at the same time, and their celebration touched me deeply. I've known Sister Jeannette since I was a teenager, and thinking about all the young people she has touched (including my own daughters) and all the good work she's accomplished because she gave her life as a gift to God made me happy... and sad. Happy for her successful ministry over the last 50 years and the fact that I know her, and sad that my kids and grandkids may not have my many memories of good women like her, simply because there are so few women choosing religious life anymore.

But perhaps there's good reason for that. Perhaps people are finally waking up to the fact that it's not just sisters, priests, monks and ministers who are called by God. Every single one of us has a special call, and though I used to be one of those brainwashed Catholics who felt that those who were called to the priesthood or religious life were super-special in God's eyes and I was off the hook, now I know that's just not true. We are all called to do ordinary things with extraordinary love. So thinking one vocation more special than another is wrong-headed, and certainly not helpful in a world that needs every single person on the planet to use their gifts and to pull together to make God's love real. None of us are off the hook!

And I'm also sure that it's time for women in particular who want to commit themselves to God to have more than one way to do it. Women who felt called by God in Sister Jeannette's day had no choice except the convent... because the men in Rome who tightened up the rules about priesthood back in the Middle Ages were afraid to share the Church's power with anyone who wasn't a celibate male. These days, it would make more sense to me if women who hear God's call to ministry have the choice of deciding whether they want to join a religious community of women and/or to serve as a priest, like many Roman Catholic Women Priests do now.

Of course, none of this is to say that Sister Jeannette is not special. She definitely is, and I have always appreciated her faith and love and joy -- joy above all -- in my encounters with her. She's the kind of woman whose love for God makes everyone who meets her want to know God, too, and she's easier to talk with than many priests I know. The fact that she has been a faithful Fille de Jesus for 50 years when the institutional Church has done so little for religious women only impresses me with her perseverance in staying close to God (though I suspect she'd like to be a more radical feminist, she won't abandon her community).

I fully expect the Holy Spirit will see to it that there will always be good, faithful people like Sister Jeannette who will do the kinds of things she has done with her life, though perhaps someday, they will be free to live their vocations as they see fit. Perhaps they won't even need titles like Sister or Father.

But then my question is, when I first meet them, how will I know that the person I'm meeting is a Sister Jeannette kind of person??? I guess I'll know them by their actions and their love; St. Francis' saying will be my proof -- "Preach the Gospel; use words if necessary."

Sister Jeannette definitely doesn't need to use words.

Here's the song that ended her celebration -- one of my favourite hymns.