April 27, 2015
Yesterday was the Annual “World Day of Prayer for Vocations.” Blessed Paul VI first instituted this “special event in 1963, appropriately assigning it to the Sunday in the Easter season when the Gospel account of Jesus the Good Shepherd is read. Today the entire Church associates itself with Our Lord’s command to pray for vocations: “Pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:38; Luke 10:2).
Conscious of the Church’s pressing need both to shepherd the faithful and to reach out as missionaries to evangelize the secular world, the Church concentrates our attention on vocations especially to the ordained ministries (the priesthood and the diaconate), and also to institutes of consecrated life in all its forms (male and female religious communities, both contemplative and active), to societies of apostolic life (like the Paulist Fathers), and to secular institutes.
The end of June will mark the termination of just over a century of Paulist ministry at St. Peter’s parish in Toronto. Already in the 19th and well into the 20th century, the Paulist Fathers conducted parish missions in several Canadian provinces. In addition, from 1965 through 1972, the Paulist Fathers also had a presence in Vancouver, and from 1973 through 1990 in Montreal. The imminent Paulist departure from Toronto signals the end of Paulist ministry in Canada, which makes this withdrawal particularly poignant. (It is additionally so for me personally, since I was ordained a priest at St. Peter’s Church in Toronto and served my first priestly assignment there at that parish.)
I mention all of this because withdrawals from parishes and other ministries to which we as a community have long been committed are one of the most obvious consequences of insufficient vocations. Yet it was not that long ago that things looked different. The year I entered the Paulist novitiate in 1981 represented the last significant expansion of Paulist ministry to a new city, to a parish in Seattle where we served for just eight years before departing from there in the first of a series of withdrawals from several Paulist foundations. That means I can personally remember when we were still seeking to expand in response to new evangelizing opportunities and pastoral challenges, and I have personally witnessed what the decline in vocations has done to the present and future prospects of the Church in the United States for which Father Isaac Hecker held out so much hope.
The catastrophic decline in vocations to the priesthood and religious community life in recent decades is undoubtedly due to many factors. And we all understand that not all problems can be solved, and certainly not easily or quickly. Yet, for religious communities to continue their mission in the modern world – indeed, for the Church to continue its mission in the United States – there is no getting around the need to encourage, foster and support in every possible way a significant increase in the number of men and women committing themselves to full-time ministry in the Church as priests and religious. This observance is intended to remind us all of this basic need and to challenge each of us to respond in prayer and action.
Paulist Prayer for Vocations
Almighty and ever faithful God, you spoke your Word to the world in your Son, Jesus Christ, and commissioned St. Paul to bring your word to all nations and to the ends of the earth. Your Spirit led Servant of God Isaac Hecker to proclaim your word in North America using tools of the modern age.
We ask you to call new missionaries in the line of St. Paul and Father Hecker.
May they burn with passion to give the Gospel a voice so that all may know the mystery of your love. May they follow the Lord Jesus with the zeal of St. Paul and Father Hecker as they carry on the mission of the Paulist Community.
In the power of your Holy Spirit, we ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.