What is a vocation? Literally, the word means ‘calling’. As Christians, our first and most important calling is to holiness. Through our baptism, we are given a share in the life of the Holy Trinity, made children of God. The whole of our life is meant to be a living out of this vocation – nothing we achieve in worldly terms, however great, has any lasting significance if this call to holiness is neglected, and similarly, even the gravest disasters in life are of little weight, so long as we never abandon the struggle to become saints.

However, in addition to this universal call to holiness, God also has a particular vocation for each and every one of us – a path of life through which we are to gain fulfilment and purpose. Discovering this particular vocation can only be achieved with the assistance of the Holy Spirit.

There are four principal versions in the Christian life – to marriage, priesthood, the religious or consecrated life and the single state. Very often, in thinking of ‘vocation’, as we do annually on this ‘Vocations Sunday’, we tend to focus on vocations to the priestly life. To some extent this is very natural – without priests, and the sacramental ministry they offer, no authentic Christian life can be had: the Church would simply wither and die. All other vocations depend in this way on the priestly vocation. Yet, within the mystical Body of Christ, every part has a vital part to play – we cannot afford to neglect any calling. Without marriage, for instance, how would future priests be born? So, while we rightly ask God in a special way for more priests in the Church, we also need to pray that all Christians find the vocation God has planned for them – and above all must pray that none of us neglect that fundamental calling to holiness which all other vocations are meant to serve.

On 15th March, 3 members of our Social Action (Justice & Peace) group walked from St Joseph’s to Box Hill, to raise money for our Lenten Charities.

Click here to read a short report from their adventure!

The appearance of the Passion veiling this weekend signals a more intense period of preparation for the celebration of Easter. The final fortnight of the Lenten season – Passiontide – is a time to focues more single-mindedly on the greatest mysteries of our faith.

The word ‘passion’ as applied to Our Lord carries a double meaning. In ordinary language ‘passion’ is often synonymous with ‘love’, which is the hallmark of Christianity. Jesus commands us at the Last Supper: “Love one another, as I have loved you“. But in its origins ‘passion’ springs from the Latin word ‘passio’, meaning ‘suffering’. To suffer one someone else’s behalf is the greatest test of love. In Jesus’s words: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends“. On the Cross, Jesus proves just how great his love for us is, offering his own life as the ransom for our sins.

In turn Christians are called to offer ‘compassion’ to those most in need. Again, ‘compassion’ has a double meaning. Often, it is taken to signify kindness, sympathy, practical assistance given to the needy. All this can certainly be implied, but at a deeper level to be ‘com-passionate‘ literally means ‘to suffer with’. The followers of Christ are not called to a sort of detached benevolence but to something more – to see Christ in those who suffer, and to sacrifice our own convenience to serve them. This is difficult, and flies in the face of wordly wisdom: it is much easier to drop a few coins in a collection box than to spend half-an-hour with someone sick, crotchety and bad-tempered. But the love we are called to is a costly love.

For this reason let us make the most of this last fortnight before Easter. Let us ‘draw a veil’ over the many things that distract us from truly following Jesus Christ, and contemplate the challenging words of the Gospel today: “Anyone who loves his life loses it; anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for the eternal life“.

Following on from last week…

Pope Benedict’s defence of the Catholic belief that condoms are an inadequate response to the AIDS epidemic has found support in some unexpected quarters. Edward C Green, Director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Centre of Population and Development Studies (a prestigious secular institution) told reporters:

the best evidence we have supports the Pope’s comments

adding

there is a consistent association shown by our best studies … between greater availability and use of condoms and higher (not lower) HIV – infection rates.

Green’s comments were made in an interview with the (secular) American journal National Review Online.

The National Catholic Bioethics Center of Philadelphia, USA, also carries the following story on its website:

An exhaustive review of the impact of condom promotion on actual HIV transmission in the developing world concluded that condoms have not been responsible for turning around any of the severe African epidemics. This rigorous study was originally commissioned by UNAIDS [the joint United Nations programme on HIV/AIDS], and concluded by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco. Instead of welcoming the findings, and adapting HIV prevention strategies accordingly, UNAIDS first tried to alter the findings, and ultimately refused to publish them. The findings were so threatening to UNAIDS that the researchers were finally forced to publish them on their own in another, peer-reviewed journal.

Read more at www.ncbcenter.org.

Beginning a tour of Africa, Pope Benedict XVI restated the Catholic belief that distributing condoms will not solve the scourge of HIV/AIDS. For this he was predictably vilified in the western media. The Pope’s comments were “close to premeditated murder“, according to one German MP, Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Hysterical reactions such as these should encourage us to look at the issue more rationally.

No-one pretends that the problem of HIV/AIDS in Africa is anything other than a tragedy – least of all the Catholic Church. Worldwide, 1 in 4 AIDS patients is treated in a Catholic clinic: 27% of the centres that treat HIV/AIDS sufferers are Catholic based.

So why does the Church argue for a solution beyond a deluge of condoms? Firstly, because no country in the world has solved its HIV/AIDS problems that way. A famous example is Thailand. In 1987 there were 112 cases of HIV/AIDS in that country. The Thai Health Ministry responded with a ’100% condom use’ policy. By 2003 there were 899,000 cases of HIV/AIDS, which had resulted in 125,000 deaths. The policy had failed. By contrast, Uganda – with a large Catholic population – implemented an AIDS prevention policy focusing primarily on faithfulness in marriage. Whereas 30% of its population were infected in the 1990s, this figure is down to around 8% today.

Encouraging marital fidelity (as opposed to condom use) is important for other reasons. HIV/AIDS spreads principally through the exploitation of the vulnerable (usually women) and this situation must be challenged, not tolerated. As the Pope said this week, HIV/AIDS will ultimately by overcome by ‘the humanisation of sexuality … a spiritual and human renewal bringing about a new way of behaving towards one another’. This means encouraging fidelity and chastity – God’s law. But western liberals see their own values challenged by this approach and prefer to pour scorn upon a Pope who has made the journey to Africa – at the age of 83 – because he cares for the people of that continent and wants to help them. Catholics should be proud to support him.