From The Bishop

The Gospel for the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time presents us with the calling of the first apostles. Jesus helps them to know their vocation when he states: “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of people.” This was their particular vocation; however, God gives to each one of us a more general calling that we all share as followers of Christ. On the day of our baptism we entered into the mystery of Divine Love. In the autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux, she writes about how she came to understand her vocation, “I saw and realized that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time and every place. In one word, that love is everlasting…At last I have found my calling: my call is to love” (The Story of a Soul). We have all been given the vocation to love. We have a powerful example of love in the First Reading. God did not want to destroy the people He loved so He sent them Jonah to preach repentance. The people listened and repented and God had mercy upon them; the city of Nineveh was not overthrown. In the Second Reading St. Paul reminds us that the world will not last forever. We believe that the temporal order will end and when that happens Jesus will come again in all of His glory. When this happens, love will be eternal. Like St. Therese, we should take some time to reflect upon our calling. May we all have a deeper appreciation of the fact that as followers of the Lord our vocation is to love.