Saint Joseph's Church SSt. Joseph's Church, Detroit, Michigan
Home Parish History Tours Worship Music Donations Links
 

 


Father Leo J. Trese (1902-1970), former pastor of St. Joseph's

In most instances, we shall not know, until eternity, what particular task it was for which we -- and we alone -- were best fitted. This is another and urgent reason why we must strive, day after day, to do God's will in little things as well as in big things. We do not know which of our actions will be our exclusive and essential contribution to God's plan, or which of our words will be the fateful words upon which God is depending.


This unswerving attachment to God's will also is what justifies God's choice of us for his work. We rarely know what the particular job is for which God has chosen us -- a job that no one else could do quite as well as we. It may be a certain person whom God can reach with His grace only through us. It may be some chain of events that only can initiate or some evil that only we can avert.


Live always to fulfil God's plan for you.
This conviction as to the purposefulness of our lives is what we call the Christian sense of vocation. It is the awareness that we are called to fill a special spot in this world and to be a unique object of God's love, both here and hereafter. It is the vivid, day-to-day realization that we matter to God; that we are not just one of several million souls tossed off by God in an absent-minded moment of creativity; that we have an individual importance to God and that God has a personal, intense, almost anxious interest in us.

Our Christian vocation imposes on us the obligation to justify God's love for us, God's hopes for us. We do so when we try, day by day, to do God's will to the best of our ability. This means that we make God's will our compass, the norm and the guide of our lives. In all our decisions and all our choices, "what God would want me to do," must take precedence over "what I would like to do."

James 2:24
See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

More meditations