"I chose you" - Vocation in Today's Gospel

Today's Gospel offers a very beautiful message for Religious Life and Vocation.

During my Lectio this week Jesus' words struck me very forcefully: "You did not choose me, no I chose you". We all need to hold on to that fact. I think that a common reaction to the thought that God is calling one to Religious Life is a kind of fear. It is not so much a fear for myself and what this step will cost me but a fear of letting our Lord down. We think, 'I'd make a very bad nun/priest/whatever; God should/would call 'X' who is much more holy etc. than I; I am a bearly passible Christian how could he possible want me; etc.

And this text is our Lord's answer, he says: No, I am calling you, I chose you and I know what I'm doing. And because I chose you, if you only accept this call I will make you "bear fruit, fruit that will last". So the main thing that Jesus asks of us in our Vocation is to let him choose us, as Blessed Pope John Paul II says in Vita Consecrata, "Those who let themselves be seized by this love cannot help abandoning everything to follow him" (VC 18). 

My Vocation, my Religious Life, is principally something that Jesus is doing. I need not fear my sins, weaknesses and failings because it is Christ who calls and Christ who enables me to live the life he has called me to; as he said to St. Paul, "my grace is sufficient for you" (2Cor 12:9).