January 28, 2009

Hope is Near

Many of us watched or even attended this year’s March for Life vigil Mass at the National Shrine in Washington, D.C. If you did, you probably noticed the thirty-minute procession of hundreds of seminarians, deacons, priests, bishops, and cardinals walking down the aisles and into the sanctuary. There was a woman standing across from me at the Mass who, in seeing her, reminded me why this Mass begins with such a long procession. She was smiling. She was in tears. She was clearly moved. I watched her as she acknowledged each seminarian, deacon, priest, bishop, and cardinal walk by her, and I could hear her repeatedly whisper to them, “Thank you.”

While we may have once said that vocations are decreasing, the March for Life should have shown us otherwise. How many different religious did you see that you had to ask yourself, “What community is that?” God is calling. . . people are responding. The Lord is still sending laborers into the vineyard, and I’d like to mention a few:

Our community has grown to 122 friars and 27 sisters in 14 friaries and 3 convents. The Sisters of Life have 11 canonical novices this year - more than the friars! Many seminaries in our country are full again; in St. Paul/Minneapolis, the seminary has to rent off-campus apartments to house their overflow seminarians. In February, a group of cloistered Dominican nuns in New Jersey will be celebrating a First Profession of Vows for the first time in 13 years. Some of us recently visited George Mason University and met 10 or so students in an outreach of about 100 who are very close to entering the seminary or religious life. The Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist are building a huge new motherhouse in a time when many old motherhouses are closing. Mother Angelica’s nuns are spreading to other existing Poor Clare monasteries and even starting new ones from the ground up.  Blessed Mother Teresa’s sisters are in 130 countries throughout the world. There are many renewals of different contemplative and monastic traditions springing up throughout the country. Many men are entering the seminary later in life, after many years of successful business in the professional world.

It is not the job of one member of an order or diocese to promote vocations. We are all vocation directors. We must encourage people when we see in them the qualities that God puts in those who He wants for Himself! Even more, we cannot say to ourselves, “It’ll be someone else’s child.” No, it could be your son, daughter, brother, sister, niece, nephew, grandson or granddaughter.

When I was nine years old, the permanent deacon at my home parish trained me to be an altar boy. When I was ten, he told me I should be a priest. When I was thirteen, he died. When I was seventeen, his family gave me his breviary to take with me to the minor seminary.

The call is the Lord’s, but many vocations begin with someone’s simple encouragement, subtle suggestion, quiet prayer, or planted seed. Be that someone!

Br. Aloysius Marie Mazzone, CFR

St. Lawrence Friary

Bronx, New York