“My dad teetered on the ladder, balancing both a paint can and a Baltimore Catechism. ‘Why did God make you?’ He hollered down, quizzing me as I sat cross-legged on the grass underneath.
“‘To know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next,’ I answered almost absentmindedly, watching him swipe green paint over the window frames.
“Dad was determined to supplement my questionably ‘Catholic’ education with some solid theology, even if he had to do it from the top of a ladder on a summer afternoon. And all these years later, I am grateful he did—drilling into me the basic answer to our fundamental questions: Why am I here? What is my purpose?”
So begins the sixth chapter in This Present Paradise as I introduce St. Elizabeth of the Trinity’s discernment of her religious vocation, that is, her state in life—which we all must discern in our journey to God.
But our state in life is only one layer of our vocation, something rich and marbled and understood through a lifetime of excavation and discovery.
There are, in fact, many layers of vocation in the life of every Christian.
Our universal vocation is holiness, that is, a love leading us ever closer to total union with God, as the Baltimore Catechism points out. This is the vocation of every human person, the ultimate end of our baptism. St. Elizabeth of the Trinity wrote, “There are two words that sum up for me all holiness, all apostolate: ‘union and love.’”
As men and women, we have a vocation to express that universal call to love in different ways. “God has created each one of us,” wrote Mother Teresa, “to love and be loved. But why did God make some of us men and others women? Because a woman’s love is one image of God’s love. Both are created to love, but each in a different way. Woman and man complete each other and together show forth God’s love more fully than either can do alone.”*
In that sense, think we could say that we each have a vocation to spiritual fatherhood or spiritual motherhood—the uniquely powerful ways masculine and feminine love are lavished upon the world.
Beyond that, we are called to a certain state in life—to make a gift of ourselves in a more particular way in the context of a diocese, community, charism, and/or family—to conform ourselves to Christ by being joyfully obedient and committing ourselves to God’s revealed will for us. One’s state in life is the way spiritual motherhood and fatherhood are lived out. State in life what we usually refer to when we use the word “vocation.”
We also have the gift of being given by God a personal vocation, that is, the unique and unrepeatable call of each believer to become wholly themselves as they learn to offer up with humble gratitude their trials, brokenness, and weaknesses to the Lord, as well as develop their gifts and strengths and put them in the service of the Gospel in their own way, in their own sphere of influence, in their particular time in history, with all the color of their personality.
Our personal vocation is an expression of the deepest truth of who we are and how we are created to glorify God in a way no one else can. It is woven into every aspect of our lives.
But there is a vocation that precedes all the others.
Before anything else, we are called to be loved by God.
We were called into being out of nothingness—God’s first act of love in our lives is to create us—we were called to exist, to be. To be loved by Him long before we could do anything, long before we could in any way return God’s love. We had the vocation to receive it.
Before we were born, before anyone knew we existed, in the secret held by God alone, we were loved. From the moment He spoke that singular, unique word that is us and we burst into being, we were loved.
We’ve always been loved.
All of our brokenness and sin come from forgetting this miracle and living as if it isn’t true, as if we weren’t desired and cherished and thirsted for.
St. Elizabeth of the Trinity knew this. And she wanted everyone to know it, surely, but she especially wanted her Prioress, Mother Germaine, to know it. So while she was suffering, literally starving to death, she secretly wrote a letter for her to find after she died.
“You are uncommonly loved,” she wrote, “…He does not say to you as to Peter: ‘Do you love me more than these?’ Mother, listen to what he tells you: ‘Let yourself be loved more than these!’ That is, without fearing that any obstacle will be a hindrance to it, for I am free to pour my love out on whom I wish! ‘Let Yourself Be Loved More than These’ is your vocation.”
“Let yourself she loved,” she repeats at least six times in that single letter. It is astonishing that this is the message burning in her heart even while everything feels like fire inside of her—unable to eat or drink, ravaged with pain—she wants to impress on this spiritual mother how very, very much she is loved.
This is the starting point and the ending point of the whole spiritual life, and so, in that sense, it is the primary vocation for all of us. Before we can love, we must be loved.
Sometimes I joke that I’d rewrite the catechism:
Why did God make you?
Before anything else, to be loved by Him.
“In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.” – 1 John 4:10
In order to be increasingly open to the transforming love of God and to more radically live out your most fundamental vocation, I invite you to pray this litany inspired by the letter of St. Elizabeth of the Trinty, known as “Let Yourself Be Loved.”
Be Loved Litany
Inspired by St. Elizabeth of the Trinity’s Major Work, “Let Yourself Be Loved”
As a child of God, known and knit together in my mother’s womb
Lord, let me believe in your love.
As a child of God, baptized to be a dwelling place of the Holy Trinity
Lord, let me believe in your love.
As a child of God, rescued, redeemed, and recreated
Lord, let me believe in your love.
As a child of God, chosen and anointed for a purpose
Lord, let me believe in your love.
When I am swallowed up in self-condemnation
Lord, let me receive your love.
When I am tempted to hopelessness and quiet despair
Lord, let me receive your love.
When I am experiencing the ache of longing and loneliness
Lord, let me receive your love.
When I am overwhelmed by the demands of life
Lord, let me receive your love.
In the place of my deepest wounds
Lord, love me there.
In the place of my secret shame
Lord, love me there.
In the place of my buried memories
Lord, love me there.
In the place of the enemy’s strongholds
Lord, love me there.
With bold confidence
Let me rejoice in your love, Lord.
With child-like faith
Let me rejoice in your love, Lord.
With reverent awe
Let me rejoice in your love, Lord.
With profound gratitude
Let me rejoice in your love, Lord.
That others may be consoled
Let me reveal your love, Lord.
That others may be healed
Let me reveal your love, Lord.
That others may be strengthened
Let me reveal your love, Lord.
That others may be given a future and a hope
Let me reveal your love, Lord.
Through intimacy with you in prayer
Open my heart even more to your love, Lord.
Through the grace of the sacraments
Open my heart even more to your love, Lord.
Through the sweetness of suffering with you
Open my heart even more to your love, Lord.
Through the continuous revelation of Yourself in this present paradise
Open my heart even more to your love, Lord.
Father, Author of my life,
I love you.
Jesus, Redeemer of my life,
I love you.
Holy Spirit, Sanctifier of my life,
I love you.
Holy Mary, whose maternal mission is to lead me deeper into the love of the Trinity,
Pray for me.
Amen.
Copyright 2024 Claire Dwyer. All Rights Reserved.
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*To read the entire letter from Mother Teresa on the complementarity of men and women and the unique way a woman loves, read my post here. At the end of the post, you can download a copy of the original of that letter, written on the occasion of the United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.
Image courtesy of Unsplash.