Vocare - To Call

This morning I piled a wriggling heap of children and coats and scarves and blankets into the car and battled the snowy roads to attend our Church’s Mother’s Group. Oh goodness what a gasping breath of life-saving air. The children, who have been cooped up in snowy weather for several days, exulted in running laps around the room, crayons dangling from their hands and crackers crunching in their mouths and under their feet, jumping, giggling, and living life with their little disciple friends. Disciples – that’s what they are: souls on a journey toward their God. We watched them play and talked about how we, their mothers, have been entrusted with their care, their formation, their way.

Entrusted: to confer a trust upon; to put into the care or protection of someone.

We let the words of John Paul II sink into our hearts:

The moral and spiritual strength of a woman is joined to her awareness that God entrusts the human being to her in a special way. Of course, God entrusts every human being to each and every other human being. But this entrusting concerns women in a special way - precisely by reason of their femininity - and this in a particular way determines their vocation.

The moral force of women, which draws strength from this awareness and this entrusting, expresses itself in a great number of figures of the Old Testament, of the time of Christ, and of later ages right up to our own day.

A woman is strong because of her awareness of this entrusting, strong because of the fact that God "entrusts the human being to her", always and in every way, even in the situations of social discrimination in which she may find herself. This awareness and this fundamental vocation speak to women of the dignity which they receive from God himself, and this makes them "strong" and strengthens their vocation.

Thus the "perfect woman" (cf. Prov 31:10) becomes an irreplaceable support and source of spiritual strength for other people, who perceive the great energies of her spirit. These "perfect women" are owed much by their families, and sometimes by whole nations.

(John Paul II - Muleris Dignitatem, on the Dignity and Vocation of Women)

Two hours later, we packed the kids, crayons, crackers, scarves, and coats and we each headed home. Fortified. We are strong not because we are ourselves, but because we have been entrusted with His power, His strength, His vocation. Vocation: from the Latin vocare -- to call. We do not choose our vocation; no, we are called. We are beckoned. And if we echo Mary’s fiat and we say yes to life and yes to mother and yes to all the love and pain and joy and tears and triumph that wrestle in our hearts as we wrestle through each day… we say yes to a life of dignity, a life infused with His grace.