Quotes about Calling

Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life…. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.

I was lucky - I found what I love to do early in life.

We are the people of life, because God, in His unconditional love, has given us the Gospel of Life, and we are called to act accordingly.

Every true gospel vocation is a resurrection vocation that arrives after a passage through the belly of the fish. All "word of God" vocations are thus formed. There can be no authentic vocation that is not shaped by passage through some such interior.

If vocational holiness is to be anything more than a pious wish, pastors must dive to the ocean depths of prayer.

There is an enormous gap between what we think we can do and what God calls us to do.

Jesus said, "Not everyone is mature enough to live a married life. It requires a certain aptitude and grace. Marriage isn't for everyone. Some, from birth seemingly, never give marriage a thought. Others never get asked—or accepted. And some decide not to get married for kingdom reasons. But if you're capable of growing into the largeness of marriage, do it.

I called you to live at your best, to pursue righteousness, to sustain a drive toward excellence.

And I remembered Willi's prophetic portrait of me, warning me against entering the American competition to be a pastor who "gets things done" and who is "going somewhere.

We fantasize an archaeological scoop. Meanwhile what we have right before us turns out to be far more useful—a theological probe. Instead of being told what Jeremiah's parents were doing, we are told what his God was doing: "Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you. Before you saw the light of day, I had holy plans for you: A prophet to the nations—that's what I had in mind for you" (Jer 1:5).

He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

To follow Jesus implies that we enter into a way of life that is given character and shape and direction by the one who calls us.