Sister Mary Lucy Carr, R.S.M., was my ninth grade teacher at St. Charles School in Woonsocket and perhaps of more than any other person I am a priest today because of her persistence. A classmate had decided to go to Our Lady of Providence High School Seminary, then at Warwick Neck, after our junior high graduation. Sister Lucy thought I should be making the same decision, urging me, “You should be a priest! You should be a priest!” Nonetheless, my option then was for LaSalle Academy in Providence. Thoughts of the priesthood would have to wait for three years.
When I finally, by the grace of God, did decide to enter Our Lady of Providence College Seminary, I thought it only proper to share the news personally with Sister Lucy who at that time was teaching ninth grade students at St. Joseph School on Walcott Street in Pawtucket. As we toured the school and made a visit to the (old) parish church, the notion of priestly and religious vocations was much discussed. Sister warmly quoted the Book of Daniel to be heard at Mass as this Sunday’s first reading. She sensed that the words especially applied to her and her fellow religious: “But the wise shall shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament, and those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever (Dn 12:3).” She understood her vocation as a religious sister and especially as a religion teacher in a Catholic school to rank her among “those who lead the many to justice.”
Nowadays it certainly falls to religious education teachers, to fulltime lay teachers, to parish priests, and yes indeed, to Catholic parents to “lead the many to justice.” Certainly, the personal example of a good Catholic life is elementary for all who would encourage young Catholics to maintain their Catholic faith first of all and then possibly to consider the priesthood or religious life. My parents’ wholehearted commitment to a Catholic way of life had a tremendous, if unspoken, influence on my decision to acknowledge a priestly calling. Of these many helpful believers the Scriptures also offer a similar glowing report: “In the time of their judgment they shall shine and dart about as sparks through stubble (Wis 3:7).”
All present-day Catholics should be proudly and cooperatively aware that the Second Vatican Council has brought the role of laity within the Church and within society squarely to the forefront. “The apostolate in the social milieu, that is, the effort to infuse a Christian spirit into the mentality, customs, laws, and structures of the community in which one lives, is so much the duty and responsibility of the laity that it can never be performed properly by others (Apos. Act.13).” Yet permeating society with authentic values is today a lay vocation as readily neglected as the priesthood or religious life. Catholics are shy to introduce perennial values to modern life. As Nancy Pelosi recently remarked, “I do my religion on Sunday.” Hence America’s legislatures and law courts, publications and airwaves, colleges and academies are dominated by a permissive mentality at odds with Christian values and sometimes even with common sense. Facing this morass is the vocation of the laity certainly to be encouraged just as much as religious vocations.
Perhaps Psalm 16, this Sunday’s response to the first reading, may offer guidance toward the fostering of clerical, religious and lay vocations. “You are my inheritance, O Lord, my allotted portion and my cup, you it is who hold fast my lot. I set the LORD ever before me; with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed. Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices, my body, too, abides in confidence; because you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption. You will show me the path to life, fullness of joys in your presence, the delights at your right hand forever.” This psalm once accompanied a seminarian’s introduction to the priestly life when a bishop clipped a bit of hair from the young man’s head as a sign of rejecting worldly ambition and embracing sacerdotal commitment. Like Aaron and the Old Testament priests, who inherited no land, the Lord was now the seminarian’s lot and his inheritance.
And yet this is a message that every Catholic Christian, and especially our youth, has to hear and embrace. The Lord is every Christian’s lot! The greatest inheritance a Christian generation can bequeath to its youth is the gift of an active faith! Together teachers in the classroom, priests at the altar and parents in their homes have first to display and then to explain and then to encourage the significance of Catholic life. This is the groundwork from which priestly, religious and lay vocations will arise. All believers are challenged to “lead the many to justice” knowing the Lord will gladly complete their work.
