Wed to a Heavenly Plan
What are your plans for the Easter season and beyond? Of course we celebrate our Savior’s rising from death on Easter Sunday. But in the days after, do we embrace the vocation Jesus Christ offers to us by way of his life, passion, crucifixion, and resurrection?
I refer to the vocation of love. Christ came into the world to teach us to love God with all our heart, mind, and soul, and to love one another as God loves us. When we do so, we discover our true self.
Remember we were made in the image and likeness of God. The image and likeness of God is love. Life and love begin with our Creator and Redeemer. Thus, Christ calls us to follow God’s order of love with our lives so we may enter into the glory of God’s kingdom. That is God’s plan, and that is our mission (if we choose to accept it).
Unless everyone is wedded to God’s plan, the struggle between good and evil will persist. In this struggle, the need to carry on Christ’s mission increases. Evidence of this becomes more pronounced with the loss of sensitivity toward humanity as society becomes more secular.
However, man’s inhumanity to man cannot destroy the vocation of love sent from heaven. The Blessed Virgin Mary’s yes to God opened the way for Jesus Christ (God’s love made manifest) to enter this wounded world. As long as heaven exists, the vocation of love lives! Christ’s resurrection proves that.
Therefore, when we say yes by the way we live and treat others, we fulfill our mission and demonstrate our acceptance of God’s plan. Divine love transforms us and the lives around us, bringing us closer to the source of this love—God. Like Mary, we can experience the intimacy of the Trinitarian life when we let God’s love pour into us with the Holy Spirit. That enables us to bring Christ and his healing to the lives we touch every day.
Christ sacrificed himself for our sake. “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (John 12:24). When we follow Christ, living less for ourselves and more for God and others, the fruits of our labor help keep the way to heaven open for humankind. Therefore, let us embrace our vocation, our mission!
• Commit acts of kindness.
• Pray for strength of body and mind, heart and soul.
• Give thanks to God.
With our Lord, love prevails! Amen.