Called by Name What is God calling you to do? Homily for Sunday, May 18, 2025

Throughout the Archdiocese of Denver this weekend is dedicated to the Called by Name vocations program. What is God calling you to do? Readings for Today.

Called by Name

When you think about your life, there are experiences that are vivid in your memory. When I was six, my mother woke me up very early in the morning with this phrase, “Get up, the house is on fire.” [laughter]

Even at the tender age of six, I was not a morning person. But I did spring out of bed that morning. We lost a lot during that time, and my memory of that day is still clear. I did not fully appreciate what we had lost. I did not fully understand how this event impacted my parents.

I do remember getting broken toys that Christmas, yet feeling grateful that those I did not know helped us. Obviously, my parents instilled this– love one another.

Another such vivid memory came when I was in the seventh grade. The priest in the parish separated the boys and the girls in religious education for vocation talks. During his talk on priesthood, at one point he said to us, “You know, one day, one of you in this room might be a priest.” And I remember what I did. I looked at the other boys in the room and thought to myself, “I wonder who that will be.” Not me. But yet, God does have a sense of humor.

Today, the Archdiocese has called all its parishes to participate in a program called “Called by Name.” As part of this program, the priests have been encouraged to share their vocation stories.

First, let me emphasize we all have a vocation. We all have a specific call from God. We all have a call from God that will, if we answer it and seek to fulfill it, will lead us to eternal life. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we gather every Sunday. Because we were called by God to follow him.

And to recognize that in our hearts and in our lives, there are those instances where we, in fact, do follow God. And so we come together to thank God for his grace and to praise God for his goodness. And to thank God for seeing worthy to use us to bring about the kingdom of God.

Many of you have or will be called to marriage. And the world needs the witness of marriage. It’s a witness drawn from the love of Christ for the church. In their spouse, husbands and wives see their very pathway to salvation. Their very pathway in following God and witnessing to the powerful love that Jesus calls us to participate in today.

Others will be called to life as a religious sister or a religious brother or as a consecrated virgin. Still others live out their baptismal call as single men and women. Each of us has been given a call by God. And yes, there will be some young men who will be called to priesthood.

We live in a world today that is noisy and distracting. Some are tempted only to follow the desire to be rich or to live selfishly or to pretend they are happy when inside they feel something else.

Dr. Viktor Frankl, an Austrian doctor and psychiatrist, lived in a concentration camp. From that experience and his work before that experience, Dr. Frankl discovered the very thing that drives human beings, a quest for meaning. In fact, I would highly recommend his book, his most famous book that is, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” which is consistently considered one of the best books ever written.

If you haven’t read it, go out and read it. It’s a wonderful book. The first half is his experience in a concentration camp in which he discovers powerful and important lessons, discovers the ability to help others because he was a doctor, discovering deep within himself that he was capable of selfish actions he did not know possible. But in the midst of it all, his very important understanding of human beings and human life came forth for him.

Today, I would like to share how it is I have found meaning and purpose in my life. As I approached my senior year in high school, I couldn’t shake the idea that maybe I was being called to be a priest. I did try to shake it out of my head.

I was interested in writing and thought I would be a journalist. A couple of my high school teachers encouraged me to consider being a teacher. But since the thought would not go away that this was something I should do, to study to be a priest, I entered seminary college.

My thinking was that I was not called to be a priest, and so I would spend one year in the seminary college, get this idea out of my head, and move on. And doing this early meant that I could still enter college to study what I thought I wanted.

One year came and went, and before long it was time to graduate from seminary college and then to decide what was next. Since the seminary college was a small college experience in a rural town in upstate New York, I decided to enter seminary in Ottawa, Canada. I was studying for the diocese I grew up in, the Diocese of Burlington, Vermont.

The seminary in Ottawa was a university experience where the seminarians studied along other people, studying theology for a variety of paths. There were university-age students, married people, and non-Catholics. It was a rich experience. Just before my decision about whether or not to become a deacon, I decided to do a pastoral year back in the Diocese of Burlington. Seminaries are modeled on religious life, and Vermont being a small and rural state, I thought I needed more practical experience living in a rectory.

The pastoral year was a great experience. It fit me like a glove. It was during this year that I knew I was called to priesthood, and the years after my ordination were really what I would describe as “Camelot.” (For those of you old enough to remember it.) I say that because when I taught in high school and I would mention Camelot, I just got blank stares. They had no idea what I was talking about.

I told the Dominican student brothers that I had to interview, because of our constitutions and my role as prior, before their ordination, I hoped their first years of priesthood would be as wonderful as mine.

But over time, and living alone, I found it to be increasingly difficult. Eventually it became clear that I needed to do something. The difficulty was not about being a priest. I loved being a priest. It was about living alone.

And life in the parish where I was pastor was wonderful. I don’t know that it could even have been any better. The parish was active and vibrant. It was growing. And it was filled with miraculous people who embraced the call to follow Jesus. We conducted a census, for example, where we visited every single house in the town in which we lived. There were about 5,000 people in this town, but we did it.

And it grew even more, because I learned in that experience that the biggest reason that people were not coming to church was not what I expected. I thought perhaps they disagreed with church teaching, or perhaps that they just didn’t care, their lives seemed fine without religion. But what we discovered from people, by presenting well-made materials that outlined the things that were possible in our parish, what we discovered was that most people simply stopped going at one point in their life for no particular reason.

So I had to think about what God was calling me to do. I still knew I was being called to be a priest, but how? And this led me to the Dominicans. And my life as a Dominican is wonderful indeed. Hopefully, in interacting with our novices over the many years, a ministry which this parish has embraced with deep gratitude and a fine following of Jesus, hopefully you see the joy in their lives, the joy in who they are and what they’re seeking to become. In fact, I think it is true that this parish knows more Dominicans in our province than any other of our ministries, because everybody starts here.

My life as a priest has been filled with many blessings. I love celebrating the sacraments. I love working with couples who are getting married, parents who I instructed to have their children baptized. My high school teachers saw something in me that I did not fully see in myself, and I have loved the many ways in which I have been involved in education.

In today’s gospel, Jesus says this, “I give you a new commandment, love one another. As I have loved you, so also should you love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Here’s the thing. We live in a world where the powerful witness of love, loving others, serving those in need, reaching out to those whose lives are broken, providing a deep fulfillment of living in the gospel, that example of love is needed now more than ever.

There’s violence in our world. There are people who are really suffering. There are people who are very afraid that the home they’ve known for some time or the home they came to because their home, which in fact they probably would rather be in, is unlivable.

Those individuals need the power of the love of God. We can’t fix all of the problems that we face in our world, but we can love. We can reach out to those who need the power and the deep love of Jesus Christ.

We can reach out to those individuals to help to witness to the dignity that they have been given in God, the dignity that they have been given because they are made in God’s image and likeness, the dignity we believe they have because we believe that all persons are created in the image and likeness of God, and therefore the way in which we treat one another, those we know and those we don’t, is the very way we teach, we treat rather, our Lord Jesus Christ.

My story is one vocation story. Each of you has another. But all of us must follow the new commandment of Jesus that we must love one another as Jesus loves us. And if we can do that, we will do whatever it is that Jesus wants us to do.

So, take some time now and in the time ahead to think about what God is asking of you. Right now, at this moment in your life, God will never lead us astray. All God wants is that we love one another and that we love him. Ask God how he is calling you to love one another.

At this time, I’d just like to point out that there are cards in the pews. Those cards are for the purpose of identifying young men who you think might be called by God to be a priest. Was that question that the pastor asked me really an act of God’s providence? Without that, would I have thought, even though I thought the idea was half-baked? Was that question the way in which God chose to help me to see my call?

When I was a pastor and we were in need of Eucharistic ministers, I asked the parishioners to do something similar to what I’m going to ask you to do today. I explained and printed in the bulletin the characteristics for a Eucharistic minister and asked people to suggest individuals they thought matched these characteristics.

When I approached people whose names had been written by many and asked them to consider being a Eucharistic minister, I discovered many had not considered it ever. But the ways in which others had seen holiness in them was powerful indeed. The same can be true in suggesting the names of young men in this parish that you think would be good candidates for priesthood.

You’re not committing them to anything. You are simply helping to invite them to think about what God might want in their lives. And when we do what God wants us to do in our lives, we are happy and fulfilled indeed.

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