Vocation Archives - Amazing Catechists

The Home Recipe for Sanctity: Blessed Anna Maria Taigi

We recently celebrated the feast day of Blessed Anna Maria Taigi, an ordinary housewife and mother to seven children ( June 9) and, as often happens with saints’ feasts, the timing could not have been better!

Bl. Anna Maria Taigi was an ordinary person with earthly responsibilities, a spouse, and children. She was vain and superficial in her youth despite not ever being wealthy, just as each of us can be from time to time. This wonderful woman came to sanctity and service of God from the same difficulties and concerns that each of us faces on a daily basis. Her self-reflection and interior illumination allowed her to see the poor state of her soul, and she undertook a life of obedience, humility, patience, and selfless service as the remedy.

Her strong interior illumination showed the state of her soul with the effects of sin and its misery before God. With that, she embarked on a life of obedience, mortifications, submission, patience, humility and self-renunciation. She developed in this effort, finding ways to fulfill her duties while practicing total submission to the Will of God. It became her mission to comfort others in as many ways as possible. Anna Maria balanced her efforts between the practical necessities of her earthly responsibilities and the spiritual necessities of her family, such as teaching her children how to pray properly. In addition, she devoted herself to the Church, and especially to the Sacraments of Confession and Holy Communion, attending daily Mass. She also had a special devotion to Our Lady and to the Holy Trinity.

Anna Maria is yet another example, like St. Therese The Little Flower, that sanctity comes not so much from what we do but, more importantly, how we do what we do. She became a renown healer and a great mystic, conversed with Jesus and Mary, and displayed various supernatural gifts from God, including the ability to see all things hidden in the present and the future.

Too many people disqualify themselves from sanctity by embracing the myth that saints are born saints, and that sanctity depends upon the age in which one lives. In truth, saints are made via love and service to God and others, and sanctity can arise in any age. Blessed Anna Maria Taigi reminds us that no matter what our state in life or vocation, we are called to replace self-love and self-will with the will of God. By kissing and embracing whatever crosses Our Lord may send us out of love, we will turn any cross into a ladder to Heaven. This holy woman turned the ordinary into the extraordinary simply through love of God and others. In this so-called modern world which increasingly has no time for God, Anna Maria Taigi comes as a reminder that any time without God is simply wasted time indeed.

2016, Gabriel Garnica

Letting Go of Our Nets: A Journey with Peter

By Maureen Smith

The Call

Yesterday morning I took the walk of shame down the side aisle of the Chapel, 5 minutes late and we were already at the Gospel. Frustrated and feeling confirmation that I was definitely a failure at absolutely everything if I couldn’t even make it to Mass on time, I then listened to the Gospel and underneath my gritted teeth felt a sense of relief and the first sign of a smile since yesterday. Having experienced a personal failure a week ago (joining the ranks of the unemployed), I felt comforted by the life and example of Peter.

In the Call of Peter in Mark’s Gospel, which we read yesterday, Jesus clarifies Peter’s vocation and asks him to leave behind what he thought defined him for a life of intimacy and trust in the Lord rather than in the success of the work of his hands.

Similarly, in Luke’s account of the Call of Peter, Jesus uses a moment of failure (on the part of Peter to provide fish after working all night) to reveal His identity as the Son of God while also challenging Peter to discover his own identity, not as a fisherman but as Jesus calls him in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, a “fisher of men.” John’s Gospel recounts a somewhat different, but not inconsistent, first encounter. Here Jesus also reveals to Peter (then Simon) his identity by renaming him Cephas (Peter).

Let It Go!

As we see in our scriptural pilgrimage, it takes Peter a while to really let go of what he thinks constitutes his identity, as well as his ideas of the Messiah and how His glory should be manifested. We see this when he fails to walk on water, when he rebukes Jesus for predicting his crucifixion, and when he denies Jesus three times.

He may have left behind his fisherman’s nets but there are still many figurative nets holding him back from receiving the truth of his identity as well as what it means to be an Apostle, probably because he is unable to believe the totality of Jesus’s identity which He holds unfolds (albeit sometimes cryptically) to Peter and the others.

Nets

So often we, too, link our accomplishments and the outcomes of our efforts to our identity so that, if and when they fail to measure up to our standards or those of others, we judge ourselves to be inadequate and are quickly overtaken by tidal waves of unworthiness. We assess ourselves by how productive work was, the number on the scale, the number of miles we ran, positive feedback, approval of others, or any other combination of worldly measures of success. It is not wrong that we have aspirations, but it is not true that these standards have any bearing on our identity and worthiness of God’s love and mercy. What are the “nets” we cling to for a sense of acceptance and worthiness that, although they may be part of our calling, are not essential to our identity? Do we need to put them down as Jesus instructs Peter in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew? Or do we need to trust in Jesus’s intercession and instruction as we see in Luke?

Do we struggle to put down these nets because we have a hard time believing in Jesus as truly God, as truly more powerful than our little mistakes or failures to “make something of ourselves?” Yes we can know the truth intellectually, but do we really believe in Jesus, in His power and authority over sin and death, and in the truth that our identity comes from Him rather than our accomplishments or lackthereof?

When Our Nothingness Encounters God’s Mercy

When we experience failure before the Lord we can become afraid and the shame we feel can be a barrier to further intimacy with him. But these encounters with our weaknesses are often the point of entry for the Lord, just as they were teaching moments and opportunities for Peter.

I think often of how ashamed Peter must have felt in Luke’s account of the Call of Peter. He would have felt a similar sense of failure throughout his journey with Jesus, however, Jesus uses these opportunities to fill the emptiness in Peter’s heart with His light and truth, which Peter will more fully embrace at Pentecost.

Saint Therese’s thoughts on this passage, recorded in Divine Intimacy by Father Gabriel of Saint Mary Magdalene, give us a refreshing outlook on what Jesus can do with our failures. She writes, “Had the Apostle caught some small fish, perhaps our divine Master would not have, worked a miracle; but he had caught nothing, and so through the power and goodness of God his nets were soon filled with great fishes. Such is Our Lord’s way. He gives as God, with divine generosity, but He insists on humility of heart.”

In her italics, Therese shows us the keys (no pun intended) to how Peter learned to follow the Lord. We will often find ourselves in the “nothing” stage. This is where the Lord’s grace is most efficacious. However, she warns that He “insists on humility of heart.” This means that we must, like Peter, let go of our fear of failure and put our whole trust in the Jesus and let him be Who He says He is, God!

Now imagine how Jesus looked at Peter in his moments of failure, for example, after a full night of reeling in net after net of nothing. Or when Jesus, after His Resurrection asks Peter if he loves Him. His gaze must have been quite the opposite of Peter’s inward gaze of self-judgment, which actually distorts his perception of how Jesus sees him.

As was the case with Peter, Jesus looks upon our failures with mercy, not with shame, impatience, disgust, etc. He may not immediately reveal His glory in our failures, that usually takes time. We may not reel in a miraculous abundance of tangible goods. Most of our failures will probably require at least a bit of waiting and trusting that eventually Jesus will use this emptiness or failure for His glory and His plan for our welfare…not woe.

Spoiler Alert! (We Will Live Happily Ever After)

Peter, whose blunders are so frequent in the Gospels, shows us that we too can achieve greatness. His ministry most likely did not feel or look successful. It looked much like that of Christ whose life and ministry was looked upon as a failure up until the Resurrection. So also our lives may appear to be lacking in value, but if we remain under the gaze of Jesus and strive to live in the truth of our identity as Children of God, we will achieve the greatest success, sainthood.

Someday, in Heaven, we will hopefully be able chat with Peter, praise God, and laugh about our failures which were transformed into our greatest moments of sanctity. We might feel like we are currently getting a poor return for our efforts, but trust in the example of Peter, it’s worth the struggle!

Vocation Isn’t a Dirty Word

By Justin Combs

We are never too young for God to call us.

As a young adult I was pretty sure about the calling God had in my life. I met the girl that I would end up marrying and knew we would raise a family. I thought about religious life but had a longing for a family. I look at my life now with a beautiful bride, two amazing sons, and another child on the way and feel confident that I chose the vocation that God wanted for me.

When my sons were born I immediately assumed that becoming a grandfather and having grandchildren would be in the cards for my life. However, as a strong Catholic I wondered if God may want to make priests of my sons. This was a difficult thought for me, and took a while for the reality that I need to let go of what our world expects of us.

The thought of going into the priesthood or other religious life has a negative view in our society today. I’m not only talking about the secular world, but even in the Catholic church. Why is this? I have been thinking about it and realized that as a child, becoming a priest was never brought up to me. If I wanted to be a priest it was going to have to be miraculous, and I would have to hear the call from God without the help of anyone. Children are often brought up thinking that being successful means to make money, and jobs like doctor, lawyer, and professional athlete or musician are the elite on the list. As catechists we know that being successful is not about money, but about doing what God is calling us to do and bringing people closer to Christ while doing it.

In my third grade class I love to talk about the saints. So many of our saints were so very young, St. Therese of Lisieux was elementary age when she wanted to join the Carmelites. St. Therese had sisters that chose religious life so she knew this was an option. I let my third graders know that we are never too young for God to call us. I encourage them and let them know how great religious life can be. Maybe none of my students will enter religious life, but they can’t say they didn’t know it was an option.

As you may have guessed I am open that God may use my sons as his instruments through religious life if he chooses. I now pray for my boys that they are open to the priesthood and religious life. They are only three and two years old and have a long while before they have to make any decision about this, but we are never to young for God to lay upon our hearts his calling for us.