Fourth Sunday of Easter
This is Vocations Sunday, a day set aside annually when Catholics throughout the world are asked to offer their prayers for vocations to the priesthood and the religious life. It is something of a cliché now to say that there is a Vocations Crisis. There has been a vocations crisis in the western Church for over thirty years now. I doubt myself if either prayer or fasting will reverse it. As the politicians say, it is hard to buck the trend. Politicians hold that in a curious way, their own personal performance is largely irrelevant. Political scientists hold that, even if you are the most effective, the most personable and most charismatic politician on earth, it will count for a mere five per cent of you vote on election day. The politician has no control over the other ninety five per cent of the vote. If the wind is at your back, if the atmosphere is right, you will win elections. If the atmosphere is not right, if playing into a strong wind, then your performance is irrelevant.
The same law applies to Vocations to the priesthood and to the religious life. If the wind is at the Church's back, in a social or a cultural sense, then you will have plenty vocations to the priesthood. This is borne out today in third world countries, and, in a diminishing way in eastern European countries like Poland. The Church is seen as having a very definite social role, whether as a social critic as in South America and Poland, or as a Good Samaritan or as an educator, as in Africa. The Church of course had a very definite role, or a series of definite roles, in Irish society up to the late 1960s. She ran the education system, the hospitals, and anything worth running for that matter. While she doesn't run them any more in any active meaningful way, she still insists on controlling them. This is hardly the best way of recruiting vocations.
As you are only too aware, we have the added difficulties in recent years of scandals impeding the work of the Church. Obviously, such scandalous betrayals will stand as obstacles in our paths for a long, long time to come. However, the vocations crisis was with us before the scandals ever hit the headlines. But they certainly don't help.
However, the gospel itself remains must remain valuable and valid. And we must retain our confidence in that gospel. The care and compassion of the good shepherd must find sacramental, institutional expression. We priests are called to be servants of God's people, the Church. We are called to reflect every day on the selfless life lived by Jesus, the Good Shepherd. He is to be our model and our challenge. He lived entirely and intensely for others. On one level, this challenge is so daunting as to be off-putting. Life-long commitment loses its attraction when all other social and cultural choices are short-term.
However, Jesus was a realist. He knew he was dealing with imperfect human beings. His first batch of disciples demonstrated this clearly. Weakness and failure are central to humanity. As St. Paul told Timothy, 'we hold this heavenly treasure in earthen vessels'. We priests have been charged with preaching to Good News 'in season and out of seasons,' according to St. Paul. And the Good News that we preach, according to the same writer, is that God has reconciled the world to himself and has entrusted us with the news that we are reconciled.
Reconciliation and forgiveness are at the heart of the Gospel, of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, this message, this good news can only be fully understood and appreciated by sinners. For the sake of humanity and for the sake of our world, this civilising message is worth cherishing and transmitting. From the very beginning, for the last two thousand years, the priesthood as an institution has had a very central role in transmitting that gospel. The chances are that this is the will of God.