Pope Francis highlights the three calls from God

Pope Francis chaired the Sunday prayer of the Angelus this Sunday, January 17 and explained which are the 3 calls that Jesus makes to everyone throughout life: the call to life, the call to faith and the call to a particular state of life.

From the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, the Pontiff explained that each of these calls “is an initiative of his love”.

God’s first call is to life. “With her, he constitutes us as a people; it is an individual call, because God does not do things in series ”.

Then “God calls us to faith and to be part of his family, as children of God”.

And finally, “God calls us to a particular state of life: to give ourselves on the path of marriage, the priesthood or the consecrated life”.

The Pope explained that these calls “are different ways of carrying out the plan that God has for each of us, which is always a plan of love. And the greatest joy for every believer is to respond to this call, to give himself completely to the service of God and his brothers ”.

“Faced with the call of the Lord, who can reach us in a thousand ways, also through people, events, both happy and sad, our attitude can sometimes be rejection, because it seems to us that it contrasts with our aspirations; or scary, because we find it too demanding and uncomfortable. But God’s call is love, and it is only answered out of love ”.

The Holy Father presented this teaching starting from the Gospel of this second Sunday in ordinary time, where “the meeting of Jesus with his first disciples” is presented.

“The scene takes place in the Jordan, the day after Jesus’ baptism. It is precisely John the Baptist who designates the Messiah to two of them with these words: “Here is the Lamb of God!” “.

These two disciples, “trusting the testimony of the Baptist, follow Jesus who realizes and asks: ‘What are you looking for?’, And they ask him: ‘Master, where do you live?’ Jesus does not answer: “I live in Capernaum or in Nazareth”, but says: “Come and you will see”. It is not a business card, but an invitation to a meeting ”.

“They both follow him and stay with him this afternoon. It is not difficult to imagine them sitting down, asking him questions and above all listening to him, feeling that their hearts light up more and more as the Master speaks ”.

“They notice the beauty of the words that respond to their growing hope. And suddenly, they find that, as night begins to fall, the light that only God can give explodes in them.

Once the meeting with the Master is over, “they go out and come back with their brothers, this joy, this light overflows their hearts like a flood. One of them, Andrew, said to his brother Simon – whom Jesus would call Peter -: “We have found the Messiah.”

This encounter with Jesus, explained Pope Francis, is an encounter “which speaks to us of the Father, makes us know his love. And then, spontaneously, the desire to communicate it to the people we love is also born in us: “I have found Love”, “I have found the meaning of my life”. In short: “I have found God”.