Eighth grade vocations Mass – Life on the Chrism Trail

Homily for the Thursday of the Third Week of Easter

Eighth Grade Vocations Mass

April 23, 2026
St. Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

Acts 8:26-40
Psalm 66:8-9, 16-17, 20
John 10:11-18

We all need to earn money to live, but money cannot satisfy our deepest desires. A true vocation has nothing to do with money because it comes from love. Most people are called to love another person in Holy Matrimony, and then husbands and wives love their children. That kind of love cannot be bought. And other men and women are called to love without being married, and they become priests and religious sisters. That kind of love cannot be bought either. Vocations, either to married life or priesthood and religious life, cannot be bought just as Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd teaches us: someone who works because of a desire for money is not following a call from God.

Feast of Saint Mark, Evangelist

Eighth Grade Vocations Mass

April 25, 2024
Saint Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

1 Peter 5:5b-14
Psalm 89:2-3, 6-7, 16-17
Mark 16:15-20

Today is a great day in your lives and in the life of the Diocese of Fort Worth because this is the only time when all of you, the eighth graders of each school in the Diocese of Fort Worth, will come together for Mass, for lunch, and for some reflection and discussion about discerning your vocation: what Christ is inviting you to do with the time God has given you in your lives. I am certain that as eighth graders you are thinking a lot about time these days — the ever-shortening amount of time that you have with your teachers and with each other as junior high students, the end of your time spent at your schools and the time of transition into high school and from childhood into adolescence. In His generosity, God has given us this time together and on this wonderful Feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist.