Tag: Vocation Awareness Program

Mass for Vocation Awareness Program

June 25, 2023
Chapel of the Incarnation, University of Dallas
Irving, Texas

Jeremiah 20:10-13
Psalm 69:8-10, 14, 17, 33-35
Romans 5:12-15
Matthew 10:26-33

“Jeremiah said: ‘I hear the whisperings of many: ‘Terror on every side! Denounce! Let us denounce him!’ All those who were my friends are on the watch for any misstep of mine.’” Unlike the prophet Isaiah elsewhere in Scripture, who says, “Here I am, send me,” Jeremiah was reluctant because he knew that the people to whom the Lord is sending him to speak do not want to hear the message that the Lord has for them, the message that they need to hear.  The message requires them to accept their need for a radical change of heart and to persevere through the destruction of a complacent and unjust way of life for the sake of deliverance from their enemies. Jeremiah knows that the message that the Lord has for His chosen people is vastly different from the message delivered by the official prophets of the royal court of his time who have been bought and sold to tell the Lord’s chosen people not what God desires for them but what the elite and powerful want them to hear.  Jeremiah will have to speak some hard truths to them, something they will not want to hear, and he will have to speak these truths well, with clarity, with integrity, and in fidelity to the Lord. Jeremiah’s anticipations expressed earlier in the story are now coming into actuality.