The Catholic Bishops of Australia have proclaimed a Year of Grace for the Australian Church, to begin on Pentecost 2012. Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide, the president of the Australian Bishops’ Conference, revealed the plan for the Year of Grace during a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI. The Year of Grace will coincide with the Year of Faith to be celebrated by the Whole Church to recognise 50 years of evangelisation since the Second Vatican Council. The Australian Bishops have taken Blessed John Paul’s Apostolic Letter - Novo Millennio Ineunte (At the Beginning of the New Millennium) as a guide and inspiration. Blessed John Paul asks us in this Letter to “Contemplate the Face of Christ”. And within this contemplative relationship with Jesus Christ we commit ourselves to God the Father to pray daily, to repent, seek healing and renewal, and to seek to walk the path of holiness cultivating the many gifts of the Spirit and seeking to grow as disciples of Jesus. As is obvious, this Year of Grace then is about deepening our relationship with the triune God. This has immediate overtones of vocation and God calling us to respond to this graced relationship.

Thus, this Year of Grace gives us the opportunity to consider Vocation from new eyes and hearts. For too long many could say that we as Christians tend towards ‘Australia Incognito’. Our faith and life in the Triune God seems private and a matter for the individual. The Year of Grace encourages us to a life in God as Cognitio – a profound recognition that God seeks and desires a relationship with everyone and we in turn respond to this desiring of God. Is this not what vocation means? Through vocational discipleship the Christian is challenged to experience a profound resonance between their deepest identity before God and the particular choices one makes in everyday life. There is a conviction that God is not at our disposal but that any knowledge we have of God comes exclusively from the will of God choosing to reveal God’s self. Everything we know about God is given through God wishing to reveal God’s self.

Choosing a vocation is secondary to the primary obedience in responding to God’s grace in our lives - faith. The choice of vocation can never be more than a preparation for, or a consequence of, the true and decisive choice FOR God. Along with St Augustine we could consider - Quia amasti me, fecisti me amabilem (Because you have loved me, You have made me lovable). The moment God loved us we are undeniably moved and attracted to seek the presence of God from within. We feel urged toward Him. His love and grace awakens in us the desire and hunger for His presence. Like Aquinas grace is not some extrinsic reality pushing people from outside but an inner constitutive principle of the human person. Grace then is God’s self communication to us (Rahner). We may take this opportunity to profoundly consider the life that God is calling us to and to how we are responding to this. The Year of Grace may be the year of Vocational Discernment before the God who loves us.

Your brother in Christ

Fr Morgan Batt

Vocations Director

Archdiocese of Brisbane

Click here for Fr Morgan Batt's biography