Sr Lini Sheeja MSC –
Divine Visions
God the Father had a vision for creation as He created everything with love, by love, and for love and He found everything good in creating it. God the Father had a vision for His chosen people, the Israelites that made him lead them to the Promised Land; a land flowing with milk and honey. He accompanied the Israelites on their journey with the vision of providing them with a new life. God the Father had a vision for fallen humanity that He sent His only Son to redeem.
Divine Visions Continued
Jesus had a vision for His mission that He chose 12 disciples at the beginning of His ministry and trained them for 3 years. It is the fruit of that vision that we have today 2.382 billion Christians across the globe who seek to live the Master’s vision. Jesus had a vision for fallen humanity that He willingly embraced the Cross to give us a future. Jesus had a vision for lepers that He healed them and sent them back to the society. Jesus had a vision for the adulterous woman that He forgave her and sent her back to the society to lead a more worthy life. Jesus had a vision for His chosen Apostles that He sent His Spirit upon them and empowered them as they remained enclosed within a locked room. The Apostles had visions of making disciples that from the locked room they went out and proclaimed Jesus boldly. And finally they shed their blood to give us a future.
Great Leaders’ Visions
Mother Theresa walked through the slums to give a future for the abandoned and rejected. St Mother Teresa was none other than a nun who had a vision that profoundly changed our world. Her vision reached the poorest of the poor. She began with that vision, and then developed a clear plan for making it come true. Saints had visions that made them do wonders through their passion for God. Founders of Religious Congregations had visions that initiated us into various ministries today. Mahatma Gandhi had a vision to fight for the freedom of India and give us a future. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh too had a vision to stand for the truth and thus to give us a future.
Call of Moses with Vision
Whenever I give a talk to young religious and priests, the first question that I ask them is to tell me about the core of their vocation or to write down the reason for God’s call to them. I used to notice that on hearing what I said they would be engrossed in deep reflection and thought. “And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt” (Exod. 3:9-10). God heard the cry of the Israelites that resulted in the call of Moses. Israelites cried out to God and Moses received a vocation. The call of Moses is the vision of God to redeem Israel from the hand of Pharaoh.
Our Call with Vision
Dear readers of this article, as consecrated men and women, we are called because someone in distress cried out to God. We received a vocation as priests and religious, because God heard the cry of someone. Isn’t it something marvellous to know the core of our vocation? Our novitiate formation should help us to know the core of our vocation, which is the cry that someone made to God which prompted him to call us. Our novitiate is not only a time to learn our constitutions; it means much more than that. We are not here in our convents and seminaries because we wanted to be a priests and religious. We are not here because our parents wanted us to be here. We are anointed priests and religious because God heard someone’s cry. “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop,” said St Mother Teresa, the Saint of the Gutter. Each of us is called by God to add a drop by our very vocation. The broken world needs us! The vulnerable humanity needs our presence and our very service!
Our vocation is to wipe out those tears which God saw and heard. How can we remain in our comfortable zones and make them cry continuously? Moses was called and sent on a mission. Remember, we too are called and sent on a mission to the ones whose cry resounded so loud before God. Are we not wasting our lives, if we have not discerned the core of our vocation? We entered religious and priestly life with a dream of becoming a priest/religious. Our dreams have been fulfilled and we find ourselves now as religious and priests. Now, we need to move towards becoming visionaries. To have a vision, one needs to know the purpose of one’s call. One needs to sit at the presence of God and God will reveal it to us.
Vision with Passion
Four years ago, my provincial called and told me to look out for a job somewhere for a year. After she spoke to me I went to the Chapel, knelt before the Blessed Sacrament and asked God, where do you want me to go? Where do you want me to reach out? Immediately I heard the voice of God saying, “A gun cannot change a prisoner, but a nun can!” The call was so clear to me, that I approached Prison Ministry and got in to serve the lost, least and the last. God made everything so clearly before me, He prepared the path for me, He put the passion within me and He did what He wanted through me.
If we are not attuned to the Spirit of the Lord, if we are not bowing before God who called us, if we are not identifying the core of our call, if we don’t have passion for God’s mission, if we don’t have a mission with a vision, our lives would end between the four walls of our institutions in gossiping, judging and pointing fingers at others. Let us become the ones with visions to add that drop, so that the ocean will never dry. Our founders had visions and that’s why we have the congregations through which we serve humanity. Our call is to be shepherds with visions by walking in the footsteps of the Great Shepherd, Christ who went in search of the lost one. Our call is to be shepherds who “know the smell of the sheep” as Pope Francis urges every priest and religious. Have visions and do wonders!
Sr Lini Sheeja MSC, belongs to the Congregation of Missionary Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. She worked as the team member of Child-line, BOSCO Bangalore. She served as the Chief-Editor for Prison Voice, a national monthly magazine and she authored a book named, Prison Ministry: The Dreamers’ Mission in which she invites the dreamers to join hands together to do wonders for the broken humanity.