Three-fold vocational call

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Matthew, a tax collector, a sinner, engaged in a career with a bad reputation. “Who’d call such a guy to the priesthood? Who’d call a woman engaged in scandalous activity, men/men scorned by society, we ask.  Jesus, who  knows our thoughts before one of them even comes into our consciousness, responds: “I do. I come to call sinners, not righteous people” (cf. Mt. 9:  13).  Jesus condemns sin, not the sinner.  God has no favorites, we learn in another Scripture passage.  Any call from God flows from God’s mercy and love. It is God who empowers us sinners to work in His vineyard, building up “the Body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood [womanhood], to the extent of the full stature of Christ” (Eph. 4: 13).

Notice a three-fold vocational call: a call to a state in life (priesthood), a call to build up the Kingdom or the Body of Christ (baptismal call to all Christians in any walk of life) and a call to become a mature woman/man  that extends to  the full stature of Christ (again, in any state in life).