Leela Ramdeen

Chair, CC­SJ, & Di­rec­tor, CRE­DI

It was with great joy that many of us gath­ered at the Church of St Phillip and St James, Ch­agua­nas, on Feb 23 to cel­e­brate the or­di­na­tion to the Or­der of the Di­a­conate of Stephan Alexan­der, Kwe­si Al­leyne, Ken­wyn Sylvester, and Mikkel Tre­strail—con­ferred up­on them by Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don. What a mo­ment of Grace!

I sat next to Lynette Fred­er­ick who whis­pered to me: "Yuh come home? I know where your fam­i­ly used to live in Ch­agua­nas." And Denise Singh, who was sit­ting in front of me, turned around to re­mind me that she, her broth­er, Den­nis Singh, and I at­tend­ed Sun­day School to­geth­er in that parish. To my left was a sixth for­mer from my al­ma mater, Holy Faith Con­vent, Cou­va, who re­mind­ed me that I had spo­ken to sixth for­m­ers there last year. I was tru­ly among FAMALAAAY!

As Catholics, as fol­low­ers of Christ through our bap­tism, we are all called to be holy. In Matthew 5:48, Je­sus tells us: "You must...be per­fect just as your heav­en­ly Fa­ther is per­fect." Prof William E May re­minds us as well "the uni­ver­sal call to ho­li­ness: The vo­ca­tion com­mon to all Chris­tians...Chris­tians are called to more spe­cif­ic vo­ca­tions. These in­clude the states of life to which in­di­vid­ual Chris­tians are sum­moned...

"Pope John Paul II em­pha­sised, in...Re­demp­tor ho­min­is, that, "for the whole com­mu­ni­ty of the Peo­ple of God and for each mem­ber of it what is in ques­tion is not just a spe­cif­ic ‘so­cial mem­ber­ship’; rather, for each and every one what is es­sen­tial is a par­tic­u­lar vo­ca­tion...one of our im­por­tant tasks in an­swer­ing God’s call to ho­li­ness is to dis­cern our per­son­al vo­ca­tion and ful­fill it."

Stephan from Gas­par­il­lo, is a lawyer, Kewsi from Ch­agua­nas, is an en­gi­neer, Ken­wyn from Pointe-a-Pierre, is an ac­coun­tant, Mikkel, from Pe­tit Val­ley, is co-founder and vice-mod­er­a­tor of Com­pan­ions of the Trans­fig­ured Christ Com­mu­ni­ty, for­mer Parish Link Co­or­di­na­tor with CC­SJ and reg­u­lar pan­el­list on CC­SJ's month­ly Ask Why TV pro­gramme on TCN. Through their dis­cern­ment process, they have re­spond­ed to God's call re­gard­ing their spe­cial vo­ca­tion. The med­i­ta­tion hymn, sung dur­ing mass and writ­ten by Stephan, says it all. Here is an ex­tract:

"Lord, I hear Your voice/Call­ing out to me/You reach out to me in love/Beck­on­ing me forth/The sweet tone of Your voice/Echoes with­in me/You speak my name in love/Like none has done be­fore/I long to do Your will..."

Arch­bish­op Ja­son's homi­ly was pow­er­ful. It was im­por­tant that he men­tioned the fact that our church is "bleed­ing". He said: "Vo­ca­tion is to be called from and called to where the church is bleed­ing, on every side—the re­sult of our own fol­ly."

I thought of the four-day Sum­mit (Feb 21-24) Pope Fran­cis called to ad­dress the scan­dal of cler­gy sex­u­al abuse. Pope Fran­cis said at the fi­nal mass on Sun­day that abuse should nev­er be cov­ered up or tol­er­at­ed. "We are deal­ing with abom­inable crimes that must be erased from the face of the earth.”

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Pope Fran­cis said the Church will "spare no ef­fort to do all that is nec­es­sary to bring to jus­tice" any­one who has com­mit­ted the "crimes of abuse". Let's work and pray that God will rid our cler­gy of those who dis­hon­our our Cre­ator and those He cre­at­ed by vi­o­lat­ing their hu­man dig­ni­ty in such un­speak­able terms, and those who cov­er up or de­ny such vi­o­la­tions.

In the midst of this scan­dal, the or­di­na­tion of the four dea­cons, on their way to priest­hood, is a sign of hope in God's mer­ci­ful love. Let's build a vo­ca­tion cul­ture in our arch­dio­cese, in which, through our con­stant prayers and our love for the Eu­charist, we will dis­cern our "call­ing" in life. What­ev­er our vo­ca­tion, re­mem­ber that we are all dis­ci­ples of Christ, called to build His King­dom here on earth. Each of us has a vo­ca­tion to be­come what we al­ready are; to live in a man­ner wor­thy of our vo­ca­tion (St Paul), and to use our par­tic­u­lar charisms to con­tribute to the sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion of the world. Let us strive to do so joy­ful­ly.

We af­firm our arch­bish­op, priests, dea­cons, sis­ters, broth­ers, and monks in their min­istry and thank them for their faith­ful ser­vice in the Lord’s vine­yard. We ask Mary's in­ter­ces­sion that God will con­tin­ue to fill them with grace to serve with courage, love, and un­wa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion to their min­istry. May oth­ers be in­spired by their ex­am­ple and re­spond to God's call to serve in our church and in so­ci­ety.