Dear young people, friends, family:
After the overloaded binge of Christmas parties, we have the privilege of being the first to write the vocational letter for the beginning of the year 2022. We have already gone through two years of being unable to move freely in places, confused and stressed. However, today in this letter, we want to talk to you about the beautiful, rainbow after the storm. Each line is meant to be a testimony to you who may be looking for an answer.
The beginning of this new year allows you to start writing a new story and each story has a special aspect, in this case we want to talk to you about your vocation as a lay person. To talk about a new year, we necessarily have to review the years that have already passed: Many of us, for example, have participated in youth, family, health, pastoral vocational, among others, and we have played a role as lay people committed to our Church and our Claretian charism.
In that sense, it is important to remember how much fun we had serving others in the Church, the commitment we put into that mission with children, young people or adults and the sacrifices we decided to make by the generous dedication of time to others. That is where our vocation becomes transparent and shows us that we are called to transcend.
That is how our vocation was born: In a Claretian parish youth ministry, it’s where we have served 15 years of our lives in the service of young people, 15 years of service so that we could ask ourselves the questions “what do we feel called to?” and “in what way do we want to serve God?”. Taking into consideration that the Claretian Family offers us a branch in which we can live this charism under the model of St. Anthony Mary Claret, we chose to begin an itinerary of lay discernment, a decision that changed both our lives.
Yes, both of us, because in the midst of this discernment, we were preparing for our special day: “our marriage.” Both processes of preparation were complementary: On the one hand, the lay discernment brought us closer to our vocation as Lay Claretians and allowed us to enter a large family in which different nationalities, languages, cultures come together, but in which we are united by one Christ. On the other hand, in the midst of this preparation, discernment as an engaged couple, consolidating our relationship to finally receive the sacrament of marriage.
The subject of courtship is a serious subject that involves asking serious questions and being accompanied in that preparation, which will later be the foundation of the house that you will build together with your partner as a married couple. Surely you are one of those young people who are in love, who like someone or who have decided to transcend in your life with something more than just committing to your pastoral life.
Suddenly, you feel that Christ is calling you to something more important, which is good: This is the beginning to ask yourself if you feel identified in such a way with the Claretian charism and you want to put a stamp on that commitment, being a lay person of the Lay Claretian Movement, and if you are in a couple, ask yourself if you are preparing yourselves to assume the great challenge of marriage.
In both vocations, we encounter Christ daily, in our daily life, in our gestures, in our fights, in our reconciliations, in our community meetings, in our formative themes, in our international encounters, in our intercultural conversations and in the other ways of living the Claretian charism.
Lima, Peru.
January 3, 2022.
