Page 146 - spiritual_accompaniment_montreal_archdiocese

HOMILIES

The vocation of creation as a whole is to proclaim as a visible sign the invisible God, to be a
visible sign of the love of God, the God who is love! God is love!

In the book of Genesis, we read right at the start that the human being is created in the image
of God, and then not much later, that the married couple is the image of God. This is because
these images of God overlap. Each human being is in their own dignity the image of God, but
the life of the couple is also the image of God. It is so as the image of the love of God for
humanity, the love of Jesus Christ for his Church.

But as the same time, whether lived celibately in consecrated life or in one of the million ways
in which individuals can be in the world to serve and to love, our individual life itself
can become a visible sign of the God who is love. In our active life, our service, our gift, our
self-giving gift, we become visible signs of the invisible: signs of the love of God and the exist-
ence of God who is love.

When we go deeper into the question, the question becomes how to live this vocation to love,
realized in the vocation to marriage or realized in the gift of self, of service, of one’s life. The
call to love accompanies us, animates us, motivates us and, most importantly, gives meaning
to our lives.

Giving meaning to our lives and making sense of our lives is looking for the way of my partici-
pation in God’s creative work, looking for the way God calls me, my vocation, the way that I
am to go.

Being created in the image of God, being created as a call to love, means quite simply being
created, being created as gift and called to look for a way to give oneself, to make my life a gift
for others.
I invite you to turn to the Lord in prayer.

In this pandemic, there are long moments of inactivity with not enough to do. Especially in
such moments, the question of the meaning of life becomes more acute. Maybe we have just
lost our job, and we try to make sense of our life. Maybe life in the family is not easy right now,
with everybody together all the time, something unusual and maybe uncomfortable, and we
try to make sense of our lives.

(cont’d)

Collection of texts by the Most Rev. Christian Lépine 146