Mass, a prayer book, and St.Paul

Thanks to Gudrun Lisa Korell’s suggestion, from over at Prayers4reparation, I headed to Vespers and Mass early Saturday evening so I would have some time to browse through the bookshop, St. Pauls. I was a little overwhelmed by the size of the shop as it is much larger than it appears from the outside. I finally settled on a prayer book entitled “The Greatest of These is Love: Daily Meditations on St. Paul“.

I noticed quite a few books on animals and the environment in the ‘current topics’ section, but none of them really seemed to be calling me. I also noticed a bunch of books written by people who are currently being investigated by the Vatican, so I wasn’t totally trusting that everything in the shop was necessarily Church approved. Needless to say, I’m very happy with this little prayer book as I’m already receiving many blessings from it! (And lucky for me Westminster Cathedral has St. Paul’s Chapel which I can pray in, which I think is pretty neat!)

I’m an academic at heart and the combination of learning about Paul’s life throughout the Bible and the meditation and prayer given by Bishop Campbell strikes a great tone for me in my prayer life. What I really took away from today’s meditation was this line: “Like St. Paul, our vocation is to respond to the measure of Christ’s grace given us in the particular circumstances of our own lives.” 

I find the concept of vocation to be really freeing. As I mentioned in Saturday’s post, there have been a few times when I’ve felt called to travel down a certain path in life. These callings weren’t necessarily long-term vocations (religious life, marriage, etc.), but I’m definitely in the beginning stages of discernment for a longer-term vocation now. Starting in October I’m going to be working for ten months in service of others and I’m praying that through this time away from boyfriend I’ll discern God’s plan. I’ve found this article from the Archdiocese of Washington entitled “Six Principles of Discernment” to be really helpful. Those six principles are going to be meditated on a lot over this next coming year!

I hope everyone had an insightful Corpus Christi!

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