By Fr. Jerry Hardy

The particular national juncture at which we find ourselves right now is a curious admixture of affluence and poverty, of construction boom and urban blight, of shaky peace and unnoticed war, of record auto sales and dwindling gas supplies, of a world’s hope lifted by the agreements of recent summit talks and a nation’s conscience qualmed by the moral leakage of a year-old Watergate.

It almost seems as if we have come to accept less in the quality of life around us because we have contracted some subtle sickness that keeps us from expecting any more.

And so we need men who will remind us to dream dreams, not as night-time refuge from today’s labor, but as the re-creative visioning of how we will build a better tomorrow.

We need men who will serve as a kind of catalytic conscience to guide the shaping of things according to higher expectations.

And what does all that have to do with you?

Well, the “we” in the “we are called” title of this talk is YOU.

For you see it is no longer good enough simply to have convictions and points of view no matter how lofty and principal. We are at the stage where they must be clearly and intelligently articulated in the meaningful idiom of our day so that those around us know where we stand and why. That’s important for the health of our society, a society to which we look for ministerial candidates. But it’s important for us as individuals too because convictions are not for containers that we seal like coffins, priding ourselves on having them correctly catalogued and certified.

Those who lock them up or pack them away will someday be indicted for killing our quality of life by slowly stoning it to sleep with the popcorn of mediocre dreams and half-hearted hopes.

And so we must ask ourselves what are we doing for life?

What are we doing to remove the kinds of things that make men kill? What are we doing in our own lives to root out the cutting remark, the put-down talk, the selfish attitude, the angry shout, because all these breed murder in its smaller forms.

If we are against violence in the streets we must ask ourselves what are we doing for brotherhood?

What are we doing to change attitudes around us in our friends and families? Attitudes that class people by the color of their skin rather than by the power of their soul; attitudes that separate people according to the size of their bank account rather than by the content of their character.

What are we doing, if we believe in the quality of life as a value.

What are we doing in the face of widespread pro-abortion news stories, organizations and legislation?

What are we doing to see that there is some pro-life counterpart to the pro-abortion storm that hangs like a haze over the communications landscape of our country?

And we must ask these same questions of those we elect to represent us because the privilege of voting does not absolve us from the responsibility of vigilance.

But for the active Christian man or woman the demands on time and energy can easily dehydrate your spirit. Most of us live in a swirl of activity that can become simply the spinning of so many wheels, unless there is some kind of quiet, reflective factor in our daily lives, a factor that enables us to do some deep breathing with the Lord.

In this context, prayer is not an activity. It’s an attitude, a posture toward, a presence to, being with the Lord, who gives meaning, significance, worth, purpose to all that I do.

What I have come to understand about myself is that I cannot be to you a priest, what I say I want to be and what you say you need me to be, unless I root and ground myself in this kind of still time with the Lord. I want Tao be a holy man – you need me to be. “Fine for you, Father,” you might say, “It’s your job and vocation.”

But isn’t it yours too?

Aren’t’ you supposed to be growing closer to the Lord, too? How can you if you pray now pretty much as you did ten or fifteen years ago?

Holiness is the process of consistently letting the Lord get me, a willingness expressed in many ways, but for only one reason: namely, that he calls out to us to be holy and my willingness to be holy is prayer. It is my response to His call. It is a way of saying here I am, tell me who you are and show me who I can become.

You are called to be holy men, holy in yourself, instruments whereby others are awakened to the urgency of listening for Him and becoming holy themselves.

You are called to be the men Isaiah talked about the beginning of his talk.