It happened while I was in the kitchen, shortly before 5pm, putting away the groceries and listening to BBC World Service which gave excellent coverage of the Papal Conclave. The reporter said there had been hope of a result around 4.30 but when that didn’t happen we would have to await another ballot.
Then suddenly he exclaimed, “white smoke!” I ran to the television.
What a sight, what a sound, what utter joy on the faces of the people in St. Peter’s Square. It was electric!
White smoke billowing from the most watched chimney in the world. And the family of seagulls on the roof beside it. The new-born chick almost symbolic of what was taking place. Despite the abundance of seagulls in Hastings, I had never seen such a young chick before. A first! New life!
I had tears in my eyes.
We were witnessing something quite unique, very special, a universal and unifying joy.
A vocation unfolding before our eyes. Our common vocation. The vocation of the one we were waiting for.
It is striking that this eruption of sustained joy took place BEFORE we knew WHO had been chosen, indicating that our joy is not focused on the personality of the Pope, but on the fact that the vacant office, the ministry had been filled again, the calling heard and responded to.
Certainly, the man chosen matters but the gift of God transcends the holder of the office.
This is important to me as I reflect on the meaning of Vocation on this Good Shepherd Sunday.
The same principle applies to the Mass, the Eucharist which is the centre of our Catholic life. Not the man celebrating the Mass, but the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood is what matters. Though sadly much of our attendance at Mass is focused on the priest.
Compare it to the table of a family. In one sense, it is the food on the table that matters more than who put it there.
I ponder the vocation of the elected Pope, the mystery of it. This sacred gift that we celebrate so loudly, so correctly. This gift has its beginnings in silence, the silent soul of the one chosen, in the Eternal Silence of God. This is how and where every vocation begins, whatever that vocation be.
Pope Leo XIV in his talk to the Cardinals the day after his election said this; “God loves to communicate Himself, not in the roar of thunder and earthquake but in the whispers of a gentle breeze (1 Kings 19;13) or as some translate it a ” sound of sheer silence.’
I am always drawn to the “sheer silence” translation because it is in this way that, as a small boy, I heard God calling me to be who I am, to become who I am now.
I felt it as a stirring in my heart at Mass, or in those troubled ten-year-old days when, mitching from school, I would sit in the empty Augustinian church gazing at the Tabernacle, knowing I was understood and at the same time feeling a pull in my chest, something magnetic that made me want to go to the Tabernacle, maybe even go into it.
Interesting that a fledgling vocation should be shaped in such a place of childhood turmoil. A bold, naughty boy being prepared for something other, like God was ploughing the soil of my heart.
And only now does the Augustinian connection come to me, in these days of our Augustinian Holy Father. Among the Augustinians as an altar server, an important part of my vocation took shape. Being in the Sanctuary, near to the altar.
But it wasn’t only in church that I heard the call. It also came to me very powerfully alone by the sea in Aran – deep calling on deep, no speech, no word, no voice. Jesus calling softly and tenderly saying, “come to me, come home, come and see, come follow me.” From before I entered my Mother’s womb. From all Eternity. “Love bade me welcome…quick-eyed Love drew nearer to me sweetly…” (George Herbert)
This is the only vocation I know, the only one I can speak of with any kind of authority.
Does not the heart burn within us as He accompanies and speaks to us. I see it in a young man from the parish here who discerning his vocations. He experiences such a sensation in his chest when he attends Mass. I bumped into this lad on the street the other day, noting that he was carrying in his hand St. Augustine’s Confessions – “you have made us for yourself O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee!”
I imagine there must be a restless kind of magnetism in a couple who are called by God to marriage. God drawing two people to each other by the burning in their hearts and in their bodies. Drawing them into one, drawing them to Himself in a loving that is sacrificial and serving, other-centred and utterly compelling.
This “oneness” brings me back to Pope Leo XIV who speaks of us all being one in Christ – one body, one spirit as the Eucharistic Prayer says.
There is something quietly compelling about this man, quietly assured, steady. And luminous. It’s as if he is bathed in Light from within, a light visible from without.