AN APPEAL
Boys and girls, young men and ladies, with your young lives so full of promises opening out before you, have you no nobler ideals, no loftier ambition, than to spend your days in pleasure and amusement, while your brothers and your sisters look appealing to you for help? Lift up your eyes and see the harvest awaiting you, the most glorious work ever given man to do –the saving of immortal souls!
The day of Ireland’s greatest glory was the time when the land was covered with a golden network of schools and monasteries; when her missioners and nuns were to be found in every clime and country; when every tenth Irishman and woman was consecrated to God and His service. “If our country would be born again,” wrote Thomas Francis Meagher, “she must be baptized once more in the old Irish holy well.” This is the work that lies before you, the work God looks to you to do – strengthening the Faith that St. Patrick, St. Francis Xavier, St. Alphonsus and other saints left us, preaching the truth to an unbelieving world, sacrificing yourselves, as your ancestors did before, leaving home and friends, and, for the sake of God, giving your life that others may be saved.
A vocation is, indeed, the gift of God, but through love of the souls whom He longs to save, gladly would He bestow it on many more, if only they would listen to His voice or ask him for this treasure.
Are you one, dear reader, at whose heart Jesus has long been knocking, perhaps in vain, inviting, pleading, urging? “The Master is here and calls for you”; He has need of you for His work. Follow Him bravely and trustfully, you will never regret it. But if you have not yet heard that voice, then remember His words: “Ask and you shall receive”; ask Him for a vocation, not once but daily, ask confidently, perseveringly, for He has pledged His word to hear you, so that you, also, may share the happiness of those who serve the Lord, and that "your joy" – like theirs – “may be full.”
“One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” Ps. xxvi.4
