The Lord calls. This is an undoubted fact. The Lord calls continuously and calls first of all to life. We just need to look up and contemplate the beauty we are surrounded by. We just need to look inside. Beauty is all around us and within us, and it speaks to us of the life of God.

Scripture, too, tells us about a God who speaks. God speaks to man, speaks to each one and calls each one by name: “The Lord said to Abram: Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house…” (Gn 12,1).
And when God speaks, God creates, gives life, calls to life. “Then God said: Let there be light, and there was light.” (Gn 1, 3); “And when he had said this, [Jesus] cried out in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.” (Jn 11, 43-44).

Each of us experiences this call of God. We live, we are called to live. We are always searching and intent on discovering the root source and the ultimate goal of our life. The Lord speaks to us and wants to give us all of himself, he wants to give us his love, the full sense of things and of life. And he has always done so, even today, now, here, giving us his Son Jesus, his Spirit, through the Church, through the sacraments, through the Word of God, through creation and the people who accompany us in the journey of life.

Everything speaks to us of the life of God. God is present in all things.

Listening, recognizing and trying to create a personal response to life become the most important thing to do. Listening to the silence within us in which the Lord wants to meet us. Listening to and praying the Word of God. Admiring and marveling at the beauty of creation. Participating actively in the life of the Christian community and in the world, collaborating in God’s work of reconciliation and justice. To feel challenged by the reality that surrounds us and to respond with the best of our possibilities, abilities and will, in the present moment, for a greater good.

The acceptance of God’s call to life thus becomes a continuous listening and questioning, an openness to the life and the newness of God himself, an art of discernment, a freedom and a skill in responding, a receiving of life and imitating God in the way we donate this same life. This is the freedom and happiness to which, therefore, we are all called, in every state and condition of life, celibate, consecrated or married: in loving and giving life just as God first loved us and gave us his life. And living like that is beautiful.