Julie Onderko - Discover Your Next Mission from God

Julie Onderko

Discover Your Next
Mission from God

Saints Who Found Gods Will
and How You Can Too

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS
Manchester, New Hampshire

Copyright 2015 by Julie Onderko

Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Perceptions Design Studio.

Cover art: details from Christ and the Virgin Enthroned with Forty Saints , c. 1340, miniature on vellum, by the Master of the Dominican Effigies, courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Unless otherwise noted, biblical references in this book are taken from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1965, 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for the United States of America copyright 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church : Modifications from the Editio Typica copyright 1997, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Sophia Institute Press
Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108
1-800-888-9344

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Sophia Institute Press is a registered trademark of Sophia Institute.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Onderko, Julie.

Title: Discover your next mission from God : saints who found God's will and how you can too / Julie Onderko.

Description: Manchester, New Hampshire : Sophia Institute Press, 2015. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015037996 | ISBN 9781622822614 (pbk. : alk. paper) ePub ISBN 978-1-622822-621

Subjects: LCSH: Vocation Catholic Church. | Church work Catholic Church. |

Catholic Church--Doctrines.

Classification: LCC BX1795.W67 O53 2015 | DDC 248.4 dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015037996

To the Holy Family: To Saint Joseph, my spiritual father
I am so grateful to him, and I love him so much. To our Blessed Mother, Mary, through whom
my consecration to her Son, Jesus,
has changed my life: I love her and
she is the best mom anyone could ever have. And to our Lord, Jesus Christ, the God-Man
and the absolute love of my life:
because of Him, all things are possible.

Contents

About the Author: Julie Onderko

Acknowledgments

Although my husband, Tom, never wrote a word of this book, it simply couldnt have happened without him. This is his book, too. His unwavering and often sacrificial support made it possible. Tom is a gift to me, and I thank God for putting him in my life.

What would I do without my spiritual director, Father Giles Dimock, O.P.? Father Giles provided the theological safety net required to ensure faithfulness to the teachings of the Catholic Church. His ability to get to the heart of any matter with clarity has been invaluable to me. I greatly appreciate the guidance I have received from this good and wise priest.

Close friends are family that you choose. Steve and Karen Timm are like my big brother and sister. Without Karens belief and confident insistence that I write this book, it is likely that I would have procrastinated indefinitely. And I cannot thank Steve enoughan absolutely fantastic writer and the best wordsmith I know. He taught me so much.

How can I adequately thank my dear friend and prayer partner, Rahles Goodell? Every writer needs someone with a nose for finding mistakes, and that was definitely Rahlie. Not only that: shes really onboard with the mission that others benefit from the saints featured in these pages.

Father Theodore Lange was so very helpful with the chapter on Saint Joseph. Father Theo also supported my writing ministry with a blessing, May Saint Joseph guard this labor of love. I am deeply touched.

There are also several friends who have supported me, and I thank God for them. They listened, made suggestions, and encouraged me. And you know who you are!

I am eternally grateful for the heavenly connections made while writing this book. It has been a real adventure getting to know these saints; they have become my spiritual family. What an incredible blessing it is to have friends and family in high places!

Seek Gods Will from This Point On

God has created me to do him some definite service; he has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission. Blessed John Henry Newman

The Question

What is the defining question of our lives? That all-important question is found in The Catechism of the Catholic Church : Lord, what do you want me to do? (CCC 2706, emphasis added).

For our entire lives, weve been conditioned to make decisions based on what we want, and it goes against our grain to relinquish control to anyone, even to God. It seems as if to do so would require us to give up our freedom. But the opposite is true: we are most free and most human when we are squarely in Gods will.

Perhaps we have messed up Gods plan for us. It could be that God had a certain job in mind for us that would use our abilities and talents to further His kingdom on earth, but we did other things. Maybe we ignored God altogether and lived a self-centered sinful life. Its possible that God had religious life in mind for us, but we didnt listen and got married instead. We could be on course, slightly off course, or way off the mark.

Even if we are not on course, no worries! Think of a Global Positioning System (GPS). If we do not follow the instructions, the GPS continually recalibrates to lead us to our destination. It does not send us back to the beginning to start all over. We dont travel the roads that we have passed up. Rather, the GPS sends us to our destination from where we currently stand . That is how it is with God, but infinitely better.

God can redeem our past. It is quite mysterious how He can take any terrible thing and make something far more beautiful out of it than we ever could have imagined. Think of the fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden. Now that appeared to be a horrible derailment of Gods plan, yet when God restored the human family, we found ourselves far better off than our first parents. We get to be in the Body of Christ; we get to share in the family of God by a radical change in our nature that actually divinizes us. We might not see it in our earthly lifetimes, and we might not understand it, but when we give our past sins, mistakes, and regrets to God and follow His will, He will take care of all those regrets.

We exist in this challenging day and time for a reason. From all eternity, God had our particular circumstances in mind for our arrival on this earth. And He made sure we would have the help we need.

Works of Mercy

It is human nature to get excited about something new, such as discovering our next mission from God. But any good thing can get out of balance, displacing what we ought to be doing. Pope John Paul II warned about the temptation of being so strongly interested in Church services and tasks that some fail to become actively engaged in their responsibilities in the professional, social, cultural and political world. In discerning our mission, there is the danger of becoming self-absorbed. But if we do it Gods way, He will reveal His will for us, even as we focus on others.

God requires certain things of each and every one of us; in fact, we cant get into Heaven without them. These requirements are an indispensable part of the journey that leads to our mission:

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