Of the Graz bishop Wilhelm Krautwaschl celebrated the service for this year’s “Good Shepherd Sunday” in the church of the German-speaking community in Rome. The fourth Sunday of Easter, this year May 8th, is celebrated in the Catholic Church as the “World Day of Prayer for Spiritual Vocations”. The history of Christianity is full of people who have answered God’s call and thus been true to their own vocation, said Krautwaschl in his sermon in Santa Maria dell’Anima. At the same time, the church needs those who are called to ordained service and who point their existence to Christ, “who, as the Risen One, is to be sought by us in the midst of the life of this world and calls us to follow him”.
All believers have the same vocation into the Christian life. But those Christians who vow to live their lives according to the evangelical counsels of poverty, obedience and celibacy, or who are ordained within the church, are “necessary,” says Krautwaschl. Priests, deacons, bishops, religious and other consecrated persons give with their existence “the memory from which we all have to live”. It is not about their own performance, but simply about “the sacramental realization of who is the actual ‘shepherd’, which was given to them in their special mission through prayer and the laying on of hands,” explained the Bishop of Graz.
Krautwaschl is currently spending a few days in Rome with some employees of the Graz-Seckau diocese who are celebrating their 30th anniversary of service. The group was also received by the Austrian Ambassador to the Holy See, Franziska Honsowitz-Friessnigg. Also present were some Styrians who work in the Vatican, among them the Styrian diocesan priest Paul Markowitsch, who has been working in the German section of the State Secretariat since March.
Those: kathpress
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