This year, FAITH explores the topic of vocations. Dr. Ed Hogan helps us to discover the heart God is looking for in some of his most specific calls to serve.

Who has God called you to be?

“God created man in his image, in the divine image he created him, male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27)

We are made in the image and likeness of God. It’s one of the first things we read in the Bible. It’s also one of the most fundamental theological truths of the Catholic faith.

Often, however, we don’t connect the fact that we are made in the image and likeness of God with another fundamental truth of the Catholic faith — that God is the Trinity.

So I want to begin this column with a question: What does it mean to say that human beings are made in the image and likeness of the Trinity?

First of all, it means that we are made in the image and likeness of a God who is a communion of persons. And one of the clearest places we can begin to understand what that means is in marriage.

Perhaps Pope John Paul II put it best when he said: “Man became the ‘image and likeness’ of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons which man and woman form right from the beginning.” (Theology of the Body)

Marriages are called to show the image and likeness of the Trinity in a special way. How?

1. The Trinity is a communion of persons, and marriage is a communion of persons.

2. The communion of persons in the Trinity is fruitful — creation comes forth from the loving union of the Trinity. The communion of persons in marriage is fruitful — children come forth from the loving union of husband and wife.

Jesus also reveals to us, most powerfully in the cross and the Eucharist, that we are made in the image and likeness of a God who makes a gift of himself, a gift of his body and blood, so that others might have life.

This, too, is central in marriage. Husband and wife are called to make a gift of themselves to each other. And one of the most obvious consequences of that self-giving is new life: the gift of children! (Perhaps no one understands this point, about making a gift of your body and blood so that others might have life, as well as a woman who has given birth!)

Marriage is a sacrament and a sacrament makes something visible. Marriages are called to make visible — tangible and believable – the fact that God is a communion of persons whose union is fruitful, and that God makes a gift of himself so that others might have life.

Of course, marriage is not the only way of being a communion of persons whose union is fruitful, or of making a gift of yourself that others might have life.

A priest is physically celibate, but also has a certain kind of spiritual union with persons, and a spiritual way of making a gift of himself to others. That union and self-giving are fruitful in spiritual ways: a good priest has many spiritual children!

But the point for now is this — and it’s related to religious education of our children: If children see good marriages and grasp how the more obvious physical kind of union and fruitfulness is a way of living in the image and likeness of the Trinity, then it will be easier for them to grasp how the more subtle spiritual kinds of union and fruitfulness are ways of living in the image and likeness of the Trinity.

C.S. Lewis once said that members in the mystical body of Christ (the church) are like organs in a physical body: They are essentially different from, but still complementary to, each other.

I’d like to suggest that we think of vocations in the church in the same way — as organs in a body.

A healthy body requires that all the organs be healthy and whole. As a breakdown in any one organ compromises the functioning of the whole body, so a breakdown in any one vocation will weaken all the others. Conversely, a deeper understanding of any one vocation can strengthen not only that particular vocation, but all the others as well.

What does it mean that each vocation is a way of living in the image and likeness of the Trinity? I think that’s a question worth pondering.