Reflections
Vocations - The Inspired Fruit of FNE
How FNE forms commitment from Otters to Wayfarers, and why the Catholic scouting method has produced strong vocations for over 100 years.
A message from Jesus Christ to his FNE Explorers as they make their Promise to become an FNE Explorer.
You are my friend, no longer my servant; my friend because I have let you know my Father’s secrets more than others. Everything you have, you have received.
From me.
All you are, you are for me.
It is not you who chose me as God – it is I who chose you.
I chose your soul among all the possible souls and those that will never exist: I created it and gave it a body.
I chose you among all men to make a Christian out of you.
And among all men to make a Canadian out of you.
And among all Canadians to make an FNE Explorer out of you.
Think about the millions of unfaithful who will never be Christians and who will die without knowing that I died for them.
Think of all the Christians who do not have the happiness of being the sons of a very Christian kingdom, and of descending spiritually from Saint Louis and Saint Joan the maiden of Orleans.
Think of all the little Canadian boys who do not have the opportunity of being explorers – the grace of being an explorer. You believe that you are an explorer because you wanted to become an explorer. Amen, I say to you, I myself elected you in secret and was preparing everything so that you became an explorer.
For it is an election as my explorers are the elite.
I have elected you, I have singled you out, and I have chosen you.
And such is the result of my predilection, of my preferred selection.
I have loved you for free. You have nothing to do with it.
I choose you, and such is the mystery of my love.
And my love does good work.
Unless the Lord is the architect, the builders labour in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch on the battlefields in vain.
And unless the Lord is in the boat, the rowers wear out in vain.
Which means, troop chief or patrol chief, that without me, you cannot do anything.
See, my explorer, the means of God and the means of man, and learn to only trust in the supernatural.
I pressed my disciples to go to sea and to arrive ahead of me on the opposite side of the lake. Then, when the night came, I withdrew alone to the mountain to pray.
I was not praying for me but for my small patrol, my first patrol, my apostles and my explorers who that evening and quite in spite of themselves were a little like my sea explorers.
And I prayed.
I chose you, you and your brother explorers, and I appointed you to go, and bear fruit that will remain, and that something may have changed because you have been on the earth.
Like a good vine, you must bear fruit.
And this fruit will remain.
Something changed – for the better – because there’s an explorer at school or in the workplace.
Something changed for the better, because there’s an explorer in the regiment.
Something changed for the better because there’s an explorer at home.
And in the parish and in the city, and in your country and in my Church, if my explorers are what they should be – and why should they not be? – something should be changed for the better: More harmony among citizens and more fervour in the parish.
More prosperity in the country, and in my church, more holiness.
And these wonders will not happen without your prayer. But to reach this, “whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give you”.
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