The feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which we celebrate this coming Sunday, affords us all an opportunity to reflect on our own vocations and, in a particular way, the vocation to priesthood and religious life.

In this year dedicated by Pope Francis to appreciating the gift of consecrated life, perhaps it might be a good idea for each one of us to follow a tradition that some religious communities do on New Year’s Day – pick a canonized saint and then use his or her example as a model for our own individual lives this coming calendar year.

How about Blessed Paul VI? A pope of patience, of dialogue, of great understanding and insight, who helped the Church bring the Second Vatican Council to completion, and who worked hard to bring greater collegiality to the universal Church?

How about Venerable Catherine McAuley? The foundress of the Religious Sisters of Mercy, who recognized in Dublin in the 1800s the need for a true mission to the poor, the sick and the ignorant?

Read her words as a motto for 2015: “The simplest and most practical lesson I know … is to resolve to be good today, but better tomorrow. Let us take one day only in hands, at a time, merely making a resolve for tomorrow, thus we may hope to get on taking short, careful steps, not great strides.”