Answering call

When we think of vocations, we usually think of religious life: priest, sister, deacon. But everyone is called by God to a vocation -- to answer the call for which we were created. It's not dissimilar to what our society means when it says "find yourself."

Everyone, whether they recognize it or not, has a particular call. And we each receive gifts that allow us to live that call, to be "the image of God." When we are true to our call, others recognize it -- and God -- in us.

We were reminded of the fact of personal vocations after the deaths of two police officers in Hobart July 22.

Bob Etter and Stephanie Markins were ordinary people who had discovered their calls -- and lived them with devotion. Both were called to be police officers -- to live, in the best sense, the phrase: "to serve and protect."

Etter had served a long time, retiring after 30 years on the De Pere force. Yet he missed his job so much that he begged to work parttime for the new Hobart/Lawrence police force 16 months ago. People called him "Officer Bob." He lived his call as the fatherly figure on a domestic call where children were involved; as the friend everyone on the force turned to; as a patient and kind man. One colleague said, "Bob wouldn't hurt a fly." Besides being a husband, father and grandfather (working afternoons to be home with his kids during the day), Etter was the first each year to volunteer for the "Shop with a Cop" Christmas project for needy children.

Markins had just joined the Hobart force, after three years with Brillion's police. For 10 years prior, she studied to be a cop, working her way through the police science program at NWTC. In both Brillion and Hobart, she was known as "a bubbly personality" who could "light up a room by her presence." She radiated love and laughter, and often picked up stray animals, even while on patrol. She, too, gave her free time to youth in "Beat the Heat" drag race competitions between cops and teens at the Kaukauna raceway.

These two people loved -- and lived -- their vocations as police officers, in their own way. By being true to those vocations, they revealed the loving power that comes from God. As Markins' fiance, Mark Golomski said, "Stephanie loved everything that lived."

We are told God is love (1Jn 4:8). Those who live in love, live in God and live out vocations that reveal God's love to others. Officers Etter and Markins lived out love. They were police officers, willing, as Lt. Gov. Margaret Farrow said at their memorial service, to "walk without security so that we might have security." They stood ready to lay down their lives for a friend -- and everyone who knew them, knew them as friends. The rest of us got to know their lives of vocation after they died on duty.

Etter and Markins answered their personal calls willingly, lovingly, and to the very end.

May we all answer God's call as well as they did.