“God has created me to do Him some definite service.”
These words from St. John Henry Newman’s prayer, The Mission of My Life, speak directly to the purpose of Exodus 90: to help men become uncommonly free. Free not merely from modern-day distractions or the unhealthy habits and attachments that enslave us, but free for the life of love and definite service God created us to live.
Service That Lasts a Lifetime
This past St. Michael’s Lent, our spiritual guide Fr. Columba Jordan, CFR, led many of us through the story of the prophet Daniel, who exemplified what a life of faithful, continual service to the Lord looks like. Brothers, the mission and service the Lord asks of us isn’t just for 40, 50, or 90 days. It is for our whole lives, and it will involve tremendous sacrifice, as the life of St. John Henry Newman shows.
Newman’s own vocation demanded costly fidelity. After decades of study, prayer, and wrestling with Sacred Scripture and Tradition, he entered the Catholic Church, leaving behind the familiar world and relationships of his Anglican ministry, along with his status as a respected Oxford scholar and leader of the Oxford Movement. In 1990, at the centenary of Newman’s death, St. John Paul II described this step as a difficult sacrifice, sustained by Newman’s desire to know and do God’s will.
That fidelity bore fruit far beyond his lifetime. He was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, canonized by Pope Francis in 2019, and declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Leo XIV in 2025.
A Link in a Chain
“I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons,” Newman writes.
Our vocation is never only about ourselves. As we grow in freedom, that freedom in Christ can bless our wives and children, strengthen our friendships, and serve our communities.
Newman lived his own “definite service” through his years of priesthood, preaching, teaching, and writing, and his influence reached far beyond what he could see in his lifetime. The same may be true for us as fathers forming our children, as husbands remaining faithful through hardship, as men serving our parishes and communities, or as workers whose honest labor benefits others. Newman insisted that every person has a mission and that no one is created “for nothing.”
Each of us is meant to labor for God in his own walk and state of life, pursuing virtue and holiness.
What Is the Mission of Your Life?
Do you long to give everything in service to God?
Newman presents vocation not as a search for status or the project of a self-made man who has his life perfectly mapped out and under control. Quite the contrary, he shows that our vocation is continuous, faithful service to God in the place and duties we have been given, even if the fruit of our calling remains hidden from us.
If we want to be free, we must drop every attempt to be self-made men and submit to the yoke of Christ.
Let us make the prayer of this great 19th-century cardinal and Doctor of the Church our own, do our part, and surrender what we cannot control, in order to become more fully the sons God created us to be.
The Mission of My Life by St. John Henry Newman
God has created me to do Him some definite service.
He has committed some work to me
which He has not committed to another.
I have my mission.
I may never know it in this life,
but I shall be told it in the next.
I am a link in a chain,
a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for naught.
I shall do good; I shall do His work.
I shall be an angel of peace,
a preacher of truth in my own place,
while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments.
Therefore I will trust Him.
Whatever, wherever I am,
I can never be thrown away.
If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him;
in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him;
if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.
He does nothing in vain.
He knows what He is about.
He may take away my friends.
He may throw me among strangers.
He may make me feel desolate,
make my spirits sink,
hide the future from me.
Still, He knows what He is about.
Begin Your Exodus
Exodus 90 starts January 11, 2027!
Find new freedom from the pharaohs and idols that hold you back from who you are in Christ, and begin living a life of uncommon freedom.
Take the first step: download the Exodus 90 app and sign up today!
