Happy National Vocations Awareness Week! As you know, vocations discernment and promotion is a particular passion of the Distracted Catholic, so I am devoting this week’s 7 Quick Takes to all things concerning vocations to the priesthood and religious life! First, let’s open with this prayer from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops:
O God, Father of all Mercies, Provider of a bountiful Harvest, send Your Graces upon those You have called to gather the fruits of Your labor; preserve and strengthen them in their lifelong service of you. Open the hearts of Your children that they may discern Your Holy Will; inspire in them a love and desire to surrender themselves to serving others in the name of Your son, Jesus Christ. Teach all Your faithful to follow their respective paths in life guided by Your Divine Word and Truth. Through the intercession of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, all the Angels, and Saints, humbly hear our prayers and grant Your Church’s needs, through Christ, our Lord. Amen.
On with the Quick Takes!
Leading off, we have the incredible Fr. Mike Schmitz (chaplain at the University of Minnesota – Duluth) explaining the simple, easy guidelines one should follow while you are discerning your vocation (and everyone has a vocation, so we should all be discerning for it if God hasn’t led us to it already). Even of you’ve read a ton about vocations already, this short talk is a great reality check and brings home some points that you may have missed, forgotten, or have been ignoring.
.
My favorite new media vocations promotion group by far is Imagine Sisters. They have a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account, and they do excellent work in spotlighting various women’s religious orders and providing young women with the resources and encouragement to begin their own discernment processes and thinking seriously about whether God might be calling them to a life as a religious sister or nun. Even though none of their material applies to me personally, I can’t describe how uplifting it is to see my Facebook feed peppered every day with photos of veiled and habited Brides of Christ who are radiating the joy and peace of the Lord. It is a wonderful reminder of God’s infinite compassion and of the need to pray daily for those who have dedicated their lives to Christ and who are praying for us and our needs.
Right now Imagine Sisters is raising money to produce a short film titled Light of Love, aimed at young women and modeled after Fishers of Men, which will show and talk about the call and the lives of sisters and nuns. This is an incredibly worthy cause, and one deserving of whatever prayers and financial support you can provide.
You might be asking yourself, “Hold on, what is this Fishers of Men that Mike mentioned in #2?” Well, Fishers of Men is an 18-minute short film on the Catholic priesthood, aimed specifically at young men who are maybe feeling a prompting in their hearts towards that state in life. It is an electrifying piece of work, and you really have to see it for yourself to appreciate it.
Fishers of Men: Catholic Priesthood from Oblates of St. Joseph on Vimeo.
Please take the time to show this to the young men in your life! When I first viewed this four years ago, it just about set my heart on fire and got me thinking “Wow! What a magnificently heroic thing it would be to be a priest!” Share this widely; you never know whose vocation you might bring to germination.
Continuing on that theme, if you are looking for a good book that will be of use in fostering priestly vocations in your own home, or if you simply enjoy reading the true stories of some of the remarkable men who are serving the Catholic Church today, I highly recommend the book Priest: Portraits of Ten Good Men Serving the Church Today and Striving to Serve Him Faithfully, by Michael S. Rose. The profiles found therein are deeply moving and really serve to inspire a newfound respect and admiration for those called from our midst to be an alter Christus.
Leave it to the Dominicans to have some great YouTube videos about the call to the religious life, for both men and women.
.
.
In a blog all about vocations, I would be remiss if I did not mention and direct your attention to:
- The Daughters of St. Paul, whose mission is the proclaiming of the Gospel through publishing, mass media, and new media. Among another things, they published my breviary, which I love! I would gladly surrender it to God, but you, on the other hand, would have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers. If you are on Twitter, give @SrHelenaBurns, @SrMariaKim, and @Chelsea_Moxley a follow; they’re awesome and do the Catholic social media thing superbly!
- The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, whose charism apparently includes “not doing things by half-measure” and “making the Distracted Catholic’s eyes bug out of his head in wonder whenever he reads about them”.
- The Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará, a rather young order who you may remember from this iconic photograph of their novice sister, and about whom I have since heard good things.
- The Missionary Servants of the Poor in the Third World, who are the reason I am studying Spanish, and not some easier subject, to round out my course load this semester. No joke. Because, you know, just in case.
- The Discalced Carmelite nuns of the Carmel of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in Elysburg, PA.
- And last but by no means least, the seminarians of the Diocese of Arlington, who all around are an incredible group of men. It is a privilege to know several of them, and an immense consolation to know that if I remain long-term in this diocese which I love, my spiritual care and nourishment will rest in highly capable hands.
Please keep all of these men and women in your prayers, especially their novices and postulants, and pray that God will be generous in calling many more members to their ranks, and that those who receive the call will be generous with their own lives and answer their vocation to Christ with courage, joy, and selflessness.
One final note: we pray a lot for those called to the priesthood and religious life, but we rarely take the time to pray for their parents. It’s not an easy thing, to see your son or daughter respond to the summons to this kind of radical life for Christ. Not easy, to see your little girl cover with a veil the hair which you brushed countless times when she was yet a child. Not easy, to see your son set aside the possibilities of career and family to pour out his energy, talent, and love into the care of a parish, the building up of a mission, or a life of contemplative prayer for the good of the Church. Not easy to consider the years and holidays ahead with a missing place at the family table. Not easy, to place yet again your own dreams for the future before the Lord and say, “Not as I will, but as You will.” These mothers and fathers are oftentimes the first and greatest teachers that our priests and religious men and women have on how to love God purely, on how to serve others selflessly, and on how to pray . It would not do to fail to lend them all the spiritual support we can muster.
Pray for the parents of those called to the priesthood and religious life. Pray that God makes their cups overflow with grace and joy as they behold the wondrous love He showers upon their children. And let us be as equally generous with our own lives and our own families as we hope that others will be, praying that God will not simply call someone’s child to serve Him in the Church, but perhaps my child as well.
God bless.
For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!
