Some thoughts on Vocations

We believe that a vocation is an individual's sacred calling from God: the form of life that gives the person the greatest freedom and joy and which advances the Kingdom of God on earth. 

In western culture, we Catholics have been distressed that fewer and fewer give their lives to the vocations of priesthood and religious life. 

This has not been true in the global south.  Especially in southeast Asia, priests and religious are to be found in abundance. 

This got me to thinking... more than the call of individuals, what is our culture called to?  In the west, the culture has begun to radically disassociate sexuality from having children, seeing them as two separate categories.  This highlights the incredible importance of the vocation of marriage in the context of our own Catholic cultural identity.

Creating a family is a sacred task that requires much self-offering.  Far from simply provide for the needs of kids, parents radically lay down their personal projects and goals for the sake of being there for their children.  It is their self-offering that enables children to become agents of self-offering themselves.  Much as Christ's love for us enables us to love others. 

As a culture, we have become radically self-interested and we see the suspension of our autonomy for the sake of another as burdensome; or even unhealthy.  But this is the very foundation of parenthood and the first condition for human development.  As a consequence of the absence of this sort of loving vocation, huge swathes of the population grow up less than loved, feeling alienated, feeling that the goal of life is to grasp happiness but finding themselves unable to hold onto it.

I think happiness was never made to be grasped.  Our peace and joy are never complete until others place us above their own happiness... and until we lay our own happiness down for the sake of others.  Paradoxical but true.  And abundantly true in the vocation of marriage.

So perhaps the signs of our times are a call from the spirit towards a greater self-offering in the living out of our vocations.  I do not see the different states of life as in conflict on this point.  Self offering is key to marriage, priesthood, and religious life.  And the more it is found in one, the more it multiplies in others.  When we think about what our church and our culture need, let us be attentive to the voice of the Spirit.  What are people really being called to?  What are you called to?

We will always need priests to be a voice for the community.  But we should think about what vocations (and what attitudes towards them) are best suited to taking up the work of loving that the Spirit calls us to in our current context, here and now.