Let’s nurture vocation culture throughout the church

I'D LIKE TO PROPOSE that we engage youth and young adults around vocation in two primary ways: integration and growth. By integration I mean that vocational language and ideas should ideally be present throughout every aspect of the life of young disciples. Vocational language and concepts can be part of their family life, their parish experience, and their school engagement (Catholic or otherwise). A vocational lens can even be present in extracurriculars. Integration means that vocation is the thread that connects those distinct realities. For young people and families who often find the different parts of their lives disconnected, the singular thread of vocation gives a powerful sense of cohesion.

For Catholic institutions, integration is key. There was a point in the history of the U.S. Catholic Church when faith integration happened naturally as a by-product of tight-knit immigrant communities. Those who attended parishes and schools while living in culturally defined neighborhoods didn’t have to work at integration. It happened naturally. Today’s Catholics swim in much different waters. There is little that cuts across their lives from school to extracurriculars to family and beyond. A vocational thread can create cohesion in the Catholic faith across the different pieces of a person’s life.

 Second, I want to look at growth into vocation. If integration is a spiral constantly coming back to the gravitational pull of vocation, then growth is about each disciple progressing forward and deepening his or her calling. Growth means identifying any barriers that keep young people from listening, understanding, reflecting, and choosing their vocation path. It begins with the conviction that all people do, in fact, have a vocation, that the vocation is multi-layered, and that people can progress toward a calling that provides them with their fullest life while meeting the needs of the world.

Family is the starting point

Now, to get practical, what does this really mean? Let’s start with integration. We first have to ask: What different communities are people part of? What communities need to integrate the language and concept of vocation? The first community is the family. Vocational language is a huge win for parents. Parents are already concerned about how to help their children be the best they can be, to maximize their talents, gifts, and abilities. They want a good life for their children. In spite of differences we may have about what leads to a good life, that desire for a good life is a starting point for parents. Vocational language calling for each person to live out who he or she is meant to be, with purpose and meaning—that is language we can use with parents.

There are moments when parents are particularly open to these conversations. The thresholds of Baptism, First Communion, and Confirmation are ideal times to ask parents to engage with these bigger vocational questions. At Baptism we can introduce questions such as: What do you want for your young person as he or she gets older? What does it look like to you to be a successful parent? At First Communion, parents can begin to ask questions like: What does my child love to do? What excites my child? What parts of my child’s character (who they are versus what they can do) are we already starting to see? When youth reach middle school and high school, the typical age for Confirmation preparation, appropriate questions include: When has my child shown the ability to work or sacrifice for something? When has he or she been part of a community using personal gifts to benefit others? How can we help our child to pray about what to say yes or no to in making choices?

Even when faith is not the primary lens for a parent, rites of passage can open up vocation-related conversations. When a young person goes to school for the first time, that transition period can open up questions about how to help guide that young person who is shifting now from parents as the primary influencers to a wider community. The move to middle school is another time of trepidation for parents. As their child enters adolescence, parents can ask questions such as: How will my young person decide who to listen to as they get older? Who will they decide to trust, and how will someone earn their trust? How will who they trust affect who they become? These are questions parents can ask young people themselves, that open up the adolescent to thinking about who they want to become and how those around them will influence that direction. Later adolescence demands another level of conversation. Again, these movements prompt personal reflection and a chance for parents to interject. Parents can ask questions such as: What do you feel passionate about? What about this world would you like to see changed? How could you begin to be a part of that right now? What kind of community would you need to be a part of to be supported in that mission?

All of these questions help ground a parent and child’s relationship within a vocational conversation. They are meant to engage parents to consider how they could encourage their child in following a path beyond financial security or professional achievement. Setting the framework for a life of service and mission early on means a young adult will be more open to such a life down the road.  

Parishes can develop vocation further

When it comes to integrating a vocation culture into the parish community, we can begin with parish leaders by using their language of evangelization, community, mission, and accompaniment. All those are pressing matters for our parish leaders. Vocational language actually helps them to get at each of those areas. They want young people to think about their own encounter with Christ, what that means, and how that moves them forward, sends them on mission, and gives them purpose. The great news is that introducing vocational language to parish leaders gives them a way to address all of these different areas of concern.

How is that carried out? Parish leaders can take vocational concepts and understandings and integrate them into the things they already have going on. Many parishes already do retreats for youth and young adults. They’re already preparing people for sacramental life, be it marriage or First Communion or Confirmation. In all of these aspects of parish life, leaders can add a vocation theme without overhauling their current programs or starting anything new. They don’t have to put on a whole separate retreat just on vocations. If they’re doing a marriage preparation retreat or a Confirmation retreat, the language of vocation fits right in. What is the purpose and meaning of your marriage? What gifts do you bring to the vocation of marriage? If you’re being confirmed, what are the different ways of living out an adult faith commitment? The language of vocation is very helpful. If young people are hearing these vocational questions in youth ministry or religious education at the same time that their parents are engaging them in similar conversations, they will have an expanded ability to consider how a faith commitment affects the whole of their lives.

Another rich area for vocation language is summer or weekend service opportunities. They lend themselves easily to vocational conversations since the focus is already on how to move beyond yourself and be attentive to the other in your midst. In week-long or even one-time service experiences, youth begin to hear the stories of those they serve. They comprehend the difference between assumptions they carry into service against the reality they discover when, for instance, “homeless people” become names and experiences. This allows young people to consider how they live their life to put others at the center, rather than centering on themselves or specific accomplishments. Reflection questions on service bring these points to the forefront. How are Christians called to serve? What are your own gifts and talents, and how can you serve others with them? How is your act of giving your life to someone else embodying the gift of Jesus to the world? How could you live that ideal beyond this service experience? How can you make it part of your everyday life?

This is what is meant by integration: taking vocational concepts and introducing them to parish leaders such that they use them in every aspect of what they are already doing. The vocational culture is embedded in the approach of the parish, catechetical, or youth leader, sometimes explicitly and other times implicitly.

HELPING LAITY LEARN
THE LANGUAGE OF VOCATION

WITH ADULTS, it makes sense to start teaching about vocation by looking at their own vocation. Sometimes our parents, teachers, and young adults have not stopped to consider what they are doing as a vocation. Parents often don’t consider their role as a mother or father as a calling. We can be asking them: What has it meant to you to be a parent? What have been the joys and the struggles? Where have you found meaning in being a parent?  We can do the same thing with teachers, helping them reflect on where they find joy in what they do. How does it stir them? Why are they drawn to teaching?

Once parents and teachers and other adults ask themselves these questions about their own passions, their own callings, it often sparks something in them, leading them to ask the young people in their lives the same kinds of questions. This kind of modeling of vocational questions can be very powerful and can have a ripple effect.

Schools play an important role

The 2020 NRVC Study on Recent Vocations to Religious Life reinforced again the strong correlation between Catholic school attendance and entrance to a religious community. The question for vocation ministers becomes how to engage campus ministers and teachers in the language of vocation, in vocational practices, in what they are already doing—in classrooms, service opportunities, and class retreats. Again, those are opportunities to introduce the concept and language of vocation into various aspects of the life our young people are already living.

It used to be that members of our religious communities were at the forefront of our Catholic schools and universities; they themselves would be constant reminders, models, and witnesses to religious life. They were an implicit invitation to join a community and continue the mission that young people had already experienced as students. Fewer religious are present in schools today, but in the same way that parishes can integrate vocational questions into the ministry they already do, schools, too, can knit vocation concepts into their current ministry.

Sometimes it doesn’t even require an action. The vowed religious life of sisters, brothers, and priests is a particular type of witness to young people, but so is the witness of lay teachers who have often knowingly taken a smaller salary to commit themselves to teaching in a Catholic community. The witness of lay teachers and staff can introduce young people to the reality of sacrifice along the vocational journey. It has the opportunity to move youth to see the prophetic cost of all vocations.

An advantage of the school environment is that it is easier to craft a vocation culture when youth and young adults are exposed to that ecosystem for many hours a day. The key to maximizing that potential is to reach the many adults across the school community who engage young people. Schools are predisposed to finding ways to adhere to Catholic identity without negating non-Catholic students. Vocational language and practices can be a significant asset to school leadership looking to accomplish this task.

Growth into a personal sense of calling

Now that we’ve looked at these three main areas—family, parishes, and schools—for integration of vocation language, let’s turn to growth. If the message of vocation has been implanted, then how do we move young people forward so they begin to grow and develop in their own individual calling?

At the family level, parents can begin introducing their children to the concept of vocation and the different types of vocations. Often this happens in high schools when we hold a vocation day, but it actually can be better to introduce specific types of vocations at the elementary ages. Parents can explain to their kids what  sisters, brothers, priests, and deacons are. At this stage, we want to expand their sense of the possibilities in life.  Very few children become convinced of a particular calling between grades 1 and 5. Yet they do like to pretend what it would be like to have a certain role when they grow up. The objective here is to simply expand their imagination to include many vocational roles.

Then as children grow up, we can give middle schoolers different experiences of vocation. Certainly they’ve seen marriage being lived out in their families. Even families where parents are no longer together are still situated within one type of calling. But what about the other vocations? What about the different ways that priesthood, or life as a sister or brother get lived out? Connecting middle schoolers to the variety within the different callings just as they are beginning to discover their own passions opens them to the reality that a commitment to religious life does not mean an end to other dreams. Perhaps we can let them experience a sister who teaches at a university or a brother who ministers at a soup kitchen. Then we can ask these young people what they see and feel when they spend time with religious. Yes, it is an effort to make these real-world connections, but they are invaluable.

High school youth are ready to connect themselves to the commitment and passion they see in religious and lay adults living their calling. They are ready to start tapping into their own interests and learning what they find life giving. We want high schoolers to start asking: What am I excited about? What am I concerned about? How can I live out my passion? High schoolers are beginning to narrow their interests and make choices that demand prioritization. Too often those involved in the faith life of a young person see that process as a competition in which church or youth group activities rarely win. An alternative perspective is that this sorting out of priorities and commitments is the exact moment that young people are choosing a passion, and that experience is a healthy next step in vocation discernment.

Young adults, whether in college or the workforce, are already trying to find what particular gifts they bring to their passion. They are still discovering purposes and missions to which they feel drawn, but now with more personal awareness, they’re wondering how their own unique skills will allow them to contribute. This discernment leads quite naturally into the next, which is the question of community. Where is the community that will support them and help them to live out their vocation?  Is it a marriage partner and extended family? Is it a religious institute? Is their community a collection of friends in the faith? These moments of inquiry are the points at which religious communities in particular hold a distinct advantage. Decades or even centuries of living and growing together as a community around mission provides sisters, brothers, and priests with good questions and perhaps even better practices to accompany young adults.

Vocation language and concepts are begging to be integrated into our various forms of Catholic community: family, parish, and schools. The beauty of this approach is that leaders in each of these areas can integrate vocation concepts without starting anything new but rather by consciously working at making these natural connections. Vocational language fits so much of what is already happening. Similarly, religious and lay leaders alike must commit to the long-term work of accompanying people as they grow into their God-given calling. For God does continue to call, and each one of us, with our own unique gifts and passions, continues to respond.

Craig Gould is a husband and father and director of family, youth, and young adult ministry for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Maryland. He has also ministered in parishes, apostolic ministries, and graduate schools.

This article is based on the author’s presentation for the 2022 webinar series: “Religious Life Today: Learn it! Love it! Live it!”  Find this presentation in video form, as well as the rest of the series, at nrvc.net/webinars.