Exploring Your Vocation
Discovering the calling God has given you often begins with a sense of excitement. This is a moment of grace in which God invites us to offer our time and energy to think and pray about what it means to live the vocation God is calling us to. The discernment process reminds us that we are always called from within the midst of community (the Church) to respond to God, who invites each of us to bear fruit generously. The question of vocation isn’t just about what God wants me to do. But, who has God created me to be. It is a question that encompasses our entire being and every aspect of our life.
Vocation is not first and foremost about doing something. It is about being someone, being a person who gives witness through every part of their life to the breathtaking reality of God’s intimate concern for all humanity. It is a response to the call placed on our hearts in baptism: the call to holiness, our primary vocation. Holiness is a gift from God and can be summed up in the great commandment to love God and our neighbors as ourselves.
“The Christian faithful are those who, inasmuch as they have been incorporated in Christ through Baptism, have been constituted as the people of God. For this reason, since they have become sharers in Christ’s priestly, prophetic, and royal office in their own manner, they are called to exercise the mission which God has entrusted to the Church to fulfill in the world, in accord with the condition proper to each one”
Catechism of the Catholic Church 871.
At the heart of all vocations, whether to the ordained, consecrated, married or single life, is the discovery of the “pearl of great price” (Matt 13:45-46). When we get a glimpse of Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God, our being hungers for more. We want to be involved in a dialogue with Jesus and to share this great treasure with others. Discovering and then living our vocation has its challenges. We don’t always know where to go or where to start. However, God will help us with this if we ask him to. Scripture reminds us that God can and still does call the most unlikely people to do extraordinary things. Those called often responded with doubt, feelings of inadequacy, and even fear. God is the master planner, and he has a role just for you, and he is on your side. Our personal vocation is ultimately a response to knowing the one who calls us. God calls us out of love so that we may have life and life to the full. (John 10:10).
Take time to sit with the words of St Catherine of Sienna, “When you are where God has called you to be, then and only then will you set the world on fire”.