Culture of Vocation

"We are God's work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had meant us to live it."
(St Paul to the Ephesians 2:10 - Jerusalem Bible translation)

That is one of my favourite pieces of scripture. It sums up our call and destiny. It is succinct and hopeful and full of good news. I use it with the parents of first Holy Communion children, Confirmation and RCIA groups and couples preparing for marriage. When we look at God's call in the scriptures we see something important about vocation. Vocation means: • God calls • God is the holy, righteous and faithful one, we are not. • The tasks are many and varied. • People who are called are unsuitable by human standards. • God's call brings out new and unexpected aspects or facets of   someone's character. In other words the call involves the one called   becoming a new person. • We are always dependent on God and never launched out on our own.

A few of the Diocesan Vocations Team working...

• The call is never private property or a possession, it is God's gift to the world through us.

Think of some of the characters in the Scriptures, e.g., Jeremiah or Matthew. Their call was not about filling positions or ensuring institutional tasks were done. Their call was related to God's desire to save them and others. The call they received was first of all about being disciples. Their vocation and ours are similar; not first to do a particular thing but to be in a particular relationship, a relationship with God.

When you work with children you learn a lot; they can be really intuitive and cut right to the heart of things. They have a talent for summing things up in a nutshell or remembering things a little inaccurately which throws light on what you're discussing: I can offer three illustrations:

1. My friend, Fr David Cain was working in his primary school and was stuck on how to explain what the prayer of adoration was: He thought he would ask the children if they had any idea. A boy of nine, put his hand up and said that he thought that 'Adoration was thanking God for God being God!'

2. In Our Lady of Lourdes primary school in Wanstead I was having the same problem in a class of eight year olds. I had inadvisedly mentioned the word 'soul' and a boy asked me what it was. Trying to work out what to say, I thought I had bought some time by asking the class if they had any idea. A girl in the class put her hand up and said: "if you didn't have a soul God wouldn't be able to recognise you." I was so stunned by that answer of mystical proportions that I nearly fell off my seat. She had realised that our identity before God had more to do with what is invisible and spiritual than what is material and visible!

3. A story that I heard involved a priest taking an RE class in primary school. The subject was Our Blessed Lady. The priest asked the class why Mary was so important to Catholics. A child put his hand up and answered: "because she was hand made by the Lord." Another amazing answer, he had probably misheard the phrase that Mary was the handmaid of the Lord and had given a far more profound answer.

At the heart of our reflection on vocation is this idea that not just Mary but all of us are important because we and our vocational calls are 'hand made' by the Lord. When the word 'vocation' is mentioned most Catholic people will think immediately of priesthood, religious life or marriage. It is our default setting to think in such a way. We need to start thinking about vocation in a newer way.

For the Christian person, the Personal Vocation, rather than a vocation to do 'this or that', is characterised and developed by a special pattern of thinking, a way of forming attitudes, a habit of discernment and the practice of prayer. St Paul would call this 'having [or putting on] the mind of Christ' (I Cor. 2:16)

In my thinking as a Christian where do I go for information? Do I read just secular books and magazines or do I also read material written by those have a Christian outlook? Do I try to think along with the mind of the Church, trying to understand her teaching?

In my forming of attitudes, do I place negative feelings on one side and try to see the issue from another's point of view? Do I have prejudices that I am happy not to disturb?

In Discernment, do I rush into things or relationships based on surface emotion or feelings without thinking and praying through the consequences, or judging what is the right course of action?

In Prayer, do I come before the Lord regularly, seeking his presence, his grace, his friendship, his healing and his will for my life?

This is vocation worth its name. It is a call to live the whole of life in the light of faith enabling us to make choices that are good and true, helping us to live well and giving glory to God. It is the way in which we will try to live out our baptismal commitment and demonstrate our love for God and neighbour. It is true to say therefore that all of us, in whatever state of life we have entered, or have yet to enter, have the same vocation, that is, to discover God's will, the unique way in which we are loved by God. God's will for us is to love us in a unique and unrepeatable manner and we can only discover this will if we walk humbly with Him. From this specific vocations will flow.

It is a wonderful, worthwhile and good thing to be a nurse, a teacher, a social worker, a solicitor etc., but these are not vocational states-of -life like Priesthood, Religious life, Marriage and Single life, but they can be and often are capable of being ways that express God's love and grace when those who embark upon these careers are people living vocationally! It is not careers that are vocations, it is always people who are called to live vocationally in the way they think, form attitudes, spend time in discernment and prayer about how they live and what they do.

Vocation means as much to let go as it does to take up. Vocation is a call to love, and love is only real and authentic when it is given away, not hoarded like a material treasure. Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, wrote this in a book called 'No man is an Island' :

'A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.

There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God's inner life. He has made the sharing of ourselves the law of our own being, so that it is in loving others that we best love ourselves.'

It is in loving others that we best love ourselves! Vocation is a call not just to take something up, but perhaps just as importantly, to let something go, perhaps cherished ideas, or plans or positions that are immoveable, sometimes resentments and refusals to forgive. Vocation can be experienced as a difficult and painful thing at times. Why is this? Precisely because it is a Christian vocation it is a share in the suffering and death of Christ. All vocation is about our salvation and that of others. Vocation must draw us out of ourselves and propel us toward others so that we live not just for ourselves but for others too. Vocation is not what we do! It is what we are and who we are called to be! It is not another detail of our life, but life itself.

You may have seen 'About a Boy', a film starring Hugh Grant. Grant plays a rich, mid thirties man, who has never had to work in his life. He lives alone and is clearly self centred. He wants his own needs met but isn't quite sure what they are. He can't form long term relationships but until now sees this as an advantage. He pretends to have a toddler who he is bringing up alone since the death of his wife so that he can attend a single parent support group to chat up the single mothers, presuming they would be desperate. For Hugh, the only sin in all this, would be in being found out. A friend of his despairs of his behaviour and berates him saying that she thought he had hidden depths. He can only say: " No, you've always had that wrong about me, I really am that shallow." Slowly a 12 year old boy from a dysfunctional background penetrates his isolation and Hugh begins to care about him. This caring leads to the flourishing both of the boy, his family and Grant's character.

Vocation is God's call to be drawn out of ourselves and to discover a joy that perhaps we didn't realise was possible. Vocation can bring pain since it calls us away from self-sufficiency, selfishness and independence to discover our place in the body, the Body of Christ. But vocation also involves joy, again because it is a participation in Christ's resurrection and He provides us with the knowledge, grace and power to fulfil the good work He has begun in us.

To build a culture of vocation is to build the understanding in the Church and in our communities that vocation is both the basis and aim of human life. All are called into existence and into a saving relationship with God so that as St Irenaeus said, 'The Glory of God is Man and Woman fully alive.'

Fr Joseph Silver