This week, 4-11 August 2024, is National Vocations Awareness Week in Australia.   It is an opportunity for the entire Church to consider, support and pray for those who are searching for their vocation in life.  This unique week offers an opportunity to renew our prayers and support for those who are considering a particular vocation: marriage, single life, religious life or priesthood.

Vocations Today

Today there is no question about the need for both a sense of vocation among all believers and there is no question that there is a need for people who offer themselves for special vocations within the Church.

We cannot avoid the fact that we are in an age of transition which is shaking up the whole Church.  This can be a deterrent to suitable people offering themselves for priestly ministry or for the life of religious women and men.

I am often struck by the fact that many efforts to promote vocations seem to be inviting people to join the Church of the past, that is the past of this transition through which we are all moving.  We need to offer a new challenge to young people.  Is it surprising that young people do not respond to something which is presented as keeping something going rather than something which asks for initiative and presents a challenge?  Do we not need to speak about building a new future in which both priestly ministry and religious life will follow new and somewhat different paths to those we are accustomed to?

We are no longer living in a society which takes God for granted and so we need to be able to speak to the people of our time and place in such a way that it can finding a launching place among them.  St Paul did not try to speak to the people of Athens in the biblical terms in which he spoke to the Jewish people.  He walked around Athens and found there his starting point from which to speak to the Athenians.  He saw among them many altars to the gods, and he saw one altar to the unknown god.  And so, he began to speak to them about Jesus from this starting point of the unknown God.

We are in a similar situation and it is both challenging and exciting, as was Paul’s initiative for him!  We are living in the midst of a new culture compared to those of the past.  We need to know our context and be able to present Christ and his gospel in terms that make sense to the women and men of our time.  Just doing what we have done in the past will not enable us to do that, as Pope Francis often states.

In calling for vocations within the Church, we need to call people into the situation in which we actually live and enable them to be part of that society in such a way that they can make the word of Christ at least find landing ground.

This is a challenging and beautiful call!  It is rather like God’s first recorded call to Abraham.  He was called to move out of his familiar place and to move into a new place which he did not really know; the Lord called to a “land that he (God) would show him”.  Abraham set off into a new future placing his trust on God’s fidelity.  We are a bit like that in these transitional days of ours.  Calling for vocations needs to reach deep down into the lives and capacities of people and of younger people in particular and offer them something beyond the ordinary even though it may be lived within the ordinary.

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin

Photo:  Courtesy Genazzano fcj College

Published: 2 August 2024