WHAT IS VOCATIONS PROMOTION ALL ABOUT?
Reflecting on the promotion of vocations to the priesthood, Bishop Donal McKeown, who heads the Vocations Commission of the Irish Bishop's Conference, said that "vocations work never seeks just to get people to sign up, to sign their life away. It can only be there to help people get into conversation with themselves, with their own life story." He also commented that the "absence of any reason for meaningfulness in an individual's life is not unconnected with the plague of suicide and self-harm and the apparent inability of our culture to produce anything of much beauty or grace." Bishop McKeown referred to Pope John Paul II's letter addressed to the Church in Europe (2003) where the focus was on generating hope in a society that had lost its sense of direction and seemed unable to create a reason for hope. In this light, vocations promotion "is a call to all young people to consider how they want to spend their lives and what they want to leave as their contribution to the welfare of society."
Reflecting on the promotion of vocations to the priesthood, Bishop Donal McKeown, who heads the Vocations Commission of the Irish Bishop's Conference, said that "vocations work never seeks just to get people to sign up, to sign their life away. It can only be there to help people get into conversation with themselves, with their own life story." He also commented that the "absence of any reason for meaningfulness in an individual's life is not unconnected with the plague of suicide and self-harm and the apparent inability of our culture to produce anything of much beauty or grace." Bishop McKeown referred to Pope John Paul II's letter addressed to the Church in Europe (2003) where the focus was on generating hope in a society that had lost its sense of direction and seemed unable to create a reason for hope. In this light, vocations promotion "is a call to all young people to consider how they want to spend their lives and what they want to leave as their contribution to the welfare of society."
The Church is often being cast as something that belongs to yesterday, a structure which is on the way out. Any attempts to make the Church relevant are ridiculed by those who would rather have it disappear completely. But faith and ideals can never be stampd out. Rather than give the impression of becoming modern, the Church is called to be visible, to hang around where people are, like Jesus himself who encountered Matthew the tax-collector, the Samaritan woman and Zacchaeus in such a way.
Vocations promotion is therefore not a recruitment exercise, something done on the side, but rather an attitude that challenges the way we do all our pastoral activity. Bishop McKeown referred to the International Eucharistic Congress which is to be held in Dublin next year, followed by the annual conference of the European Vocations Service in Maynooth. "I believe that this is a time of grace for society to stop moaning and start moving" he said. "This is a critical time in which the future of society is being cast."
Let us therefore envisage vocations work as an invitation to generate hope, solidarity and healing in a world that is fractured and hurting in many ways. "It is all about freeing people from being prisoners of the past and helping them to be architects rather than victims of the future" so that all, even those who feel rebellious, can exercise a prophetic role in the footsteps of Jesus.
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