Vocation Awareness Week

Next week we will be celebrating Vocation Awareness Week!  How does one celebrate Vocation Awareness Week?  While vocations include the priesthood, religious life, marriage and the single life, I've dedicated this blog entry on praying specifically for an increase in the priesthood and religious life.  Here are a few suggestions as to how you can promote religious vocations:

• Read a story about your favorite saint.
• Ask your parish priest why he became a priest.
• If you were taught by a religious person write them a letter or call them and let them know how much you appreciate their example of living a life totally devoted to God.
• Search the Internet for inspiring stories of men and women who have answered the call of priest, religious sister or brother.
• Invite a priest or religious sister or brother into your home for a meal.
• Talk to your children about being open to God's call to serve as a priest or religious brother or sister.
• Encourage your local Catholic school teachers to talk about vocations in their classrooms.
• Have your children write their parish priest, bishop, religious brother, sister or deacon a letter thanking them for loving and serving God in their chosen vocation.
• Make a collage of people serving God. 
• Write an essay or poem about how you might choose to serve God as a priest, religious brother or sister or as a permanent deacon.
• Read the Bible and find the many ways God's people lived their vocation.
• Read Mark 1:7-11, this Sunday's Gospel reading on the Baptism of Jesus.  Talk about how John the Baptist and Jesus ultimately listened to  God's call to love and serve.
• Pray a Rosary for men and women who have answered the call to be a priest, brother or sister.  Ask God to open the hearts of young men and women to do the same.
• Spend time in Adoration praying for priests and religious men and women.
• Take time to read your local Catholic newspaper (for example click on this link:  Family Nurtures Vocations.)

Every child born was born out of God's love for that child.  All baptized children of God are called to holiness.  God wants all His children to love God and to serve God's people.  By rite of our Baptism we are called to the vocation of loving and serving.  God gave each of us gifts and talents in order that we might perfectly love and serve His people.  How we choose to use these gifts and talents will determine how we choose to glorify God in everything we do.  We are called to Build the Kingdom of God.  Take time today to ask God how you can encourage vocations or perhaps answer your own call to love and serve God as a priest or religious brother or sister!