If, like me, you are enveloped much of the time in a little Catholic bubble, then congratulations! You're probably loving your life, and chances are you know what a vocation is. If not, that's okay, you probably live in a scary place I like to call "reality", so I can bring some of my bubble to you. Vocation comes from the Latin word vocare, which means "to call", and it refers literally to God's call to a person to their state in life. Most Catholic people hear the word vocation and think "Oh, right, those things that special holy people get that means they're becoming a priest or a nun!" This is not, however, the case. Everybody has a vocation, not just the folks in habits or clerics.
A lot of people also think that a vocation is like a job, that God calls people to become doctors and plumbers and the like. This may occasionally be true, but that's not what vocation refers to; each person's vocation is either to the religious life, marriage, or chaste singlehood. Sounds totally exciting, right? Okay, so maybe it doesn't sound so thrilling, but it's better when you're living it than reading it. So how does one discover one of these "vocations"? Through a process called "discernment", and with the aid of a "spiritual director" (feel free to imagine the use of obnoxious finger quotes). But again, in the absence of a Catholic bubble, this may also be a foreign concept. Basically, you get a priest, nun, or (spiritually) well-formed lay person to guide you through a process of prayer to determine God's will in your life. Often this takes several months and a bit of frustration to work out.
How do I know all this? I'm a dork. Oh, and I've also already freaked out about my vocation. Yes indeed, I have already gone through periods when I was so certain of my vocation that I started to freak out. This is not really a new thing for me, since anyone who knows me knows that freaking out about something that's not really happening soon but would someday be important is almost a pastime. This was probably not as funny for my spiritual director as it is for me to look back on, since he had to deal with all the "But-, but-, but-, but FATHER! I have no control over my life anymore!!! What am I going to do!!! I was going to be president, and now I don't know what I'm going to do!!!!" But hey, life's no fun without a little unbridled panic now and then, is it?
Most of this is based on my being a complete control freak. I'm the type-A person my university attracts, and like every other political science student there, I waltzed into my freshman year thinking I'd be a representative at 25, a senator at 30, and president sometime between 35 and 50. Which is a nifty little plan if you're in charge of planning your own life, and 2,000 other people don't have the exact same life plan as you do. However, I recognize that in handing the planning of my life over to God, I leave my career and vocation entirely up to him. And that's alright with me. Not the passive-aggressive "well-I-guess-if-Someone-who-shall-remain-nameless-has-decided-then-I-have-to-go-with-it" alright, but really, truly alright. It forces me to rely on God more if I'm not doing anything more than the temporary basic framework.
The great thing about vocations, though, is that even though each one leads down a different life path, it's always ultimately about love. I can trust that whether God makes me a mother, a sister, or a single woman on a mission, it will always be about loving Him and other people. This is essentially the same with every vocation, with really the only difference being how the love is expressed. The religious are called to give their whole love to God, and through that love, minister to God's people. They deliberately forego some of the pleasures of this life to be able to focus on living out God's love. The married are called to mirror the love of the Trinity, and to make it so real that nine months later they give it a name (obviously this happens a varying amount of times, depending on the couple). God is still at the center of the family life, but they express His love differently by virtue of the call to uniquely re-create it. Single people are called to be spiritual mothers and fathers (as are the religious) to others, and to express God's love through what they do with their lives. They are called to give their lives to God, but to remain in the world in a way that the religious are not, and the married often cannot be.
Maybe calling it a vocation is not enough. Vocation does not explicitly speak of the joy of the lifestyle. Vocation does not say "I am bringing God to a congregation, or to the poor". It doesn't say "I am dedicating and sanctifying all my work, so that God may use it for His own ends". It doesn't express "We have chosen to give fully of ourselves to God and each other, and all these little strangers in our house". After all, vocation just means a call, and doesn't explicitly speak of the happiness, the heartache, the laughter, the sorrow, or any of the myriad emotions and experiences that come with a human life. But then, maybe that's what God wants. Maybe part of each vocation is a life so well-lived and full of love that the only motivation needed to answer is... a call.
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