The Recruiting of Vocations

Recruiting of vocations
‘May the words of my lips and the mediations of all our hearts, be acceptable to you Lord, our rock and our redeemer’.

The topic of my sermon is one that I have had the opportunity to think about over the past year or so, and one that I believe is hugely relevant to all of us, but in much need of clarification. This is the topic of vocation, or calling. It is no secret to most people who know me that I have been reflecting on this topic in the particular context of the ordained ministry. But what I have to say this evening has nothing to do with ordination per se; rather, it is about what I will call the human vocation, the calling that all of us have as human beings, made in God’s image, to, in the language of St Paul, become sons and daughters of God.

I will begin by explaining why I think the term vocation needs to broadened and clarified, and warn against three common misconceptions of it. I then go on to ask: what does it mean for a human being to be called to become a child of God, and how are we supposed to respond to this call? As I answer this question, I will reflect on the call of Jeremiah, which we heard in our first lesson.

So let us begin. The term vocation is one that is often used to refer to the ordained ministry or the religious life; this, indeed, is the context in which I have been exploring it. This is what people have in mind when they talk about a ‘decline in the number of vocations’ or a ‘vocations crisis’. But without meaning to undervalue this use of the term, I think we need to be careful that we don’t blind ourselves to a much broader reference for it. While the calling to be a Priest or a member of a religious order certainly is a vocation, it is by no means the only sense in which we can or indeed should apply the term. After all, if vocations are what clergy or monks or nuns have, they are things that, by implication, the rest of us do not. But this seems contrary to the fact that the notion of a...