“We must constantly evaluate our methods of vocation promotion and be willing to adapt them to circumstances or replace them with others.” (SVD Constitution, 510. 2)

Introduction

At the beginning of this year the Congregation entrusted me with the service of vocation animation in my Province. As a result of this appointment I was transferred to a community where there is a parish, the school and a house of formation all under SVD auspices. During a meeting with the pastoral agents of the parish, I announced to those gathered that from that moment on they were invited to collaborate with vocational work. After the meeting, a lady told me that she was very surprised to find out that vocation ministry exists in our country, because she imagined that the SVD’s own thing is to “come from outside”. This opinion, repeated by many people in other places, made me think and write a couple of lines about the need to reconsider our vocation ministry and place it as the “style of our life” and the transversal axis of all the ministry. It needs to be pastoral care that is not limited to the action of mere vocation “specialists” nor to days, weeks and other vocational “times”.

The vocational: transversal axis of the pastoral

Transversality in the pastoral sense refers to the fact that the same topic or content can be addressed by several pastoral ministries, thus achieving a better and more complete use of the topic in question.

The title of this article is much more than a play on words. It is a dream of a renewed understanding and practice of vocation ministry. “Vocation” and “pastoral” are two keywords that define the essence and activity of the Church. They  reveal the vocational character of the Church. Already in the same etymology – the Latin term “ecclesia” is translated as ‘the gathering of the called’, implicitly, those called by Jesus Christ. The pastoral care of vocations is born from the mystery of the Church and is at her service. The theological foundation of the pastoral care of vocations, therefore, “can be born only from the reading of the mystery of the Church as “mysterium vocationis”.

Vocation ministry knows no borders. It does not apply to a certain privileged few or only to those who have already made a choice of faith, nor simply to those from whom a positive response can be expected, but is addressed to everyone because it is based on the fundamental values of existence. It is not an elitist ministry, but a universal one; it is not a prize for the most deserving, but a grace and a gift from God for each person, because every single person is called by the living God. It is the ministry of all and directed towards all. Using a biblical image of fishing, we acknowledge that we cannot fish next to an aquarium with the hopeful feeling of reaching “some”, but must fish with a wide net in the vast ocean of the world. For example, in the case of the vocation to the consecrated life or the ministerial priesthood, we can distinguish three spaces and stages of vocational animation: promote (for all); provoke (for some) and accompany (for a few).

Vocation ministry must be related to all the other dimensions, such as the family and culture, the liturgical and sacramental, the catechetical and the path of faith in the catechumenate; with various animation and Christian formation groups (not only with children and young people, but also with parents, boyfriends, the sick and the elderly) and movements. Every member of the Church, without excluding any, has the grace and responsibility to promote vocations. Only on the basis of this conviction will vocation ministry be able to show its truly ecclesial face and develop coordinated action.

Testimony as a tool for vocation ministry

There is a lot of talk these days about the vocation crisis. God certainly gives vocations, but there is a problem with the unfavorable environment, with the condition of modern man, which makes it difficult to read and respond to this divine call. Indeed, we do not have a vocation crisis – after all, God does not limit vocations – what we have is a calling crisis.

Vocation ministry is a most difficult and delicate ministry. In general, there are few people who are willing to assume the specific role of “vocation animators” in their communities. In reality, their service should focus, first of all, on the animation, coordination of all the members of the congregation, diocese or movements, considering them as “co-animators” by their very nature. Regarding the use of pastoral tools, we must remember that we ourselves are the best living resource. There is nothing more convincing than the testimony of one’s own vocation so fervent that it can be communicated to others. There is nothing more beautiful than a vocation that inspires other vocations and gives us the full right of spiritual paternity and motherhood that “engender” new vocations. Only unanimous testimony makes vocational animation effective. We usually present this important issue using attractive vocational publications. To end this paragraph, I want to quote the testimony of Sister Anna – Verónica, published in 2015 under a suggestive title “When I grow up, I will be like the Sister”. She herself writes: “I was seven years old, in the first year of primary school, and my teacher was an Ursuline sister. I was impressed by her way of looking at us, her students, coming from all social classes and endowed with very diverse abilities. To her, each one was like an only child. She gave each one the same attention, the same availability, and did it with the desire that each one could give the best of himself or herself, feeling deeply respected by the others. This look was recorded in me and, as a young adult, at the moment of asking myself about the orientation of my life, I remembered this Sister. So I asked to spend a few days in her community to try to understand the secret of this look that did me so much good. And there I stayed…” (Éditions Saint-Agustin 2015).

Communion of all charisms and vocations

Broadly speaking, we can speak of three vocational paths in the Catholic Church: the priesthood, the consecrated life, and the lay life. All three are equally important and necessary, each one with its own traits providing a service to humanity.

As for the laity, Vatican II brought about a strong change when conceiving the mission of the baptized in the Church and in the world. This novelty stems from the new location of the Church before the world. She is in solidarity with it and considers that she has a mission to serve the world. One of the great pastoral challenges of the Church today is to awaken in the multitude of the baptized their enormous evangelizing and transforming power.

One of the signs of hope for those in the consecrated life are the laity inserted in the charism of the congregations, from the attitude of gratuitousness and selflessness, who must be considered something more than simple collaborators. Our Congregation, in various countries, has traveled a long path of shared mission. In some places, it is called to see in the laity a great sign of the times and open the doors of hearts and missionary spaces to them.

The Church-communion supposes a mutual harmony and interdependence of all states of life and vocations. In this sense, vocation ministry must speak openly and clearly about all charisms and vocations, without blurring their profound identity. I am referring to the certain “difficulty” in presenting today, clearly, the vocation to the priestly ministry. I believe that said difficulty lies in the loss of enthusiasm and joy in carrying out our own ministry  or in an idea of “equalizing” all ministries in the name of the greater “fraternity”. It is undeniable that Vatican II, by enriching the theology of the laity, also renewed that of the ordained ministry. “The image of the priest-leader, who decides everything, gives way to that of the animator and coordinator of the community who exercises his directive function from a greater horizontality and ecclesial co-responsibility. It is worth clarifying that the theology of the priestly ministry not only is not opposed to that of the common priesthood of all the baptized, but rather is at its service. Both condition and order each other. The priestly consciousness of the laity can hardly grow in a community without ministers to serve it; nor can the ordained ministry develop in a community that does not have the age of majority or interest in reaching it” (Alfonso Pedrajas Moreno, 2008).

Conclusion                                                                                                                                                                     

Vocational service must be seen as the soul of all evangelization and all the pastoral care of the Church and cannot be reduced to activities closed in on themselves.

Vocational animation becomes more and more the joint action of the entire community, religious or parish, of the entire institute or of the entire diocese, of each priest or consecrated person or believer, and for all vocations in each phase of life. If the vocation ministry of the past tried to limit its field of action to certain categories of people (“ours”, those closest to Church environments, or those who seemed to immediately show a certain interest), now it is called to go out to all. The discernment and care of the Christian community must extend to all vocations, both those generated in the traditional forms of the Church and as well as the new gifts of the Spirit.

And finally, the foundation of all vocation ministry is the prayer commanded by the Lord (Mt 9,38). It involves not only some people, but also all the ecclesial communities.

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Fr. Jerzy Marian Faliszek, SVD was born in Biecz (Poland) in 1966. He joined the SVD in 1985. He was ordained a priest in 1993. Since 1996 he has been working in Argentina. He was vicar and parish priest (1996-2002), vocation animator (2002-2007), missionary secretary (2011-2016), pastoral director of the SVD College in Jujuy (2017), and the national director of Pontifical Mission Societies in Argentina (2018-2022). He currently lives in the Formation House in Córdoba, being a missionary secretary and vocation animator. He has a degree in missiology from the Bolivian Catholic University of Cochabamba.