Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2009 / Instilling a vocation? 'Eat your vegetables, mow the grass, make a visit'
Instilling a vocation?
'Eat your vegetables, mow the grass, make a visit'
by Bishop Daniel Flores special to The Michigan Catholic
Published January 9, 2009
Editor's Note: National Vocation Awareness Week is Jan. 11-17, beginning with the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which marks Jesus' initiation into public ministry. More information - Vocations Office.
Over the years, parents of young children have occasionally asked me what they can do in order to help their children consider a priestly or religious vocation. This is a very important question, and one that reaches to the foundation of what it means to create what Pope John Paul II called "a culture of vocations." Young children grow up before we know it. Parents hope and pray that as they grow into adolescents they will start thinking wisely about the particular kind of Christian life they want to lead as adults, whether it is marriage, the priesthood or the religious life.
Here are three suggestions on the topic, based mostly on my experience growing up. They are simple, but I am convinced that in the life of a young person, they can make all the difference in the world.
Eat your vegetables: It may sound silly, but gently insisting to our young people the importance of eating their vegetables, especially the ones they do not like, is an important thing. Not that it is the most important thing in the world to eat broccoli, but learning that there is a difference between what is truly good and what appeals to my likes and dislikes is one of the great lessons of life. Learning as a child that broccoli makes you healthy, even if you don't particularly like it, leads to an appreciation of the fact that in life we must sometimes put our likes and dislikes away in order to seek what is truly good.
What young person would consider the true dimensions of a life of marital fidelity or priestly dedication without having first learned this lesson? There are many joys in marriage, and the priesthood, and in the religious life, but each life has its sacrifices. No Christian vocation is possible without a willingness to go beyond what I like, and enter into the deeper world of what is truly good.
Cut the grass: Sometimes parents are reluctant to ask their children to help with things around the house. Something as ordinary as asking them to make a regular commitment to cut the grass, or help shovel the snow away, helps teach another great lesson of the Christian life: there is joy in giving of ourselves generously for the good of those whom we love. The experience of this kind of joy, so different from what the world offers, is the root of all Christian vocations. Without having learned as a young child that there is joy in doing good, and that their is beauty in the committed willingness to sacrifice my own preferences for the good of another, it is unlikely that a young adult will appreciate what marriage, the priesthood or the religious life are really all about.
Make a visit: When I was a kid, when we went out as a family to go shopping or visit relatives we made the sign of the cross when we drove by the front of a Catholic Church. We were taught that we did this because Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament was there. And sometimes, when we were coming back from someplace, we would stop and make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament in the parish church.
It may not be as easy as it used to be to find churches unlocked during the day, but there are chapels of adoration around the archdiocese. Find out where they are. And teach the children how to be quiet for a few minutes and say a prayer to Jesus present in the Church. And then take them to visit Him when you can.
Of all the lessons that make possible a Christian vocation, the awareness of the presence of Jesus in the sacrament, knowing that He hears us when we stop to speak to Him, is the greatest of all. Who will hear a call from Jesus to serve Him in the priesthood, the religious life or in marriage if they have not learned first, as children, that Jesus is present, He hears us, and He speaks to us? And in the end, He is where a vocation comes from. Take the children to Jesus, He will do the rest.
Bishop Daniel Flores is an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Detroit.
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