Vocation And Answering The Call- A Better Understanding
What exactly is a vocation and what does it have to do with answering the call?
[simpleazon-image align=”left” asin=”0933932995″ locale=”us” height=”292″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/419mInrFCZL.jpg” width=”188″]As we continue along the theme of answering the call, we would like to take a look at “vocation” and what it really means as there are many misconceptions whenever the word vocation is mentioned. Many think that vocations are for “de priests and dem“. This is actually a very narrow view on vocation. So for starters, let us take a look at the definition of vocation.
The dictionary defines vocation as a strong desire to spend your life doing a certain kind of work. It continues by saying that vocation is the work that a person does or should be doing. It is very interesting that in the second definition, the dictionary emphasizes the point of the work that someone ‘should be doing’. I say this because the work that someone does may not necessarily be their vocation in life. A vocation is therefore a call to a specific role or path in our lives. One of the key test to determine if what you are doing is your vocation is to seriously answer the question, ‘does this give me maximum joy?’ If it doesn’t and you are constantly miserable at what you are doing, then chances are it is not your vocation. It is not your calling.
Every human being was created for a specific purpose. By this, I do not mean a job but rather a specific end; a specific goal in mind. The catechism teaches us that ‘God made us to know him, to love him, to serve him in this world, and to be happy with him in Heaven.’ Therein lies the fundamental vocation of every human being, that is to spend eternity with God in heaven. Just as cars are made to be driven, so too we are created to live with God for all eternity in heaven. Now that does not happen automatically. We have to play our part. We have just witnessed the start of the 2016 Olympics. The athletes who compete at these games did not get there by chance. They had to work very hard to get there. They had to make many sacrifices and had to train a lot. So it is with us. We will not attain our primary vocation – Heaven – just like that. We have our part to play. Even though we will never be perfect in this life, yet Jesus challenges us to “be perfect just as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” Every one of us are called to be saints. It is in acknowledging this primary location and truly striving to live it out that we are able to discern what are secondary vocations are.
The catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraph 1694 tells us:-
Incorporated into Christ by Baptism, Christians are “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” and so participate in the life of the Risen Lord. Following Christ and united with him, Christians can strive to be “imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love” by conforming their thoughts, words and actions to the “mind . . . which is yours in Christ Jesus,” and by following his example.
So it is very important for us to live out our primary vocation – that of following Christ – and in so doing, discern from God what he desires us more specifically to do with our lives. God who is the Author of all life, knows oh too well what plans He has in store for each of us, and no plan that we can ever have – no matter how grand it might be – can ever be better than God’s plans for us. He knows every one of us by name and he knows why he created every one of us. That maximum joy I spoke of earlier can only be reached when we surrender our desires to a much higher one – that of our Heavenly Father. Therein we will discover our true vocation and will be well on the way to answering the call to serve.
