Resources for the journey...
Some words of wisdom on Vocation:
 “Our sense of vocation is intimately linked to the people and things that move us to passion and compassion.” (John Neafsy, A Sacred Voice is Calling: Personal Vocation and Social Conscience)
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” (Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC)
“Oh God, I thank you for having created me as I am. I thank you for the sense of fulfilment I sometimes have: that fulfilment is after all nothing but being filled with You. I promise You to strive my whole life long for beauty and harmony and also humility and true love, whispers of which I hear inside me during my best moments.” (Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork)
“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11)
 “Discerning one’s vocation relies on a process quite different from choosing a profession. A vocation must be heard or felt with passion. This passion – to write, to paint, to heal, to teach – must be confirmed first by oneself. Second, it needs to match one’s gifts. And finally, it needs to be confirmed by a community of others or by a mentor. This final step helps preclude mistaking a personal compulsion with a genuine vocation.” (James Van Oosting, “Vocation Education”, America)
“A career seeks to be successful, a calling to be valuable. A career tries to make money, a calling tries to make a difference.” (William Sloane Coffin, Passion for the Possible: A Message to US Churches)
Vocation is, “finding a purpose for being in the world, which is related to the purpose of God.” (Walter Brueggemann, Covenanting as Human Vocation)
Sometimes A Book Can Help!
Trying to map out our future can seem overwhelming. Even finding the best step to take next can be tough!
Sometimes taking stock by reading and reflecting on what others have experienced and written about can offer a signpost.
Reviews of four useful books are offered here.
"Sleeping With Bread: Holding What Gives You Life" by Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn and Matthew Linn.
 This short (74 pp.), simple and beautifully illustrated book explains a method of prayer and reflection known as the “Consciousness Examen.” Not to be confused with “Examination of Conscience”, which we do in order to prepare for Reconciliation/ Confession, the authors identify the Examen as a valuable way to enable people to hear the voice of God guiding them from within.
The authors take the reader on a gentle journey of identifying moments of consolation and desolation, or, simply put, the highs and the lows of life! They do so by having us ask ourselves two questions: For what am I most grateful? For what am I least grateful? Reviewing our day/week/year with God recognises the truth that it is often in the looking back that we see and sense God’s presence, power and peace at work all around us.
During the bombing raids of World War II many children were orphaned and left to go hungry. Rescue for the lucky ones often meant being put in refugee camps where food and shelter were provided. But because of the losses and trauma of war many of the children could not sleep at night. Fear of waking up to find themselves homeless and without food meant it was difficult for them to get off to sleep at night. Then somebody had the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime. Holding their bread meant these children could finally sleep in peace – the bread serving as a reminder that “today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow,” hence the title of this book.
Discerning when, where and how God is calling are all the stuff of finding and following one’s vocation. The prayerful approach of the Examen helps build an attitude of listening and openness, to seeing the patterns that emerge in our daily lives. For it is here that God speaks regularly and clearly in the events, people, conversations, encounters and places that are the building blocks of life. This book provides a tool to help us in a very practical way for sifting through our experience to better see where and what God is communicating to us.
"Sleeping with Bread" is published by Paulist Press (Mahwah, New Jersey, 1995).
"Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation" by Parker J. Palmer
 “Is the life I am living the same as the life that wants to live in me?”
So Palmer approaches the question of vocation – how to discover one’s true calling. He is a writer, teacher, activist and member of the Society of Friends (Quakers), who urges us to let “the highest truths and values guide everything” we do. For him vocation comes from listening to and accepting “true self” with its limits as well as its potentials, and vocation “is not a goal to be achieved but a gift to be received.”
It has been said that the person we are least inclined to trust in life is oneself! The author serves to address and correct this by recognising that, amongst other places, God speaks clearly within the human heart. Drawing out insights, stories and lessons from his own life and the lives of people who have made a difference (Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Rosa Parks, Gandhi), the author encourages the reader to come to a greater awareness of the vocational lessons life has to teach us as it unfolds. Moments of darkness, depression, fear and failure can show us our authentic path just as surely as times of happiness, fulfilment and joy.
Palmer is very aware that one’s inner journey needs to be God-focussed so as not to end up lost in selfishness or narcissism but so as to go out to others and the world, “bearing more gracefully the responsibilities that come with being human.” Using the language of journey, focusing on values that are very much of the Gospel and deepening our listening to the voice which is God’s, Palmer observes that the world is waiting for the truth that will set us free: “the truth that was seeded in the earth when each of us arrived here formed in the image of God.” He believes that cultivating that truth is “the authentic vocation of every human being.”
"Let Your Life Speak" is published by Jossey Bass (San Francisco, California, 2000.)
"How to Discover your Personal Mission" by John Monbourquette
 John Monbourquette is a priest and a psychologist. His book “How To Discover Your Personal Mission” is written to accompany people who are struggling to decide what path to follow in life.
Knowing oneself better and coming to a clearer sense of what we want to accomplish in life are its main aims. Sections on personal story, the dreams we wish to pursue, practical exercises to focus and strategies for discerning and deciding, all make it a practical guide for people searching to map out their future.
“How To Discover Your Personal Mission: The Search for Meaning” by John Monbourquette is published in London by Darton, Longman and Todd, priced £ 9:95. ISBN 0-232-52452-1.
“Discernment: The Art of Choosing Well” by Pierre Wolff
 Choices, big and small, surround us every day. To be human is to be always choosing and deciding. Probably the most important and far-reaching choices we make concern our path in life: where will I live, what course will I do, and what path will my career and ultimately my life take? Where do other people and God fit in with my life choices?
The job of choosing carefully and deciding wisely is often summed up by the word “discernment.” In this book, Pierre Wolff offers a clear and simple guide to deciding well so as not to drift into situations or choices we will later regret.
Using the wisdom and advice of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Wolff reminds us that discernment simply means putting to use abilities we are all equipped with. The question is how to learn to use these abilities when the time comes to make a decision.
The book will takes the reader on the journey of discovering how to use head and heart in order to manage our decisions with greater freedom – being faithful to our deepest self and faithful to God’s dream for us at the same time. In an age when individualism and selfishness can creep in without us realising it, Wolff explains that personal discernment and group discernment can and do go hand in hand. The best decisions are seldom made alone.
Gentle but searching honesty is encouraged by the questions the author puts at the end of each chapter. Our thoughts, feelings, past choices, values and beliefs all combine to make up the ingredients of how we choose what path to take in life. God’s words to us as well as what we hear from family, friends and even foes all provide food for thought but also food for life!
Fruitful choices that will enrich others and ourselves are seldom easy. Time and effort are needed. But we are not alone on the journey of deciding which way next. Others have been there too and others are on that journey right now. This book encourages to learn from their wisdom and to recognise that the tools for choosing well are not far from any of us. Discernment: The Art of Choosing Well” by Pierre Wolff is published by Liguori Publications, 2003.
And sometime a movie too!
 It is not plain sailing discerning one’s path in life these days. There are so many options. And, the question about the role God plays in our decisions is not an easy one to answer. We seek advice. We think about our own experiences. We pray. We listen to stories.
One way of trying a story about vocation is to watch a movie, a story - with an ending - that presents us with characters, questions, issues that get our interest, engage our emotions and stimulate our minds. It can contribute to our discernment.
Here is a movie for the month. Our website will add another movie each month. Our movie reviews are provided by Fr Peter Malone MSC, an Australian MSC based in London who works for Signis (the World Catholic Association for Communication) in that area of Media, Faith and Culture.
 MOLOKAI
Can there still be heroes? Not the superhuman types, but the types who give themselves completely to others. The men and women who are moved by a religious motivation and lay down their day-to-day lives for others – and sometimes their lives in death.
The 19th century Belgian priest, Damien, was one of these heroes.
Molokai, the Father Damien Story, was written by John Briley who also wrote Gandhi and Cry Freedom. It was directed by Dutch-born Australian, Paul Cox who took his crew to Molokai itself. The film was made in the actual places where Fr Damian lived with the outcast lepers. The Hawaiian island and its mountains provides spectacular backdrops to the action.
The movie boasts a large international and Australian cast. Sydney actor, David Wenham, is a down-to-earth, sometimes cantankerous saint.
The result is a moving story of a saint (beatified in 1996 by John Paul II) with a world-wide reputation in his time for his charity and his social concern for lepers. It is also a serious social justice movie about leprosy in the 19th century and its gradual elimination. (Catholics of previous generations were brought up on the biography by film director, John Farrow, 'Damien the Leper'.
Damien is presented as a down-to-earth priest who volunteered for his work with the lepers knowing that he would not be able to leave the island. The film is more contemporary in its picture of the struggles of a priest in terms of his vows: poverty in living in Molokai and his need for help and funds; obedience in the harsh commands of his superiors; chastity in terms of temptation and testing.
Fr Damien was canonised a saint by Pope Benecict XVI in October 2009.
Peter Malone MSC
KEEPING THE FAITH
Uh-ho. This is the film where the trailer shows the young seminarian setting his surplice alight with the thurible coals and then sitting in the holy water stoop to extinguish the flames. Shades of Fr Ted and a touch of Ballykissangel?
Actually, Keeping the Faith is an entertaining American comedy which raises an important question for people who are committed to their Jewish faith or to their Catholic faith: how do you communicate something of faith and religion to a modern TV and movie audience who may not be churchgoers or who have unhappy memories of their life in the church? Keep faith with them so that they can keep the faith? It is easy to preach to the converted and support their faith.
This, in fact, is one of the problems confronted by the two central characters, Jake (Ben Stiller), the young rabbi whom his synagogue like very much (and want to marry him off to an eligible woman in the congregation) and Brian (Edward Norton), the young parish assistant, (who is committed to celibacy). They have a talent for communicating in a contemporary way, especially in their preaching - and their congregations increase almost miraculously.
But, Anna (their heroine whom they last saw at school aged 8) gets in touch and comes back to New York, a top efficient business executive. Well, this being the movies, you can guess some of the complications that are going to arise, especially as regards relationships, making us ask questions about the vow of celibacy and, in these days of some clerical confusion, what is the vocation of the priest. The scene where Brian seeks the help of his old parish priest is worth listening to.
The screenplay is not meant to be realistic in the sense of a naturalistic drama of what happens in either the Jewish or the Catholic community. Rather, the film mirrors, in its comic and emotional way, some of the struggles of religious people today in their personal lives and in their community. Here the rabbi and the priest in an era, as they note, where barriers are breaking down, open an interfaith karaoke club for the elderly!
It's not a theological analysis of religious vocation and modern pastoral care but, in its light and often humorously serious way, it does raise the issues.
Peter Malone MSC
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