Our vocation enables us to encounter and embody Christ's love
We celebrated my sons’ high school graduations this past May – a bittersweet occasion, but it was mostly sweet. Although I’ll miss them terribly when they leave for college, I’m so thrilled and excited for them. There’s something rather thrilling about the dawning of a new era, being right on the cusp of adulthood and all it has to offer. I remember those days in my life, that feeling that I was setting off into the world to do great things. Before graduating, my boys had to prepare and defend a senior thesis on the Aristotelian prompt, “What does it mean to live well?” Since their classical liberal arts education ought to have prepared them to answer such a question, they were ready to go forward with the knowledge and tools to put their ideas into action. My sons and their classmates (of varying religious beliefs) argued the question differently, but in essence, much was the same as they argued that to live well is to lead a life marked by meaning and virtue. Worldly success, accolades and the accumulation of wealth were not mentioned in any of the defenses, but friendship, faith, family and humility were. Before becoming Catholic, one of the most compelling things about the Catholic Church was its understanding of vocation. The idea that God calls each of us to love and serve in a particular God-given context made so much sense to me, theoretically and practically. I’d long observed tension among Christians, women in particular, between a desire to do something important for God and a feeling of being unable to be effective because they had very young children at home. It was as if these women felt their lives were on pause during those years in the trenches of motherhood, and they were merely biding their time until they could resume the “actual work” of living for Christ. I always believed there was something wrong with this approach to Christianity, even if I couldn’t quite put my finger on the precise reason why. Surely, God would not have created women with the incredible capacity for carrying, birthing and nurturing new life if he instead preferred them to do other, more meaningful things for the Kingdom of God. If both women and men are created in God’s image, then why must women be at war with their biology to please him? And what, then, of men? How ought they prioritize their lives, career, family and mission? Shouldn’t they, too, be asking themselves this question? When I encountered the Catholic approach to vocation, I knew I’d found something true, real and meaningfully applicable to my life. The word comes from the Latin vocare, which means “to call” or “to invoke.” If God has called you to the vocation of marriage and, subsequently, to an openness to children, then parenthood is your mission, the particular way God has called you to love and serve him in this world. I wouldn’t have been able to put this idea into words when I was a young 20-year-old bride, nor when my first baby was born a year and a half later. I didn’t have the theological language to describe the sense of mission I experienced in those years beyond saying that God was leading me to marriage and motherhood, and I was thrilled about it. But, thankfully, I did have a strong and unflinching sense that I was somehow following God’s will for me, that he was intentionally calling me to be a wife and mother, and that this was now going to be the core of my life, the center of my mission, the driving force of whatever it was I was going to be doing. It all made perfect sense when I eventually encountered the Catholic view of vocation. St. Pope John Paul II’s teachings on vocation were unlike anything I’d read before. The beauty and adherence to natural law reflected a cohesive and attractive approach to life and love. This Catholic understanding of marriage imbued the sacrament with a clear vision and mission and respected the dignity of the human person. It particularly honored womanhood and biology in a meaningful, wondrous way. Obviously, this sense of vocation doesn’t mean that you may not additionally have a career, hobby or other interests. It doesn’t mean you won’t find meaningful work outside your house. A Catholic notion of vocation is equally applicable to both women and men. It is more about a general disposition and ordering of things than painfully specific tasks and roles. Our vocation is the most important and vital work we do for Christ, the thing towards which we must order our very lives. In No Man is an Island, Thomas Merton wrote that “All vocations are intended by God to manifest his love in the world. For each special calling gives a man some particular place in the Mystery of Christ, gives him something to do for the salvation of all mankind. The difference between the various vocations lies in the different ways in which each one enables men to discover God’s love, appreciate it, respond to it and share it with other men. Each vocation has for its aim the propagation of divine life in the world.” Far from being a limiting factor, then, Merton tells us that a person’s vocation is the very thing that enables him or her to encounter and embody God's love. It provides both a lighted path to follow and a channel from which our deeds flow to others. It is at once both submission to God and freedom in Christ. I love to think about how, as two more of my kids launch into the world, chase their dreams and pursue their goals, God is simultaneously preparing their vocations, those special places for them in the Mystery of Christ. Of all the things they may go on to accomplish, things they may be immensely and rightly proud of, nothing will bring them as much fulfillment or joy as living out of their callings. Community, friendship and family: these are the things that define a life; these are the conduits for encountering Jesus. Investing in such eternal pursuits is something you can do no matter what your present marital status or life situation is because the call to vocation is simply a call to love.
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