Vocations Prayer & Resources

National Vocations Awareness Week begins today. Our leadership team sent out our Congregation Vocations Prayer this week as a reminder of our commitment to pray for vocations. In our house, we've started praying this prayer every day at the end of our evening office--the prayer of the church that we say together as a community after dinner. I thought I'd post the prayer here on the blog and invite my bloggy friends to join us in praying for vocations to our community and to religious life.

God of Peace,

you have called us to live the Gospel of Peace in its

mission of Justice as Sisters and Associates of St. Joseph of Peace.

We hear this call

to be people of prayer and nonviolence

to be community for mission

to respect the dignity of all persons

to stand in solidarity and act in justice with

marginalized people

to deepen our spirituality of peace

regarding care of creation

Gracious God, send your Spirit to us so that women and

men among us will respond to your call to service and

leadership in the Church and for our world.

May those who are opening their lives to your call be

encouraged and strengthened in their generous response

by our hospitality and joy.

May women called to vowed life as Sisters and women

and men called to become Associates reflect the rich

diversity of gifts and cultures revealed in Your creation.

May our patron, St. Joseph, inspire us to trust in God’s

abiding love and live a life of faith and peace.

We ask this through Jesus Christ, our brother. AMEN

If you are someone who reads this blog because maybe possibly some day you think God might be calling you to consider a religious vocation, I encourage you to listen, ask questions, and pray. There are lots of resources out there, many more than there were even when I started this crazy wonderful journey into religious life.

• For one thing this blog is a chronicle of my own discernment journey. You might want to read some of the posts with the tags discernment, bean spilling chronicles, groovy sister reserves, and vocations.
• The Vocation Network website is chock full of wonderful articles, personal stories, and links to an incredibly wide diversity of religious communities out there. If you don't know where to start, you might want to try out this exercise, either with the paper Vision magazine which you can sometimes find in your parish or the online directory of religious communities. I found it very helpful back in the day.
• My friend Sr. Julie Viera has a great ministry and blog called A Nun's Life that helps tell the story of Catholic Sisters today and has a multitude of resources for discerners.
• The US Bishops Conference has launched a new vocations website with a variety of resources for women and men discerning religious vocations.
• If you have particular questions or wonderings, my email box is always open. You can find my address on the sidebar to the right.

Most of all, know that you are in my thoughts and prayers on this journey. It is a wonderful and surprising thing to listen to your heart's desire, to find God's desire for you, and to find a place where that all fits together and the world makes sense.