Vocation Directors

Most vocation director agree with the idea of stepping on the other side in order to confirm ones calling, they'll never say YES and NO. It is a favorable risk though. But what can you say to those who never tried but have decided their vocation? Would you say it's harmful? Is the sense of peace really true?

 

In my opinion, Vocation Director is only a guide along the maze of discerning a religious calling. He/She is not or should not be there as a recruitment manager. It is a temptation to unconsciously "force" a person to think they have a vocation to religious life (and worse still a vocation to the director's own congregation.) And so I agree that after discerning WITH the person the Will of God for that person, the director should step aside and allow the person to make her / his own decision. Hopefully, by the integrity and authenticity with which a vocation director lives his / her own religious life, one would be attracted to her witness and attract the person discerning to the director's own congregation.

Is this a "favorable risk?" I would not call it entirely a risk. Religious life from the outset is a "leap of faith." The will of God is shrouded in the unknown and the uncertain. it is a paradox because unless one enters into it, one never really finds its certainty. Hopefully when one decides to enter religious life, it is not just for a "try out." It does happen that after the leap of faith, one finds out later that religious life is not the life intended by God for them. The experience is still part and parcel of the bigger picture of God's will for that person. When one sincerely follows the Will of God, AS ONE UNDERSTANDS IT, God works everything for the good in the end. (Romans 8:28).