1. The Vocation Director — A Person who integrates Faith with Life.

A vocation director must blend personal rigor as well as comfort in relationships with people. It goes without question that the one selected must be a person of faith, comfortable with his calling, an integrated person in touch with his emotions and feelings.

    —  The vocation director should not try to sell the religious life based on privilege, but on servanthood. The vocation director must personally understand the meaning of servanthood as oneness with the pain and suffering of others. He must live out, not avoid, the struggles and turmoil in one’s own life. In the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, the vocation director must be one who celebrates life, one for whom worship is not separated from life’s experiences, one for whom life is for Eucharist, and Eucharist is for life.

     —  The vocation director must have already worked through feelings of inadequacy and a sense of failure in ministry if he is to be truly effective in encouraging others to consider a religious vocation. As a person of faith believing in self and as a person of hope encouraged by the present and future, the vocation director can in one’s person be an inspiration and support to those who are considering lifetime commitments in ministry.

    —  For a congregation, leadership must give great care in the selection of the vocation director. There is a strong argument for the need of a full-time vocation director. The job or, better still, the special ministry must not be viewed as part time, temporary or one not requiring special skills in human growth and behaviour. The vocation director, besides being comfortable in his own vocation and seasoned in ministry, must possess definite professional skills in discerning vocational potential.

    —  The vocation director should understand the developmental, psychological and religious signs that are appropriate to each stage of human development. He must guard against setting unreal expectations with an applicant who is in late adolescence or early or mid-20s. The vocation director, as an astute observer of human behaviour, must see the growth potential in candidates, must have a sense of the developmental flow of life, helping an individual to gain experiences to balance deficiencies as well as to consolidate growth.

     —   The vocation director must have a fairly direct “tough streak.” One must be challenging, honest and confronting, even demanding, not surrendering to mediocrity because of the shortage of numbers or the critical need to fill ministerial slots. The vocation director should not have the image of a bounty hunter who always gets one’s catch, ‘dead or alive’. Nothing can harm effective vocation recruitment more than a misguided willingness to accept candidates whose suitability is at best marginal.

II. The Vocation Director  - a Person who is Relational.

    —  While a vocation director must be an integrated person with professional competence, it is imperative that he not be a lone ranger, but sees oneself in relationship with others, particularly the people with whom he shares daily life, his co-religious, and the entire Christian community.

   —  The vocation director should also develop a close relationship with his fellow religious. A good measuring rod of satisfaction in ministry is the extent to which they assist in promoting vocations on the local level.

    —  It is important that the vocation director not function in isolation from other offices in a province complex. In group interaction the vocation director can share his plan and activities for the year and interrelate vocation efforts with such departments as campus and young adults, schools and religious education, liturgy, and justice and peace. Failure to do so leaves a vocation director out of touch with the very people he needs to reach.

    —  Vocations will flourish only to the extent that all our people experience themselves as called and gifted. A person will accept the call to the religious life if he sees that ministry related to and evolving from a community that accepts and exercises its baptismal call to service. In such a setting religious life is seen in its proper perspective, not as a hierarchical model of powers and privileges, but as related directly to the larger reality of ministry. Once we recognize the plurality of ministry within a faith community, a religious vocation properly follows upon discovered charisms within the community.

    —  By developing relationships with all the people of God, the vocation director will imbue those contemplating a religious commitment with a real vision and sense of challenge for today’s Church.

        III.   The Vocation Director - a Person with a Global Vision.

    —  The vocation director must be convinced that people preparing for the religious life must have a world vision. Candidates must know that their calling is not an end in itself, but is for the sake of the kingdom.

    —  The vocation director must clarify his own ecclesiology. The Church is not synonymous with the kingdom. The Spirit of God is calling us to be Church in new ways, and in this new Church all baptized are called to proclaim and promote the kingdom — the reign of God in our world. The vocation director lives in a changing world and hopefully a changing Church which captures the historical moment, a graced moment. This Church must provide a critical Christian presence in interpreting life’s events.

    —  A true vocation director must recognize his own vocation to bring about a more just world, a more peaceful world, and a world that is more human. He should have a worldview that sees the earth as God’s handiwork with us, his creatures having the choice for good or evil, for life or death. The vocation director should see the world as having a great capacity for good in furthering God’s life-giving presence. This same world is threatened with its own destruction through weapons of selfishness, deprivation, poverty, malnutrition and nuclear power. A vocation director will not look for qualities of compassion, concern, service, witness, involvement in a candidate unless he she is empathetic with a struggling world trying to enter the 21st century.

    —  What type of candidates are we looking for? Much will depend on the qualities we seek in a vocation director, a person who has integrated faith with life, one who is relational and one who

has a global vision of a world hungering for justice and peace. His task is monumental. Many put unreal expectations and burdens on his shoulders. If there are not enough candidates, he frequently will be the scapegoat.

    —  The movie “Chariots of Fire” might contain a message of hope for the ministry of vocation promotion: two British runners won in the 1924 Olympics against tremendous odds through character, discipline and courage. Eric Liddell ran for the love of God. “God made me fast,” he said. He felt an extra-ordinary power from within. Eric explained further, “When I run, I feel his pleasure” or to paraphrase, “When I run, I feel God is pleased with me. When I run, I share in God’s own pleasure, in God’s own delight.”

Today, you, vocation director, are that chariot of fire. Within you is a frightening force, a burning heart, a speed and a grace. God has made you fast. You are God’s gift that in turn you share with others. His power is within you, the Spirit of God who lives so silently, so secretly deep within you. And when you run you experience his divine pleasure. As a chariot of fire may you have light to see your gifts, faith to recognize the power within you and feel the pleasure of God in all you do.

(Excerpts from a talk by Bishop Walter Sullivan. 1982)

All pictures used from Cornwall II were taken by Br. Thomas Collins.

Picture:  CLT team member, Dominic Sassi, addresses the Cornwall II assembly.  Dominic has as one of his areas of concern for the Congregation, new members and formation.