 What is
Vocare?
Vocare is a Latin word meaning “to
call.” We are often told that
God has a calling for each of us. But what does this really mean?
The
scriptures are filled with references to the church as a people called
by God. In Isaiah, the words of God’s call to Israel is couched in very
personal terms: “Do not fear, for I
have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine…you are
precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.” (Isaiah
43:1,4)
The Apostle Paul writes to the Church in Corinth that they are “called to be saints, together with all
those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
both their Lord and ours.” (1 Corinthians 1:2).
We hear that the Christian life is a pressing on “toward the goal for the prize of the
heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:14)
Paul prays for the faithful, “asking
that our God will make you worthy of his call and will fulfill by his
power every good resolve and work of faith, so that the name of our
Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the
grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Thessalonians
1:11-12)
We each have a vocation –
a God given calling and charge – for our own lives. Each Christian is
called, through the sacrament of Holy Baptism, into a life lived for
Jesus Christ, and is equipped at the Holy Eucharist with the assurance
of Jesus Christ’s very presence with us today as we “do the work He has given us to do – to
love and to serve Him as faithful witness of Christ our Lord."
The Vocare Weekend
The Vocare weekend provides an intentional period of time for young
adults (ages 18-30) to intentionally engage with their God-given
vocations in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Led by other young
adults, the Vocare weekend finds its heart in a series of twelve talks,
each focusing on a unique aspect of the Christian faith and life, and
each connecting to an overall consideration of the theme of God’s call
to us, here and now. Talks may be followed by discussion,
contemplation, worship, or any number of activities – but the weekend’s
ultimate theme is found in the intentional consideration of the themes
of calling and vocation.
 In his book Wishful Thinking, Frederick Buechner writes of Vocation:
It...means the work a
person is called to by God. There are all different kinds of voices
calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find
out which is the voice of God rather then of Society, say, or the
Superego, or Self-Interest. By and large a good rule for finding out is
this: the kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a)
that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have
done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met
requirement (a), but if your work is writing cigarette ads, the chances
are you’ve missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is
being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement
(b), but if most of the time you’re bored and depressed by it, the
chances are you have not only bypassed (a), but probably aren’t helping
your patients much either. Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth
will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep
gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
It is our hope that
the Vocare weekend serves as a catalyst for the life-long task of
discerning the vocation to which God calls us – both in our lives
within the church and in our lives in the larger world. We hope that
Vocare provides each participant with the opportunity to thoughtfully
consider where his or her own deep gladness meets the world’s deep
hunger.
The above text is
adapted from Vocare International.
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