Vocations

In honor of National Vocation Awareness Week, Nov. 6-12, The Visitor is featuring “snapshots” of a few of our diocese’s seminarians, who share something about their vocational calling or seminary life.

Talk to any seminarian and they will tell you the countless ways people from around the diocese support them — through prayer, notes of encouragement, visits, and sometimes through financial donations and fundraisers. All of these make a difference in their lives as they discern the priesthood.

They are more than just tag lines — these words etched into seminary walls and onto seminarians’ hearts. Each carries its own character and challenges those preparing for leadership in the church to greater unity, service and charity.

When young people feel called to the priesthood or religious life, they can’t keep it a secret. Eventually, they need to break the news to their parents.

All priests share a common brotherhood in their deep bond of ordained life and ministry. Fathers Anthony and John Hollowell, David and Doug Marcotte, and Andrew and Benjamin Syberg experience it at an even deeper level as brothers. And they hope their witness will deepen the faith of archdiocesan Catholics, and encourage them to make their families the seed bed of future vocations.

The seeds of Sister Grace Dominic’s vocation were first planted in the Archdiocese of Washington, where she was born and raised, attended school, graduated from college and began a career in journalism. Here, in her hometown, God’s eventual plan for her life took shape. As she said, it’s where “everything began to unfold.”

To meet the ongoing need for priests and women religious to meet the spiritual needs of Catholic communities, various programs have evolved over time to give men and women a wide range of discernment opportunities.

In its ministry to young people, and especially in vocations promotion work, church workers must step out of the sacristy and take seriously the questions and concerns of the young, Pope Francis said.