Her job, well placed within a regional organization, had seemed impervious to the rounds of budget cuts and layoffs that had wiped out lesser positions. I knew she wasn’t coming by to see if I would advocate on her behalf with the team in the upstairs corner offices. She was calling on me for vocational clues and maybe a word of encouragement.

“How are you preparing spiritually for this change?” I asked.

“I guess I’ll pray a lot.”

My friend is not altogether young. Chances are slim that she will find another full-time job that will engage her at the level which she has enjoyed.

I guess I’ll pray a lot. This is not an uncommon response, but what does it mean? Embedded in the urge to pray lies the vocational challenge. No matter what the circumstance that urges us to pray, nestled somewhere within is God’s invitation to step decisively and trustingly into what we do not yet understand.

It matters very much, both spiritually and vocationally, how we pray at life’s crisis points, and how we pray through our not-knowing. For some, “praying a lot” results in the amplification of worry through the multiplication of words.

When you pray from a place of worry, you magnify the worry. When you pray from a place of trust, you magnify the Lord, and give God space in your life to be, well, GOD.

My friend described all the things certain to fall apart with her job loss. I listened, and sat silent for a moment.

“Well, what should I do?” she asked, devoured by desperation. I sat silent for another moment. Did she want employment or career advice? I’m not really qualified to give that. Or financial advice? Ha! I could use some of that myself! Any answer I could offer would have to come from the Holy Spirit who knows what she needs far better than I do.

And then the words burst forth from my mouth. “Eat the Gospels!” I said. “Eat the Gospels! Eat the life and the teachings of Jesus. Eat them with feverish hunger. Eat his mission, his works, his teachings, his passion. Eat straight through to his anguish, his wrestlings, his unjust conviction, his public execution, his death and resurrection. Eat the words of the Gospels.”

She looked at me wide eyed, as though she were receiving a revelation.

When life is going well it is easy to live vocationally distant from the raw edge of the “word of God, sharper than any two-edged sword.” But this divine raw edge is precisely the front edge of our lives, where life as we know it encounters its vocational frontier, the place where God’s invitation calls us beyond ourselves.

If we were utterly honest about God’s calling, we would acknowledge that we have no hope of vocational clarity apart from the Gospels, nor apart from that rhythm of dying and receiving new life which we call the paschal mystery. Every one of us will be challenged in our lifetime in some way, and more likely in many ways. Each time it will feel unique and painfully personal.

And that’s precisely the point. God continually invites us beyond our known quarters into a larger life, the life which uniquely has our name on it, the life which God has had in mind for all eternity. The vocational life is far from neat and tidy, seldom delivered to us in some lovely and perfect package. The vocational life more likely emerges from the raw wet unshapen clay of our incompleteness and the enduring promise of the Holy Spirit.

Copyright 2012 Mary Sharon Moore, M.T.S.

Then there were the college dorm days. We had one floor phone which served about twenty girls. On Friday or Saturday night, when that phone rang, there would be a breathless mad rush to the little booth at the end of the hall. I always felt like the man of John’s Gospel sitting at the side of the pool at Siloam. The call seemed never to be for me.

Today we all have cell phones. Even eight-year-olds have cell phones, so each call is personal. When a call comes in, it’s always for you.

I sometimes call friends on their cell phone. Daniel, can you talk now? “No, I’m folding laundry.” Maryann, can you talk now? “No, I’m in the supermarket.” Patrick, can you talk now? “No, it’s a tense moment with my in-laws.” (Oops.) Caroline, can you talk now? “No, I’m in the bathroom.” (Oops again.)

In a small way, I discover, I begin to feel as God might feel.

What is the acceptable time to make a call? When is the perfect moment to receive a call?

In my practice as a spiritual and vocational director I get an even better sense of how God feels about trying to get through to us. “I just don’t know what God is calling me to do,” some say. Or, “I don’t think God is calling me to anything—or to anything in particular.” In reply I usually ask: Can you tell me how you actually listen? In frustration some say, “I really want this for my life, but I’m afraid God is going to call me to that.” My reply: Have you considered getting out of the driver’s seat?

The truth is, God is calling you all the time. God’s got your number—memorized! Even if you’re already a mom or dad, or a student, a web designer, teacher, or business owner; even if you’re already a landscaper, a farmer, office worker, or bank teller, even if you’re already a religious or a priest, God is still calling you. And God continually calls you in two directions at once: more deeply to the center of your life, as well as to the frontier of your life, the unexplored edge, the place where you have not yet been. God continually calls and invites and nudges, and even challenges you to be more fully yourself-in-God. God continually leads you into the unexplored territory of your life.

One of today’s biggest challenges to “hearing the call” is the incessant deluge of distractions which keep us off center just enough so that there’s always a perfectly good reason why we cannot give ourselves wholeheartedly to God’s perfect plan for our lives and for the world we touch. In the Gospels, Jesus’ would-be followers had perfectly good reasons why they could not follow him just then: They would be constantly on the move, with no place to rest their head (how inconvenient); or they needed to wait until their parents died (how untimely). They would have to forsake their family and the comforts of home life, forsake the path to riches and success. How impractical, all of it!

Jesus encountered distractions, too. Recall the temptations he underwent in the desert, Satan’s mighty—and mighty smooth—effort to pull Jesus off center. Jesus did not put on his “God suit” and fend off these very appealing distractions. Rather, in his humanity he had to set his will on the one important thing: being the authentic Son of his Father.

Will you let the distractions in your world push you over? Or will you be the unique son or daughter which only you can be, attentive to God’s call?

Yet the unavoidable loneliness embedded in God’s calling has not gone away. Jesus experienced this loneliness within his calling, and he taught his followers to expect such loneliness as well. What is this loneliness?

Vocational loneliness is the interior ache that reminds you that to be called by God means that you throw away all other options and give yourself wholeheartedly to a holy work where you are no longer in charge. Vocational loneliness means handing over your plans, your understanding of how things should be, your very liberty, to the greater forces of the Holy Spirit, to make of your life what God has in mind.

This loneliness is the necessary work of being conformed to Christ. You may encounter it early in life. More likely, this loneliness defines the experience of God’s calling as the years advance.

Vocational loneliness runs counter to what we intuitively seek for our lives—the comfort and safety of family, the buffer of friendships, the distractions of work. Will these all be taken away? Not necessarily. But you’ll discover that family, friendships, and the distractions of work are not enough to sustain you in your personal vocational journey into God. Instead, there will come a time when you will find yourself taking your relationship with Jesus more seriously, and come face to face with the life that has your name on it and no one else’s.

In writing about Catholic social activist Dorothy Day, biographer Robert Ellsberg described the vocational loneliness that Day experienced, which “persisted even in the midst of others, the essential isolation that belonged to any commitment or vocation … to which Christ invited his friends.” In her autobiography, The Long Loneliness, Day herself writes: “[This vocational] pain is very great, but very endurable, because He who lays on the burden also carries it.”

Jesus taught his would-be followers as much when he said, “Let the dead [i.e., those who lack a personal sense of calling] bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60). Jesus spoke of the very solitary path of the disciple: “If anyone comes to me without hating [i.e., fully detaching from] his father and mother … and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). And again: “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).

Vocation is costly. God’s calling is demanding of your fullest self or it is nothing at all, as Jesus insists: “Whoever loves father or mother, … son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37). Indeed, before communion we pray these honest words, “Lord, I am not worthy …” But should the Lord himself vocationally say to us, “You are not worthy of me,” we would feel the sting down to the core of our being.

No matter your age or state in life, you may be surrounded by family members and friends who are not yet vocationally awake, so your own vocational awakening may cause them to pull you back from your solitary path, in hopes of escaping a little longer their own solitary path. But once your vocational awakening begins, you know in your heart that there is no looking back.

You should expect vocational fruitfulness in your life. But be prepared to walk a road which you alone must take. Even in the midst of family or studies or work obligations, expect that God’s calling of you is personal, and your lifelong response will be one for which you alone are accountable and which only you, anointed in the Holy Spirit, can give.

Copyright 2012 Mary Sharon Moore, M. T. S.

Generosity, and living generously, is an important dimension of the vocational life because it is a real-time expression of the eternal generosity of God.

What are some examples of the vocationally generous life? Who can we look to as models of living as though God were enough? We can start with Jesus.

The Gospels abound in accounts of Jesus feeding the multitudes: In Matthew 15 and Mark 8 he feeds four thousand; in Mark 6 and Luke 9 it is five thousand. And in John 6 we find Jesus feeding “a large crowd” of “about five thousand men.” We do not know how many wives and children came along. Jesus demonstrates astonishing generosity, far beyond what we can ever accomplish. Or can we?

Then we have the accounts of Jesus healing people and unshackling them from the bondage of sin. People come in droves, pressing all around him in order to be freed of their physical and spiritual infirmities. Again, feats of healing and mercy beyond what we can ever accomplish. Or can we?

Did Jesus feed everyone, or eliminate for all time the scourge of food insecurity for the poor, the marginalized, the ones who always seem unable to pay? No. He fed a few good sized crowds, and healed a good number of people, and showed us how it’s done.

So how is it done? A generation back, in the depths of the great depression of the 1930s, God put upon the heart of a woman, a single mom, a fervor and a plan to feed the desperately hungry—mostly men—and to give them shelter, clothing, and spiritual encouragement for their lives. This woman possessed no more than those whom she served, so her vocational generosity was not coming from some hidden “nest egg” or financial reserves. Her generosity flowed directly from her anointing to follow Jesus and to take his words at face value. And so Dorothy Day launched the Catholic Worker movement, which continues today.

Oftentimes young children lead the way in vocational generosity. I recall the story of the ten-year-old boy who told his mom that for his birthday he did not want gifts. He wanted his buddies to come to his party with bags of nonperishable food for the local food pantry. How cool is that? his friends thought. So they in turn took up the practice.

And when it comes to Jesus’ work of healing, of forgiveness, mercy and reconciliation, last year I met a woman whose whole life is dedicated to speaking, writing, and advocating tirelessly across the nation for replacing the death penalty with a sentence of life without parole. The vocational generosity of her response to God’s calling was “multiplied” when two actors brought Sr. Helen Prejean’s work to the silver screen in Dead Man Walking.

Someone has to step forward to be the carrier of God’s generosity—so why not you? In fact, someone already has been anointed to be the carrier of God’s generosity in particular ways—and it is you.

Will you achieve notoriety for your living a vocationally generous life? Maybe, and more likely, maybe not. But notoriety, or lack of it, does not deter God’s fully-pledged commitment to redeeming this world in which you and I live. Every day, and all through the night, the life blood of redeeming grace and goodness, compassion and mercy, forgiveness and healing, feeding and encouraging, pulses through the heart of this world. Not magically as though on its own, but miraculously through the likes of you and me. Jesus has shown us how it is done. Our work is to go and do the same.

Copyright 2012 Mary Sharon Moore, M.T.S.

The word that found me recently is one I cannot honestly say describes me. That word is: generous.

In a world whose conversation is more like two disparate monologues—the monologue of the one percent and the monologue of the ninety-nine—this word “generous” wedges in like sand in the oyster just itching to produce a worthy pearl. If I understand the Scriptures correctly, God’s heart isn’t with the high and the mighty who have secured for themselves enough and more than enough, but with the lowly who wrestle daily with their poverty and who look like they could benefit from the relief of divine generosity. Mary’s Magnificat proclaims what this generous-hearted God looks like in action.

Generosity therefore becomes a vocational word for us. Its fuller phrase, “living generously,” points us to an intentional way of life that is larger than ourselves. I am not speaking about the occasional donation to a worthy cause, or the tithing which is more like tipping. I know these modes of “generosity” quite well. I discern within this phrase, though, a vocational imperative to live life openhandedly, which is the only way God knows how to live.

But I immediately protest. Being an itinerant worker in the vineyard, I often do not know how I will meet next month’s expenses. I cannot always explain the math that somehow works itself out in my checking account. So this vocational imperative to live generously is not contingent on what I possess but on how willing I am to mobilize my trust in God. God takes our vulnerabilities seriously, and is counting on each of us to trust that God’s generosity is for us all.

What I discover is that I am called upon by God and anointed to live a generous life not because I have enough financial and material means for myself with some to share, but because I have faith in a generous God whom I believe is worthy of my trust.

I think of the poor widow of Zarephath, preparing the last of her food for a final meal before she and her son are overcome by starvation. She has no safety net, but she has the good sense to respond generously, if obediently, to the request of the prophet Elijah for a cup of water and a small portion of bread. And apparently, ignoring her inventory of supplies (“only a handful of flour in my jar and a little oil in my jug”), he asks first for “a little cake” (see 1 Kings 17:9-16). Is Elijah joking, or merely out of touch? Or, perhaps, we are about to encounter that fire of generosity burning in the very heart of God through the person of the prophet.

The widow of Zarephath is presented with a vocational moment, and she responds to it. We find that a year later Elijah, who has taken up residence upstairs, and the widow and her son are still taking their meals together from the jar of flour that never went empty and the jug of oil that never ran dry.

Living generously does not happen when we finally have enough. Living generously means that we have God, and God is enough. From communion flows community, and within community comes the vocational call to act. Time after time God supplies materially for real physical human needs. God has compassion, and one way or another it will be expressed—either through us or despite us.

Next time: Examples of the vocationally generous life.

Copyright 2012 Mary Sharon Moore, M.T.S.

Editor’s Note: Today, we welcome new contributor Mary Sharon Moore to our CatholicMom.com family! Mary Sharon is a noted author and the founder of Awakening Vocations. I look forward to learning from Mary Sharon’s posts and thank her for joining us! LMH

From where I sit on this Sunday morning, beside the picture window looking out onto the dense green canopy of bigleaf maple and white oak, as dapped sunlight falls from a clear blue sky, I see a fresh crop of chickadees. Their song irrupts into praise as they flit from perch to perch. They are so fully what God designed them to be—chickadees, and their chickadeeness fills me with joy.

With this I begin to pray the psalms of Sunday Morning Prayer, psalms of all creation singing praise to the Creator. In bursts of praise volleying forth from these psalms and canticles the Church celebrates the right ordering of life and of all creation in the risen Lord Jesus. All that exists points to him, gives innate and irrepressible praise to the Lord of Life, and draws life, breath, grace, and meaning from the risen Christ.

This “right ordering” of humankind and of all creation is vocational to the core. Consider these lines from the psalms of Sunday Morning Prayer: “Praise God in his holy place, … / O praise him with sound of trumpet, … / Praise him with timbrel and dance, … / Let everything that lives and that breathes / give praise to the Lord” (Psalm 150); and this beautiful line from Daniel 3: “Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord, / praise and exalt him above all forever” (v. 57). And the universal call to praise: “Praise the Lord from the heavens, … / Praise him, sun and moon, … / Praise the Lord from the earth. … / all earth’s kings and peoples, … / Let them praise the name of the Lord / for he alone is exalted” (Psalm 148).

St. Paul writes: “[He] is the firstborn of all creatures / In him everything in heaven and on earth was created. / … All were created through him; / all were created for him. / …In him everything continues in being” (see Colossians 1:15-17). All richly vocational language.

French Jesuit theologian Père Teilhard de Chardin has a beautiful phrase in his essay, “Cosmic Life,” in Writings in Time of War (1968), “Lord Jesus, you are the center toward which all things are moving.” This phrase speaks to the inescapably vocational trajectory of our anointed Christian life and of the life of all creation. In Eucharistic Prayer III (Roman Missal, 1985) we hear this brief yet lovely phrase: “Father, you are holy indeed, / and all creation rightly gives you praise.” (In the Roman Missal, Third Edition, the phrase reads: “You are indeed Holy, O Lord, / and all you have created / rightly gives you praise.”)

The human spirit is most fully itself when it renders wholehearted praise to God, in its being and in its actions. St. Irenaeus observes: “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” Yet poet David White wisely cautions: “We are the one part of creation that can refuse to be itself.” The psalms of Sunday Morning show the fruit of faithfulness to vocation. Jesus’ vocation was to reveal his Father and to invite us into that intimate relationship, and to show us how to faithfully, obediently, and fully participate in it. He was frequently cornered, harassed, and finally executed because he would not back down from his claim of intimate relationship with God whom he dared to address as Abba, Father, nor from his equally unthinkable claim that every person is invited to share in this relationship, everlastingly.

In his nonviolent acceptance of his arrest, death sentence, scourging, and bloody execution, Jesus showed us what adherence to vocation demands—a costly refusal to back down from what you know is true: that you participate in an unbreakable bond of love with God which is expressed in your life, your work, your relationships, and in all you cherish, a bond expressed throughout all creation.

Copyright 2011 Mary Sharon Moore, M.T.S.