The vocational crisis is also a crisis of communication and of languages, of symbols and gestures, of words and parables. For too long a time we have been thinking that the vocational appeal travels almost automatically through casual mediations, or that it is transmitted through mysterious ways and it always reaches its destination; or that the action of educators or vocational animators (from parents to teachers and various educators up to official vocational animator…) is not that important, just as if the voice of God who calls were enough, irresistible and winning.

Unluckily, facts do not confirm this cheerful presumption and we keep on making vocational proposals often deserted and snubbed by the youths; or we plan projects of vocational pastoral actions that, in the best of cases, arouse interest but not adhesion. Why does this happen?

I think that it is due to a duplex problem: a problem of content and one of method. It is this double sense that I would like to face with this short reflection.

Research of sense

I believe that there are few terms today so much needful of a healthy process of…cleaning as the term “vocation”. This term straightaway arouses in the collective imaginary of a person who feels addressed with a certain type of proposal, a precise and exclusive idea having something to do with seminaries and their surroundings, priests or sisters, through a hard and even somehow strange choice.

 It is somehow the original sin of a certain vocational animation, a restrictive animation that finishes by making a person less capable of proposing the vocational message and by concretely discouraging the adhesion of the youths.

We have the interest of going back to the authentic sense of the concept, since even the original need of any person is linked to it, in particular the youth and the very sense of life.

The calling God and the called man

Vocation means call and –at psychological level- it goes back to the meaning of one’s own identity and to the journey to be made by every human being to reach a substantially positive and stable self perception. In fact, the identity is constituted by an actual I, namely by what an individual man is already at the moment of his birth, with his characteristics and limitations, and by an ideal I, by what he is called to be, which he is not yet, but which he perceives as his own ideal project to be realised. 

Therefore, evidently the concept of vocation comes soon to qualify the sense of the I, as its constitutive element, an I that does not exist in its integrity and cannot catch its positive reality if not within a relation with someone (Someone) who calls him. This is what the fact of being called exactly means: if somebody calls you, it means that you are important for somebody, that you are precious in his eyes; it means that somebody cares for you, has preferred you to non-existence and now minds your future, proposes to you something that has been thought of just for you and that leads you to the utmost degree of your realisation. Summing up, vocation means this message of positive reality and dignity: it is good news that reconciles life with yourself and, before this; it makes you to discover the presence of Another, One who has written your name on the palm of his hands.  

In other words: the event of vocation causes us to discover the face of God as that of One who is the Eternal Caller (or the eternal lover, since he who calls is one who loves), and man as one who is loved by God from eternity (or pre-loved, loved first), called to life and to realise a project thought of by God just for him.

Evidently a talk like this must be addressed to all men and women, without discrimination: it is true of every creature, every young person who opens up to life. However, how is this project going to be realised?

Vocational grammar of life

The gift reflects the donor, thus the gift of life from God who calls, “speaks” of God himself, expresses His loving nature and manifests his style. If God is love it follows that the life donated to man is a received good that by its very nature tends to become donated good. This is the sense of life (but also of death, as extreme fulfilment of the gift of life), and in every case it tells us that life has its own meaning that comes directly from the loving project of the Creator, like a rule deeply written in every human existence, a grammar that every living being finds carved in his spirit  and in his body; this is because it is logical  that the received gift keeps its integral identity of gift and, therefore, its altruistic charge, that leads by its very nature to become a donated good. There is no compulsion, of any type at all, neither moralistic nor perfectionist, in the passage from the received good to the donated one; it is a natural tension. It signs the passage from the first phase of existence, as the season of received good (from birth to adolescence), to the second existential phase (from youth to old age), in which life becomes a donated good, without anyone feeling to be a hero. On the contrary, this connection between received and donated good is merely logical, it could not be different.  

Admitted the truth of what has been said above, the fundamentally vocational sense of human life becomes evident. If life is the received good that by its very nature tends to become donated good, life itself is well-lived when a person freely and responsibly chooses to carry on this passage. Vocation is precisely this choice, dictated by nature and decided by the individual. Man can understand that he is free to make the choice he likes for his future life, but is not equally free to get out of this vocational logic, from the logic of the gift, because should he get out of it he would choose his own evil, he would become like a monster, would like his unhappiness but would be unhappy for ever.

Once again, this proposal of vocational sense of life would be a “universal” proposal, addressed to all men and women, and not simply to someone or to a restricted group or to the best and more available persons. On the contrary, this vocational message should be part of an essential catechesis on the elementary sense of human existence, something not consenting anyone to feel disinterested in or already differently oriented. At the same time, if this is the true vocational sense of life or if life is essentially the welcoming of a gift that by its very nature tends to turn into donated good, vocation will no longer be something one can have or not: all human beings have a vocation for the simple fact of being living persons called to live the gift up to its depth!

A research of consensus

We are now going to face the problem of the method, of how to arouse in the youth the interest for one’s own vocational research to be further concretised in an existential decision. We have already indicated some attentions, but there is still a lot to say on this matter that today looks more and more problematic and whose result is so uncertain as to discourage those who should work for it. Let me, therefore, propose some of the most important suggestions.

The convictions of the vocational animator

First of all a right attitude of the vocational animator, as well as a clear interpretation of his role are fundamental. This is not surely a task of leading vocations to his own Institute, but rather that of helping the youth to discover the project of God in his life. The finalities of our vocational animation are evidently not those of own Institutes, but those of the persons who are looking for what they must do in their life. To aim purely, and above all, at interests of one part would be a mercantile vocational animation with usually losing results. It is logical that all of us today are worried about the life and the works of our own Congregations, but it is just for this that we need to act with intelligence and straightforwardness, without shortcuts or without acting for one’s own interests, but rather working for the general growth of the universal vocational awareness. If this awareness grows in the Church and all the persons will be helped to discover their vocation, we can be sure that vocations of special consecration also will grow.   

If, on one side, if we say “no” to the mercantile vocational animator, on the other side we say “no” also to the fearful, shy, doubtful and…too much educated vocational animator, who withdraws as soon as the other is not enough interested to his proposal. He who works in the vocational pastoral programme must believe…not only in God, but also in the youths; he must be animated by this important conviction: that there is a plan of God for all and each person and that all are called to offer the received good, no one is excluded. He –the animator- is there to promote this awareness and to see that it may become a choice of life, without giving up ingenuously before the first apparent negative signal. Otherwise, let him ignore it without running the risk of becoming a vocational in-animator.

On the other side, the data of eventual researches show a strong interest for this sense. According to Garelli’s survey the call to special consecration is not in crisis at all: 11% of youths confess of having been thinking of it (11 Italian youths out of 100 means almost one million of human beings who have felt the vocation of being priest, religious or sister); out of them,  always according to the survey, 20% of them have been reflecting on their vocation for a period of 3 years without any provocation of help from the various educators (this means 200 thousand youths have cultivated this idea in a culture that surely does not move towards this direction).[1]

The steps of vocational animation

Here also we need the intelligence capable of putting together spiritual wisdom and pedagogical ability. The image of a vocational animator that ingenuously soon reaches the conclusion and speaks of vocation just if there were only the religious and priestly vocations, with the risk of finishing by burning one’s own proposal, should by now have completely disappeared. This is why in the first part of this reflection we have pointed out the authentic sense of Christian vocation and a genuine vocational animation should start just from there, from what we have defined as “essential catechesis on the primary sense of life”. We mean a simple and quickly intelligible catechesis highlighting the principal points, like a vocational kerigma, namely a proclamation addressed to all, without excluding anyone: a vocational sowing reaching everywhere, just like the Gospel parable. If this intelligent gradual growth is respected or if certain values are transmitted (like the link between the received and the donated good) more radical and explicit proposals can be made with the hope of being listened and adhered to.

The style of vocational  animation

It is a duplex style: individual and communitarian. It requires attention paid to the individual person, patient listening to, journey appropriate for the youth, consideration of his lived experience, well pondered provocations and dedicated time. All these attitudes cannot be taken for granted. They presuppose the presence of an elder brother or sister at the side of the younger brother/sister, to go together along a tract of the journey, or to be of help in recognising the voice of God who calls and waits for a response.

On the other side, the subject of vocational animation, the one who reminds or arouses interest, especially if we speak of consecrated vocation, is the community more than the individual person. A community of consecrated religious is a better vocational sign than that of the the individual who lives a specific call of consecration; the fascination exercised by a fraternity made up of different persons who have not chosen one another, yet live united in a sharing of material and spiritual goods, grow together in holiness, each shouldering reciprocal burdens, limitations and sins, share reciprocally the gift of mercy that comes from above, together proclaim the Gospel of salvation for all, are hospitable and welcome everybody to their banquet, their prayer, sharing the joy of being and working together…, well this type of community of saints and preachers exercises an enormous vocational fascination on the youth who, never as today, is in search of vital spaces, where the relation with the other becomes a way to find again oneself and God, one’s own call and the eternally calling One.

1 Cf F. GARELLI (a cura di), Chiamati a scegliere. I giovani italiani di fronte alla vocazione, Cinisello Balsamo 2006. 59

Amedeo Cencini
Lecturer in the Pontifical Salesian University
Via S. Bakhita, 1 - 37030 Poiano (Verona)