How Cool is This? The Ripples are Increasing

A while back I wrote an essay on Vocational Awareness for high school students that Catherine Fournier graciously placed on her website Domestic Church . I hadn't thought about it in a very long time except that it was a pretty well written piece.

Last week Catherine contacted me because the Vocations Centre for the Archdiocese of Sidney Australia contacted her because they would like to include my essay in a packet of information that they will be sending out to every parish in the diocese to help all the young people in their diocese with vocational awareness and discernment.

Today I gave them permission to use my essay. The ripples from my little essay are indeed spreading out to the ends of the earth. I am so humbled that God has chosen to use my words in this way.

Pax

Vocational Awareness

If you have any interest at all in horse racing you will get a chance to learn a great lesson in vocational awareness this weekend by watching Calvin Borel ride the filly Rachel Alexandra in the Preakness this weekend.

Calvin is the son of cane farmers, and never went further than the 8th grade in school. He is a self professed simple man, but he has a way with horses. He didn't just come by this gift naturally; it comes from spending hours and hours with the horses he loves. He says that the only way to learn how to "read" a horse is to spend time with the horse you are going to ride. You have to enter into a relationship with the horse.

Hmm, doesn't that sound a bit like our relationship with God? Our relationship with God doesn't just magically appear because we decide we want it. We have to spend time creating it by spending time with God in prayer to develop a relationship.

Calvin loves to ride and has loved it since he was a kid. He would spend all day at the track, working horses in the morning and then after a rest in the middle of the day he would race them in the afternoon. He knew that he could race horses and make them winners but it was a tough job making others believe that he could do it. It never got him down though, as long as he could ride.

In our developing relationship with God we should be willing to put the time in no matter what we get back in return. We can go through very dry spells in our prayer life, but none of that should matter so long as we continue to pray. Praying should be what we love, not the consolation that comes from our prayers.

Now after winning the Kentucky Derby two years ago and then this year winning both the Oaks and the Derby people are beginning to see his gift.

Part of anyone's vocational awareness prayers should be knowing where your gifts are and using them to the best of your ability with humility and grace. Calvin Borel is a great example of someone who has used the gifts God gave him to great result and who shows humility and grace in victory. We could all learn a great lesson from watching this simple man do what he loves to do, and who does it so well.

Do You Reckon?

"It is also necessary to pray as well so that there are holy spouses, capable of indicating to their children, above all by example, the horizons to which they should tend toward with their liberty."

The words of Pope Benedict XVI on praying for vocations. You can read the entire article here.

May those words flow from his mouth to the ears of my Archbishop, who tends to forget to pray for sacred marriages until couples have been married for 50 years. In my not so humble opinion, any and all prayers for vocations should begin with prayers for the vocation of sacred marriages, because without them, there will be no more generations to be called to the vocations of priesthood and religious life.

I Meet the Nicest People In Gradual School

I have two young men in particular that I would love to tell you all about. They are both future seminarians and they are both in my philosophy classes.

One is named Tim and he is going to be a monk in a very small order dedicated to Our Lady, I wish I could remember the name of the order but I can't. He is so wonderfully excited about learning.

The other is Aaron. He has been living as a Glenmary Missionary and is in the process of preparing for the Seminary (he needs to get 30 hours of Philosophy Courses before he can enter Major Seminary somewhere, so he is taking courses not only at Saint Meinrad, but also will be taking courses at another school closer to his mission post in Kentucky in the fall, then he will be back at Saint Meinrad next Summer. Hopefully he will be ready to begin Seminary training in the Fall of 2008.

I am sure that both of these young men would appreciate your prayers as they follow God's call to the priesthood on the path He has chosen for them. Aaron in particular has been and will continue to work for most of his career in under served areas of the United States where he may be the only Catholic presence for miles. When he talks about the work he does it is very stirring and you can see the Spirit welling up inside him.

I know they will be in my prayers. Won't you join me in praying for them.

Pax

Celebrate!

Mrangelmeg and I are leaving in just a few hours to drive to the secret celebration of the 75th birthday and 50th ordination anniversary of one of my favorite professors from my gradual school, Fr. Damien, or Damo as we all affectionately call him. I have written about him before, and would do just about anything for this man, and apparently am since I am going to take his seminar on Women in the Old Testament along with my final in the fall (even though I am not taking it for Credit I must be crazy, there are five books that we will be reading just for this one class).

A friend and I decided to put together a little PowerPoint project to display at the dinner tonight that we hope will get a few laughs and show Damo how much we love him. With mrangelmeg's considerable help we have pasted Damo's face into pictures of historical events going all the way back to creation with the theme "How Old is Damo". We wrote a little commentary to go along with it and my friend and I are going to present it to the group after the dinner.

She is the one who is taking the bigger risk, she is taking his class in the fall for credit!

Anyway, I just wanted to take the time to say Happy Birthday Damo, and Happy Anniversary as well. My life has been greatly enriched by knowing you.

Pax

Twenty-Four Years of Bliss

Today is the anniversary of the day mrangelmeg and I took our vows before God and the representative of the Church that sealed our vocation as husband and wife.

We celebrated by exchanging cards and gifts of chocolate (that is the traditional gift in our house) and we went out for lunch, because mrangelmeg is on his way out of town for the week on a business trip. This is probably the only anniversary we have ever had to spend apart in the entire 24 years of our marriage.

I think that each year we have been married our relationship has grown in ways that we would have never imagined when we were first married. We understand each other so much more than we did when we were younger, and we have lived through adversity and success.

I wouldn't say that we think alike now, because I will never understand why he drinks Mountain Dew or likes Country Music, (although I do like Keith Urban), but those are the things that make him the man that I love.

I hope that we have many more years together, so that I can explore all the other intricacies of his character, and grow to love him even more. And besides, in just 26 short years we have a date for dinner with the Archbishop of our Diocese (He honors every married couple in the diocese who have been married for at least 50 years with a Mass and Dinner) so we have that as a goal.

Pax

Another Vocational Perspective

Adoro te Devote has a very moving entry on the vocation of the Single Catholic Adult; those among us who are called to be set apart by God to be neither Priest, religious or married.

It is worth a read as well as the lengthy comments that follow. I have some very dear friends who are called to this life and I feel great respect for their perseverance in a society that looks upon them as "the crazy cat lady" or the self absorbed wild boy who never wants to grow up. They are much more than either of those definitions.

Pax

One Who Understands Vocations

As I was catching up on blog reading this morning I came across this amazing post about vocations by Deacon Dan Wright.

In my diocese I have been frustrated for years because the only time the children or teens hear about vocation at all it is in reference to the priesthood or religious life. It is as if to choose anything else would be a less holy choice for ones life.

When I worked for the church it frustrated me to no end that I couldn't even craft a general intercession that mentioned vocation to marriage or the single life even though it was statistically accurate that the majority of the teens at the Confirmation mass would fall into those two vocations. Any vocational intercession HAD to be only for an increase in vocations to the priesthood and religious life.

For me it is a matter of discernment to which vocation I was called. Had I chosen to enter religious life knowing I had been called to the vocation of marriage because I thought that the religious life would lead me to a more holy life would have been wrong. God chose my vocation and the only way for me to enter into the fullness of whom I was created to be was to accept that vocational call and enter into marriage with my husband almost 24 years ago. My holiness comes from being wife, helpmate and mother.

I don't think we can pray for an increase in vocations, because God calls whomever He wills. I think the only valid prayer that we can pray, and the only way that I can pray for vocations is that every person will open their heart to God's loving vocational call wherever it leads them. When one is open to God's loving call and willing to follow that call wherever it leads, only then will one be able to become the truest self.

That is my prayer for my children. If God were to call any of my children into religious life I would be behind them 100%. And if God's vocational call is for my children to be married I will be there to help them be strong in that vocation as well. And if God asks my children to remain single as their vocation (which in the case of my two autistic children he might) I will be there to support them in that vocation, with its stresses and needs as well.