Vocations Under the Christmas Tree? [Catholic Caucus]

NCRegister.com ^ | 12/20/10 | KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ

[Salvation]

Vocations Under the Christmas Tree?

2 children’s books help plant seeds...fruition in the priesthood and religious life.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ 12/20/2010

 

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Into that breach steps Elizabeth Ficocelli, a New York City-born mother and author (of books like The Imitation of Christ for Children) living in Ohio and convert to Catholicism. This year she has penned the children’s books Where Do Priests Come From? and Where Do Sisters Come From?, the latter of which has just been released by here).

Why would you want to encourage girls to be oppressed victims of a patriarchal Church? Haven’t you read any Maureen Dowd?

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Where did the idea for Where Do Sisters Come From? come from?

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Vocations Awareness Week is a wonderful opportunity to personally thank a priest, deacon or religious sister or brother for their vocation. It can be in the form of a card or letter, a small token of appreciation or an invitation to dinner. Let these men and women know what their vocations mean to you and your family. Pray for these people, not just during Vocations Awareness Week, but all year long. They can really use our prayers! This is also a good time to recognize young men and women or boys and girls who you feel might have a calling to the religious life and share that with them. 

[Salvation]

I was looking for something else and found this. (Does that happen to you too? LOL)

[Salvation]

Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a nationally syndicated columnist.

[Salvation]

 January 9-15, 2011
National Vocation Awareness Week

Look around you.

How many men and women in your parishes are caring and compassionate individuals who are good listeners, articulate speakers, and loving enthusiastic Catholics?

How many of these special, gifted people have ever been invited to consider becoming a priest, sister, brother, permanent deacon, or full-time lay minister?

 Pray for these individuals and talk with them about the possibility of a vocation.  You will be blessed in return.  Perhaps you could offer an hour of prayer for them in the Adoration Chapel.

"Lord, open the hearts of many men and women to courageously consider a vocation to the ordained ministry or consecrated life."

 

[Salvation]

January 9-15, 2011
National Vocation Awareness Week

Do something in your parish!

[firerosemom]

I would also like to encourage parents to pray for vocations to come from within their own families: I read about a town in Italy called Lu, in which a number of mothers got together to pray for vocations, and they got quite a lot of them. This is a variation of the prayer they said:

“O God, grant that one of my children may become a priest or religious!
I myself want to live as a good Christian
and want to guide my children always to do what is right,
so that I may receive the grace, O God, to be allowed to give you a holy priest or religious! Amen”

We have prayer ministries for vocations at our parish: one meets monthly to do prayer and adoration for the priests of our diocese, and another involves having one family take a ‘vocation cross’ for the week, and praying daily that week for an increase in vocations. They then return it to the church (at a side altar) for the next family to pick up.

Funny story - I remember some years ago that there was no one praying for vocations for a particular week, so I thought I’d silently do the prayers (I didn’t know what they were, so I just said something simple, I don’t even remember what), and well, long story short, one of my sons is now a first year seminarian at Mt. St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg...

(That was not how I’d planned things to come out - I thought it would be someone *else’s* vocation somewhere else!)

[surroundedbyblue]

Looks interesting. I may buy this & put it away for a few years til my 3 yr old is a little bigger

[surroundedbyblue]

Congratulations on your son!!!!! How blessed you are!

Keep praying for vocations! Fr Corapi says it’s working & we have wonderful seminarians!!!

[Salvation]

**Mt. St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg...**

There are several of you moms of seminarians on FR. Prayers for all.

[Salvation]

**Emmitsburg**

Isn’t that where St. Elizabeth Ann Seton is buried?

[Biggirl]

Yep, and her feast is today.

[mlizzy]

What a great story! I love it!!

[married21]

We have a lot of vocations. We have three deacons and one in training and two applying.

We also have a seminarian studying somewhere, I believe.

Missing: don’t know of any nuns. Just goes to show that you have to be able to see something in person sometimes to be able to consider whether you are called to it. The parish has no sisters, and hasn’t for awhile, but it has active deacons and priests who keep encouraging men to consider the diaconate.

[Salvation]

I really think the young women are drawn to the orders with habits. The street-clothes orders are dying away.

Good sign for us. (in my opinion)

[Salvation]

Vocations Under the Christmas Tree? [Catholic Caucus]
Good News About Vocations – Part 1 of 6
[CATHOLIC CAUCUS] Vocations Explained: A Catechism on Vocations