One of the joys of being a college campus minister is that I’ve been able to accompany a number of young people as they have discerned their vocations in life. And when they come, they’re very anxious because they have an idea that a vocation is like one hidden prize; that somehow they have to search it out and find it. And if they miss the prize, if they don’t correctly locate it that somehow their life will be unfulfilled. That they will be somehow lesser in God’s eyes.
So one of the analogies I love to use when talking about vocation is that vocation is like a tree. It is rooted in baptism and the trunk of it comes up strong in our early life in our experiences of God. And then it has many big heavy branches for God is a generous God. God would not give you just one hidden branch, one hidden vocation, one hidden prize, and then send you off desperately to search for it. God gives us many prizes. He gives us many branches in our tree. And any one of them, if they be strong, if they be stout, if they be true, they can support you in your life.
And so we climb up into this tree and we start to recognize these large branches that God has given us. A vocation to religious life, a vocation to married life, a vocation to priesthood, a vocation as lay minister, a vocation to the single life, and they appear like mightly limbs in this tree. Now our jobs while discerning our vocation is to take a few steps out onto a branch and jump up and down a little bit, see if it will carry us. If it’s really there. And then we get to choose between these mighty limbs and we get to climb out on them.
Now the next part of the analogy is that the end of the branch is covered with leaves. We’re not really sure what’s on that branch. We begin, we crawl out on it, we make our way up into the canopy of our lives and it has many twists and turns. Sometimes branches will come together and sometimes they will move apart. St. Theresa of Calcutta said that this is the call within the call. We are rooted in the call of baptism, we are brought up in faith, and then we choose amongst the great vocations that God has opened for us and we climb out onto these branches. Then we find a call within the call, a branch within the branch.
The call of God is not just once, and if we miss it we’re done. The call of God is continuous. Samuel! Samuel! Once, twice, three times, four times. God never tires of calling.