Discerning your vocation surely brings up some BIG questions! Each month Sister Janet, SC Vocation Minister, tries to name some of thse questions and offers insights that might be helpful. She welcomes your feedback and further questions at janetsc@juno.com.

"Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue... Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

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How do I know if God is calling me to religious life?
Every woman embarking on a journey of vocation discernment asks herself this question. There is a real desire to know for certain, to be free of any doubts, to have absolute clarity about “the call”. But of course that desire is rarely if ever fulfilled!

I think that one of the best signs that God is extending the invitation to explore a religious vocation is a deep desire that the priorities of one’s life will be set by the relationship with God. Everything else: family, service/ministry, friendships, lifestyle will flow from that primary commitment to a deep relationship with God in the context of our Catholic faith.

The ancient exclamation, “My God and my All!” expresses the basic desire that one hopes to be completely given over to the quest for God: body, mind, heart and soul. For those who are called there is a growing realization that as beautiful and fulfilling as married or a dedicated single life is - something more is desired. And very often there is as much fascination as fear that “perhaps God is calling me!”

 

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