As children, we learn how to relate to our parents and family members. We discover the beauty of friendship with peers. During the often turbulent years of adolescence, we begin asking existential questions and searching for our place in the world, frequently with the help of mentors. We also learn the importance of affection: a mother’s healing hug, rough-and-tumble play with a father, sharing secrets with friends, and eventually meeting someone who changes how we see the world.
Within our families and friendships, we also encounter hardship: arguments and disagreements, visiting someone in the final stages of illness, experiencing betrayal, or grieving when paths part—whether in life, or when someone is called from this world into the Heavenly Father’s embrace.
It is family and friends who teach us how to relate to others. And this, in many ways, is the everyday life of a priest: sharing in the joys and sorrows of those around him—not in his own name, but as a sign of God’s closeness. In baptisms and weddings, house blessings and hospital visits, in comforting those going through difficult times and consoling those who grieve, the priest is present.
Family is one important circle that nurtures a vocation.
Another, no less important, is the spiritual community—most often, the local parish. A parish atmosphere that cherishes vocations creates space where a call can be heard, and where answering it feels possible. An open, approachable pastor. A welcoming, loving community. Such a parish understands vocation as a shared responsibility. As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child; it may take a parish—or even several spiritual communities—to raise a priest. As in the family we learn the personal prayer, it is the parish we discover the beaty of the Liturgical prayer. At the catechism classes, with our peers, we are embarking to discover the basics in faith, youth or prayer groups, Bible studies, and pilgrimages are the places and moments where we learn to follow the Lord together.
It is from this web of relationships—family, friendship, and parish—that a man emerges who is ready to give himself back to the community that shaped him. And yet, something more than community is at work in this story.
There is a reason the priesthood is not merely a profession, but a vocation. We sometimes use this word loosely, to describe someone with a natural gift for teaching, medicine, or counseling. Yet the word comes from the Latin vocare—“to call.” A vocation means someone is called.
With the priesthood, there is Someone who calls.
As the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us: “No one takes this honor upon himself but only when called by God, just as Aaron was” (Hebrews 5:4). This is the heart of priestly vocation. Every priest, in one way or another, has experienced this call—sometimes gently, sometimes dramatically—and has freely said “yes.”
Then begins the process of discernment: prayer, reflection, sharing the call with others, applying to the seminary, and years of study. Finally, one day during the Liturgy, the bishop ordains the man first a deacon, and later a priest.
It is often said that we need more priests. Some priests are aging; some parishes are growing; some priests serve two or three communities at once. This gap is sometimes filled by priests from Ukraine who come to serve our faithful in the United States, Canada, Australia, Western Europe, and Latin America. And yet it still seems we do not have enough.
I am convinced this is not because the Lord is not calling. He is. I see it in the stories of my classmates, and especially in the seminarians I work with—Nick, Darko, and Brogan. Surely there are more.
This is where families—both families of origin and parish families—play a crucial role. Yes, a man must freely say “yes” to the Lord’s call. But the prayers and support of those around him matter. We need to cultivate a culture of vocations.
There are simple things each of us can do.
