Editorial: ‘Vocations season’ an invitation to discern, live out our own call

It’s summer, and in addition to warm days, lake life, mosquitoes, barbecues, and all the rest, it is also a time when what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls “sacraments at the service of communion” — aka holy orders and matrimony — are commonly celebrated.

It’s what we might call “vocations season.” 

Here in the Diocese of Duluth, we have been blessed with six men receiving the sacrament of holy orders in the past couple of months, with two new priests and four new permanent deacons taking up a new vocation in service to the church.  

And in many of our parishes, we also celebrate with joy as couples are joined in marriage and take on new vocations and spouses, founding new families, new places where the “domestic church” is present, the place of service to love and new life. 

We are right to be grateful to God for these blessings and to all those receiving these sacraments for the “yes” they have given to God in his call for their lives. We’re certainly right to pray for new clergy and new married couples that they will live out this call faithfully and joyfully and fruitfully. We are right to beg God for more of these blessings — for more holy marriages, more priests and deacons. 

And these joyous events are also an invitation to consider our own call, to whatever state in life God has given us. For some of us, those are calls we have already received, and the invitation is to rededicate ourselves to that calling and living it out in a holy and missionary way. For others, it is still the time of discernment, of asking God for a deeper sense of direction on how he has called us to live and love in the communion of his church. 

Wherever we find ourselves on that journey, in this “vocations season,” may we find in these joyful moments the encouragement to live out our own call generously and with faith and trust in the God who has given each of us the vocation to be his holy ones.