Questions on vocations

What is a vocation?

When you’re in love or you really like somebody, you’re always looking for that person, eager to be close to him or her. Well the same can be said about God. Since God loves us, he always wants us to be close and he calls us by our name, as if we had nothing else to do. Often we say that “there is lack of vocations,” but in fact what we really mean it is that there is a lack of vocations to the priesthood or to religious life.

There cannot be a lack of vocations because there are just as many vocations as the number of baptized. God calls each of us to our own particular way of life, in pursuit of the living one who is Jesus. The word vocation comes from Latin “vocare” which means to call. And God always calls. According to an important theologian of the church, vocation is the call to a stable way of life that is directed to maintain grace in this world and reach the glory of God.

So is marriage a vocation? It certainly is! According to that definition, since marriage is a stable way of living and it is a sacrament, which grants grace, marriage is certainly a vocation. God calls married couples to live their love and construct their small domestic church from the familiar daily life. Just like any other, the vocation of marriage is not easy. According to Father Rainieri, this “state entails great obligations, tough trials, and much difficulties.”

Marriage is not just about a pretty wedding, but a very serious commitment. When the words are spoken: in good times and bad, in sickness and in health, at that moment because of the tremendous happiness of the wedding, it is easy to think those times are never going to come. The truth is human life is filled with difficulties. And living with another person is never easy. It is necessary to love each other a lot in order to tolerate the odd habits or customs that may appear weird because it was done differently in our family, which had a completely different personality. You must love each other a lot in order to survive those difficult moments, engage in a dialogue, and continue to realize the sacrament (the sign of grace that realizes what it means) on a day-to-day basis.

One does not enter marriage just because everyone else is doing it and because “you don’t feel you have a vocation,” but precisely because you have it. It is a call to achieve God’s mission in the vitally important atmosphere that is the nuclear family.

The call to the marriage is not only a romantic inclination towards another person, nor the desire—although noble—of having children. The call to marriage is an acceptance of the responsibility to create, along with God, a better world by building indestructible ties of love, and the education and upbringing of human beings who also accept the call to change the world.