What is a Vocation?

In the midst of the journey of finding "what comes next," i've been finding more of myself by waiting than I ever did by doing. Ironic, eh? Ignatius, Merton, and other famous contemplatives all speak to this reality in their writings on the true self. The true self is content to just be.

When it comes to vocation, i'm by no means "there," and the "there" isn't something I can simply arrive at. It is something that comes as the threads of the story in which i'm participating braid themselves into the core of my existence, with a lifetime of living into its essence. Amidst some of my studies, I recently ran across a rather thoughtful book on the topic of vocation put out by several scholars at Loyola University. The book, entitled "Revisiting the Idea of Vocation" presents a plethora of discussions on the topic of vocation. It is an excellent read underwritten by a generous gift from the Lilly Endowment. While many of the authors are engaging, I particularly liked what one of the scholars, Mark McIntosh, had to say in his chapter, entitled Trying to Follow a Call: Vocation and Discernment in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Here are a few of the lines that I noted:

Vocation as the calling to exist: “To pursue one’s vocation in this sense, then, means becoming more real, moving beyond a kind of stymied, half-life caricature of oneself. It means moving beyond a response to calling that is merely a biological drive to go on existing and toward a listening, responding, choosing, delighting personhood. This kind of personhood involves the risk of setting out from the self given to us by our biology, or constructed for us by our culture, and embracing the call to relationship with others who stretch us beyond the limits even of what we thought of as our selves, and on into a deeper truthfulness of being. This is the calling, the vocation, that religious thought understands as the calling into being, by virtue of a calling into relationship with God.” (120-121)

“The urgency of vocation is truly pressing, and it can only avoid hardening into fierceness and zealotry if it understands itself in the milieu of a universal love. There are no easy algorithms for calculating the justness of this or that step in the working out of an authentic vocation, and sometimes it will be necessary not to cease loving one’s own but perhaps to place our little love in the context of a much greater love, and trust that the greater love can alone supply what is most truly needed.” (138-139)