Vocation looking backwards

Recently I had the opportunity to talk about Christian call and vocation with an adult education class. Normally I have this conversation with 17-21 year old people, but last weekend the crowd was a bit older, closer to retirement age. I asked them to think about what society had told them about vocation, what the church had told them and what their experience of vocation had been.

The interesting thing this group said was that often vocation only became clear in retrospect. In the midst of life one’s vocation was not necessarily clear. It is not surprising that older people said this. If you have lived more than a couple of decades you probably have noticed this.

Sometimes younger people are very concerned that they make the correct choices about their vocation. This is a good thing. They are thinking seriously about their abilities and gifts and what the world needs. They want to be faithful. But they wonder, how can they know that they are making the correct choice? I tell them that all they have to do, all they can do, is take the first step as faithfully as they can. And then they take the next step, as faithfully as they can. And then the next step. They might have to backtrack occasionally but God can work with that. It may not seem that they are headed anywhere special. Their path may not be clear. Life might be pretty confusing. But when they are older and looking back on their life, that’s when their vocation becomes clear.