Contact
Diocesan Offices
St Eugene’s Cathedral
Francis Street, Derry
BT48 9AP
Tel: 028 7126 2302
VOX - Vocation Voice
Vocations Ireland have just launched a new newsletter as a means of communicating with young people. This is in response to the many questions we have been receiving about:
What is a Vocation,
Who are sisters, priests and brothers?
What do nuns and brothers do?
What do priests and Missionaries do?
Can lay people be missionaries?
This is the first issue of Vox and we hope to offer this publication 4 x per year. We hope it will become a space where young people will send us in their poems, questions, thoughts on what the Church means to you? Thoughts on how you see religious life? Would this be something you would be interested in hearing more about?
Music competition
In this issue we draw your attention in particular to the Music Competition on the back page. An opportunity to showcase your talent and perhaps help you share your thoughts about vocation in a creative way.
Vocations Ireland is a support organisation for religious sisters, brothers, priests, and missionaries that helps to promote a culture of vocation. Vocation is a call to Love. Pope St John Paul II reminded us that 'Love is the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.' This innate vocation grows in the life of the Christian who 'walks in the path of a living faith which arouses hope and works through charity.' As they walk in this path, people hear God calling them into discipleship, a living relationship with the person of Christ, a call that has three dimensions:
- The universal call to holiness: God the Father calls people to listen to his Son, to be baptised in the Holy Spirit and to live as disciples of Christ.
- The call to a way of life: a Christian disciple expresses their faith, hope and love through living as a consecrated person, an ordained minister or a lay person, in the married or single state.
- The call to work: God calls people to many different kinds of work, ranging from paid work to care of family members. Work on its own does not give meaning to life however; it is human beings who make work meaningful. 'Work constitutes one of the fundamental dimensions of a person's earthly existence and of their vocation.'