When people ask me about my call to the priesthood they often begin with the question, “When did you know that you wanted to be a priest?”  Their question assumes that something happened within me, that I weighed the many options open to me in my life and that I made a choice to pursue the call to priesthood.  In this way the call to vocation seems to be a prudential decision that I made with my life.  This type of decision places the call to vocation within the individual person and asks the individual to consider whether the life of vocation might be something attractive to them and something that they might choose to pursue.  With this model of vocation the work of attracting more men and women to a life of vocation within the Church would compel the Church to try to make the life of vocation an attractive life that someone might choose among the many other options that they feel is available to them.  For this reason you see people considering the shortage of vocations within the Church and then proposing that the answer to this crisis of vocation is to make the life of vocation more attractive.  Among the ways offered to accomplish this I have heard the suggestion that perhaps priests should be allowed to marry and have a family, that maybe priests should be paid more money, that there should be other allowances made for human wants, needs and desires and the like all in some way as might be said to “sweeten the pot.”  In answering the call to vocation I would be taking charge of my life and directing my life towards the demands that a life of vocation might place upon me and then seeking to prepare myself to be able to meet those demands.  In this model I would also be constantly considering whether the life of vocation had met with my expectations and whether I was satisfied with the choice that I had made.  If things just didn’t work out the way that I thought they would then I could always redirect my life with a new decision and pursue some other course in life.  I would also expect the Church and the people of God to be appreciative of the talents that I was offering and respond accordingly.  If I felt unappreciated then I could again always seek to make another choice and pursue a new course for my life.

     This isn’t entirely wrong but it was not the experience that I had of the call to vocation and I don’t think that it fits with the biblical model of the call to vocation that we have in our readings today.  I have to answer people very candidly and tell them that I never felt like I wanted to be a priest.  The call to vocation was not something that rose up from within me rather it was something that I experienced outside of my self.  It caught me by surprise.  A life of vocation is an answer to a call that comes from an Other outside of my self.  There is something greater than my self that calls me to a life of love and service.  There is someone who knows me better than I know my self and who makes a claim on me.  The call comes in a way of saying, “This is who you are.  This is what I created you for.  This is what your life means.  You are mine.”  St. Paul puts it very succinctly in his letter to the Corinthians in today’s second reading, “Do you not know that…you are not your own?”

     The call to vocation asks me to move beyond my selfish, self-centered point of view and to recognize that an Other has a claim on my life.  God purchased my life with a love that is beyond my imagining or deserving.  In vocation God makes a claim on my life, he equips me for the call with his many gifts of love.  He offers no promises of fame or power or wealth, he only offers himself, as Samuel learns in our first reading when he responds to the Lord’s call, “and the LORD was with him.”  Jesus doesn’t offer the first apostles called any promises of success or happiness, he merely invites them to, “Come, and you will see.” “So they went and saw where Jesus was staying, and they stayed with him that day.”  The promise that Jesus makes is that he will be with them always, they will never be alone in their life of vocation.

     So we don’t really need to make the life of vocation “more attractive” to get young men and women to consider working for the Lord.  We need to help young men and women to hear the voice of the Lord that is calling them, like Eli does for Samuel today, and encourage them to answer his call in obedience, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”  A listening, obedient heart is the truly fertile ground for vocations.