2018 National Vocation Awareness Week Presentation by Mark Chang (YG Catechist) on 11/4/2018

A
calling assumes that there is a caller, who we identify as God. But what makes
hearing this call so difficult is that 

God’s voice is not the only voice
calling out to us. 

There
are all different kinds of voices competing for your attention, your loyalty,
and your devotion. There are so many narratives we can choose to live by other
than a Christian one. How are we supposed to determine God’s voice amidst all
these voices?

Fredrick
Buechner’s advice is to simply pay attention to 2 things: the thing that brings
you gladness and identifying 

the world’s deepest hunger. 

He
says “the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and
world’s deepest hunger meet.” So, what does this mean?

It’s
means we need to take a look inward and we need to take a look outward. 

Let’s
start with the idea of looking inward. Teresa of Avila invites us to think
about our souls as if it were a castle. She 

called it the interior castle. And
if you had to describe a castle, how would you describe it? It takes time to
walk through an entire castle. And it’s only when we enter into this castle and
look around, exploring each room, that we discover 

our hidden hunger. It’s
there we can talk with God. It’s there where we can discover what truly gives
us joy or 

gladness. 

Buechner
says, listen to your life because it’s trying to tell you something. It’s
whispering something to you everyday. 

It’s nudging you in a certain direction.
What your life is asking of you is to be honest
with yourself in learning what you 

truly love. 

Cardinal
Joseph Tobin echoes this finding, stating: “Quiet reflection and prayer are
essential elements for vocational 

discernment. It is in the interior depths of
our heart where we hear the voice of Christ, where he speaks to us, and 

where
he reveals his will for our lives.” 

That’s
the 1st step, looking inward. 

The
2nd step is to look outward. Looking outward simply means taking an honest look
at the world in all its 

brokenness. Looking outward means
acknowledging the pain of others around you. Looking outward means
getting 

proximate, up close, and personal to people’s suffering. 

And
here’s where vocation comes in. Our vocation is when our
gladness intersects with world’s deepest hunger. 

Vocation happens
when we realize our gladness can bring about positive change into the lives of
others who are 

in pain. 

Our
calling begins to unfold for us when our inward discoveries begin interacting
with our outward discoveries. 

It’s when our work brings healing to the
brokenness that surrounds us. 

Hopefully, these 2 steps can get you started as you continue
exploring your own individual vocation. 

Thank you!