Vocational Week 2024.

Vocational Week 2024 • The Secular Augustinian-Recollect Fraternity has decided to create in its last International Encounter a vocational ministry to facilitate people’s ability to see the Secular Augustinian Recollect vocation as a space of response to the call of God.

By Andrea & Marcelo De Biase, SAR

Vocation is an original gift from God, waiting to be discovered. Helping people to know how to discern God’s plan for their lives is a religious duty that is born of Christian hope and personal encounter with Christ Jesus, the Lord. In short, it is a call that He makes us live in Him, through Him, and for Him.

On this path of discovery, it is necessary to differentiate between the vocational and the vocation itself, since what is vocational has consequences on the vocation. The dynamism of the vocational points out to the Christian spiritual experience, which gives rise to the vocation.

This difference is what the Lord has made the Augustinian Recollects Secular Fraternities understand in prayer. We have been faced with the challenge of carrying out vocational promotion that, based on the testimony of our daily life, the commitment and training both spiritual as well as knowledge of the pillars on which the Augustinian-Recollect charism is based, allows us to travel an itinerary as committed lay persons so that we can accompany other lay people to listen to that call and decide to be faithful to their vocation.

This certainty that we have carried in our hearts for several years now gained more strength at the International Meeting of the Secular Fraternities of Rio de Janeiro (2023). There, it emerged to implement this service to promote vocational culture as a dream and a necessity.

Developing a vocational ministry for Augustinian-Recollect lay life requires planning an Itinerary of Vocational Ministry for the laity. Given the worrying lack of concern for discovering one’s vocation that we perceive in Christian communities and society in general, it has been seen as prudent to appoint the Coordinator Team of the Secular Fraternities, two in charge of the Vocational Ministry. This measure aims to promote the lay vocation in places with Fraternities, such as where they still need to be established.

The first strategy could be to go deeper with people from the Christian communities, what is the meaning and reason for being of the secular Fraternities. We also believe that it could help to celebrate training and spirituality days with the young people of the older Augustinian-Recollect Youth, who are close to finishing their youth vital process to integrate into adult society. So that those young ARY who feel called to continue the same lay vocation with the values and proposals of Augustinian Recollect spirituality and charisma can be projected towards the future by forming part of Secular Fraternities as the natural passage from youth to adult life.

Lastly, we pray that the Lord Jesus Christ, who put this dream in our hearts, will give us the answers and the gift of the Spirit to create a vocational ministry that helps discern the life project, vocation, and mission of the new secular pilgrims.