Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Please find enclosed this year’s pack for the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, which is celebrated on Sunday 13th April. Hopefully, some of the resources will be suitable for your own establishment and can be used throughout the year.

It is a decade since Rome published New Vocations for a New Europe - In Verbo Tuo, the Final Document of the European Congress on Vocations to the Priesthood and Consecrated life. This document sees these specific vocations naturally blossoming in a Church community which truly values and promotes the general baptismal vocation and universal call to holiness in its fulness. It also calls for the Church in Europe to rediscover and re-create a strong culture of vocation and to reinvigorate its work for vocations in all its pastoral activities (including schools), not by periodic initiatives, but as part of the totality of Church life.

Pope John Paul II called for a ‘new evangelization’; In Verbo Tuo goes hand in hand with this, challenging us to journey-on together with renewed hope and fresh vision, living our vocation as a Church which is both ‘called’ and ‘calling’. The latter is sometimes overlooked.

When I have visited schools and college in recent years, I have seen a lot of good work going on to promote the Christian vocation generally and also specific vocations such as priesthood and consecrated life. This has included: vocations days, visits to churches and religious houses, classroom posters and structured coursework/homework that makes young people think about vocation.

In discussions with governors, headteachers, senior management, chaplains and R.E. staff regular themes often emerge. I am including some of these at the end of this letter in the form of a series of questions for reflection and discussion.

Thank you for all that you and the other staff do in the work of promoting vocation, both general and specific. Those involved in education have a special and privileged role to play in helping young people to discern their vocation.

Yours sincerely,

Fr. Paul Embery,

Click the links below to access the materials in MS Word format.

Wemmicks - Primary School Assembly or Classroom Activity

St. Lawrence - Secondary School Assembly

Church in Australia - Secondary School Classroom Activity

150 Years of Lourdes - Secondary School Classroom Activity

Church in China - Sixth Form RE Lesson Activity

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