Pope’s message for World Day of Prayer for Vocations

(January 13, 2013) Pope Benedict XVI is urging all those engaged in educating young people to pay special attention to those who sense a call to the priesthood and religious life to help them respond generously to God. “It is important for the Church to create the conditions that will permit many young people to say “yes” in generous response to God’s loving call,” Pope Benedict said in his message for the Catholic Church’s 49th World Day of Prayer for Vocations, released in the Vatican on Monday. Pope Paul VI instituted the World Day of Prayer for Vocations in 1963, assigning it the 4th Sunday of Easter, the feast of the Good Shepherd. This year the day falls on April 29. In his message Pope Benedict said that the central task of fostering vocations should be the love of God’s Word and attentive and unceasing prayer, both personal and in community. But above all, the Eucharist should be the heart of every vocational journey. “It is my hope that the local Churches and all the various groups within them, will become places where vocations are carefully discerned and their authenticity tested, places where young men and women are offered wise and strong spiritual direction,” the 84-year old pontiff wrote in his message. Pope Benedict pointed out that the response to God’s call can find eloquent and particular realization in Christian families, as it is within the family, “a community of life and love” that young people can have a wonderful experience of this self-giving love. “Families,” the Pope said, “are not only the privileged place for human and Christian formation; they can also be “the primary and most excellent seed-bed of vocations to a life of consecration to the Kingdom of God”.