This week, we’re learning about God’s call to each of us and more than anything, if you want to hear you need to develop the skill of listening.  I’m pretty sure that the greatest modern obstacle keeping us from growing in holiness is busy-ness (either perceived or real), so asking families to prioritize time for prayer and quiet is hard!  (Really, really hard.)  But start small and look for areas where you’re more likely to have success: Is there a specific commute where your car radio can be off? Can you collect everyone’s phones at 8:30 each evening? Can you bless your children before bed?

In last week’s lesson, we learned to Pray, Ask, Listen, and Obey and it’s good to review that simple formula this week as we learn about vocations.  God is always communicating with us  (Literally always!), and He’s always inviting us to His Best Plan for our unique and unrepeatable lives.  We have the free will to answer however we’d like, but the invitations keep coming and quite often they are intimately tied to our vocation, so in this lesson we learn more about them.

We give you lots of activities to choose from and hope they will help your kids learn more about vocations and perhaps picture themselves living them out.

For your younger kids, we have the My Vocations Friends Coloring Book to encourage them to think about the people they already know and which vocation those people are following.  And remember that the saints in heaven are our friends too so if you don’t happen to personally know someone in each vocation, branch out in this direction, perhaps starting with your family’s patron saints!

For older kids, we’re focusing a little more on a personal response as they consider what their own vocation might be.  Is God Calling Me? gives some details on various vocations about things like what kind of preparation and service is involved in each.  How Someone Becomes a Priest on page 7 of the lesson gives more information on this specific vocation.

It’s not an official part of the lesson, but if you’re interested in learning more about a specific religious order, you may want to spend a little time with the online religious ministries directory found here.  It’s a great search engine helping you sort through hundreds of religious orders throughout the country.  From there, you can go to their sites, request information, and lots more.

Keep in mind that our older saint/younger saint recommendations are merely guidelines to help simplify your life a bit, parents.  There are many, many exceptions based on your children’s interest, attention span, skill level, and the time you have to devote to any particular lesson.