Jesus also said “No one can come to Me unless my Heavenly Father draws him to Me”. It is not only financial constraint which pulls away young boys from the priesthood as many people generously give for the same. It also depends on the calling from God because it is God who calls and sets them apart for His Mission.Vocation Sunday will be followed by Mission Sunday. One of my family friends was teaching in a reputed Engineering College. He gave up teaching and joined the Carmelite Order. It is also the upbringing of children in their young age. Sometimes we talk against our priests at home and the children who listen start to have a bad idea about priesthood.
I lived in a joint family. My grandmother would gather my cousins, my siblings and me at night to teach us catechism. Nowadays everyone wants to live as a single family. The old parents live alone or are in the old age homes. Today we as parents have no time to teach catechism. We leave that to the Catechists who do that on every Sunday. My mother made sure that we would be home by 7 pm to say the Angelus and then the Rosary. Now we put our children for swimming, dancing or karate classes and when they come home they are tired. On our birthdays we would get a gift of a rosary or a prayer book. Now our children demand a mobile, ipad, tablet etc.
All my priest friends on their ordination day spoke about their prayerful mother who led them to their vocation. Whenever I go to DRC, Kerala for a retreat Fr. Augustine Valloran always tells of his mother who pulled him to church everyday when he was a kid. She showed him Jesus on the Cross which he says confused him but when he started knowing why Jesus was on the Cross, he started loving Him and joined the Seminary to serve Him.
We should also always pray to God everyday to sow the seed of vocation in young boys and girls so that we get good priests and nuns to carry out the Mission of Christ of love and service to preach the Good News to the ends of the earth.
