National Vocation Awareness Week…to make You known and loved

Sr. Christina M. Neumann

When I was still in grade school and attended Mass at St. Joe’s in West St. Paul, MN, we started using the “Archdiocesan Prayer for Vocations” at Mass.

This week’s National Vocation Awareness Week reminded me of this custom.  The prayer goes as follows:

O God, we earnestly ask You to bless this archdiocese with many priests, Brothers, and Sisters who will love You with their whole strength and gladly spend their entire lives to serve your Church and to make You known and loved.  Bless our families, bless our children. Choose from our homes those needed for your work.  Mary, Queen of the Clergy, pray for us, pray for our priests, Religious, and deacons. Obtain for us many more.

It is interesting for me to look back on this.  I can remember standing in church, next to my dad, and reading the words to this prayer.  At the time, they did not really resonate with me; I just prayed along because that was the thing to do.

At the time, I certainly did not anticipate that my life would take the direction which it now has.  I wonder what I would have said had someone told me back then: “You’ll be one of them!”

Today, I’d like to adapt part of this prayer.  May I be a Sister “who will love You with [my] whole strength and gladly spend [my] entire life to serve your Church and  to make You known and loved.”