Being Exposed to the Idea of Vocations

This is a picture of three of our kids from a couple of years ago. The occasion? All Holy's Eve and All Saints. Isaac is dressed as his namesake, St. Isaac Jogues (he had a plastic hatchet, but that wasn't the best idea). Liliane is Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha (Lily of the Mohawks) and Therese is obviously St. Therese of Lisieux. It was amazing how memorable dressing up like their saints was to them - and how often they did it. On a side note, let me say that Therese was the show stopper trick or treating that year. Let's face it, almost every kid is dressed as a super hero or a princess, but not many come in a full habit as a Carmelite. I can't tell you the number of excited reactions when she showed up at the door. At one house the woman answering the door, obviously from up North, called several other women to the door and several of them were (no lie) crying. They immediately began to recall sisters they new from childhood.



This is a picture of our girls with Sr. Charlotte and Sr. Monica from the Sisters of Life, and Sr. Marie Rose and Sr. Maria Kolbe from the Nashville Dominicans. They hung this picture in there room near pictures they have of St. Therese and Bl. Kateri. What is nice about it, is that it serves as a visual reminder (in a Diocese without fully habitted women's religious orders) that young, joyful, habit wearing sisters are still out there (and God willing may come to our Diocese someday). It is not our idea to force the issue of religious or priestly vocations, but in a culture that promotes anything but, it is perhaps even more necessary to expose our children to the idea of discerning vocations at a young age.