2024 Vocations Awareness Supplement
Every vocation offers the faithful new hope
By Fr. Michael Keucher
Each year, the archdiocesan vocations office creates posters of our seminarians and of our men and women religious in formation. These posters hang in our parishes, schools and agencies across the central and southern Indiana.
One woman was next to me in the narthex of St. Joseph Church in Shelbyville as I was hanging the posters up this year. Looking at the seminarian poster, she almost began to cry as she said, “I’m just filled with so much hope when I look at these faces.” And then she folded her hands.
She hit the nail on the head! I’ve heard some version of that statement by so many people during my years as vocations director, and I feel its sentiment strongly in my own heart. The response is always the same: folded hands in hopeful prayer of gratitude and prayer of petition.
Hope! Every vocation should fill the faithful with a great big dose of hope.
Every vocation reminds us that our Lord is still calling men and women to follow him, spend their lives for him and pour themselves out for the salvation of souls.
Every vocation requires a total gift of self. And, praise God, there are so many young folks in our archdiocese willing to lay down their lives and give that heroic “yes.”
Every vocation, as Pope Francis reminds us, “flows from the heart of God and blossoms in the good soil of faithful people”—and our archdiocese is filled with these good and faithful people.
Every vocation brings more grace and love in this world and leads to the eternal salvation of real souls.
Every vocation is connected in a mystical yet vital way to other vocations. Holy priests, for example, need holy families, and holy families need holy priests.
Hope! Each and every vocation is a source of great, great hope—for our world, our Church and our very souls.
Pope Francis has announced the upcoming 2025 Jubilee Year’s theme to be “Pilgrims of Hope.” No matter what troubles afflict our world, hope means knowing that Jesus provides for us something so much bigger: his grace, his mercy, his presence, his love—and even his salvation.
And Jesus offers all that wrapped up in a deeply mysterious and personal way inside each and every vocation issued, answered and lived.
The priesthood, diaconate and consecrated life—these are the three types of vocations we hold in special prayer and honor during National Vocations Awareness Week. Because of them, our tabernacles and souls are not left empty. Our sins are not left unabsolved. The poor are not left destitute. The imprisoned are visited. The hungry are fed. Children are taught and formed. The eucharistic Lord is not left abandoned. The Lord’s purposes are attended to by folks who give up their whole lives for him.
For all that, we ought to join with Pope Francis in his beautiful prayer: “May hope fill our days!” Those words, I suggest, ought to be our prayer when we look at the faces on our vocations’ posters, when we read the stories in this supplement and consider the vocations of those we know and love—and even our own.
This week, we thank God for the gift of the priesthood, diaconate and consecrated life. I invite you to consider how those in these vocations have touched your lives, and, if able, offer a word of support and gratitude. At the same time, we pray for a generous increase in these holy vocations.
May hope fill our days! May hope fill our hearts! May hope fill our archdiocese!
(Father Michael Keucher is director of vocations for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, dean of the Batesville Deanery and pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Shelbyville and St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Shelby County. Contact him at mkeucher@archindy.org.) †