What are some ways you can promote vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life with your students? Read through the list of ideas below. Choose at least one of the ideas. Add others of your own. Develop a plan to work with others to implement these ideas at your school (or parish).
1. Perpetual Adoration
Arrange for a schedule of continuous prayer for vocations before the Blessed Sacrament at a school chapel. Collect names of students willing to sign up for fifteen minute or half hour blocks of time. Make this a regular event.
2. Publicize Special Vocations
Highlight special events like National Vocation Awareness Week, World Day for Consecrated Life, or World Day of Prayer for Vocations. Also take note of special vents offered particularly in your own diocese. Volunteer to distribute flyers or other promotional materials to your students.
3. Witness Talk
Broach the topic of vocations to the priesthood or consecrated life in class or as part of a campus ministry session or retreat. Speak personally about how you have and are currently discerning your own vocational call. Arrange for a priest, seminarian, and/or a professed religious to speak about their own calling.
4. Seminary or Motherhouse Visit
Call a local seminary or motherhouse of a nearby religious community and arrange for a field trip or for interested students to visit on their own to hear a presentation by the vocation directors, and perhaps the seminarians and novices themselves.
5. Website Links
Create a set of website links to vocation websites in your own diocese and beyond and place them in a place where students can easily access them. Assign them to write a reflection essay about any vocational stories they read about in one or more of the sites.
