Watching the operations of God’s grace in the lives of people is an awesome and marvelous gift in itself. I have never ceased to be amazed each time I hear how a person’s vocation developed. These stories range from the sublime to the humorous, and, just as in listening to married couples relate how they “found” each other, the religious vocation story-tellers rarely tell identical tales although many common themes prevail.

It is also amazing how few people think that ordinary religious vocations never happen to ordinary people. Many still believe that the call to religious life or the priesthood is given only in a mysterious way to those who have been destined from birth and somehow already set aside; the fact that it might happen to Johnny next door or even to lively Susie in this family just never occurs to most people.

During the past summer I directed a vocation institute for young women who were asking questions about religious life. This program was held at our mother house in Alabama in Alabama so that they could see at first hand what religious life was all about. It was in watching God’s action in them that I found the theme for this column.

One young woman had traveled nine hours to attend the institute. She had had little previous contact with sisters and certainly had never seen so many in one place at one time, much less to be right there with them all. I enjoyed watching her wide-eyed wonderment at all that went on.

At the end of the institute she told me how much the days had meant to her; she was convinced now that her vocation was to be married state but that she was now much more secure in that decision because she had always wondered so much about the convent she thought she might have had a vocation, and she knew now that it was curiosity, not a call.

Another college student told me that she was not yet in any position to make a decision, but that she at least knew the questions she had to answer for herself. Before she had felt simply overwhelmed with a terribly vague uneasiness of the single question, “How will I ever know what I am supposed to do with my life?”

Our sharing of prayer in community and the instructions on developing one’s own prayer life seemed to make the difference for another participant. When some time had elapsed since the institute she told me that she had been able to come to a decision and she has enrolled in the pre-entry program of a community in her home state.

Institutes of this nature do not always run the complete gamut of decision-making which I just described. For some persons, the decision is made suddenly, almost abruptly, after an experience or realization which quickly puts everything into perspective. For most people though, a decision for religious life is made over a long-agonizing period, made all the more difficult because it is counter-culture, not exactly the “in” thing to do.

Unfortunately, assistance in this decision is rarely available, or even if available, many are afraid to ask for fear they will get either a “sales job” or a fast put-down; others simply do not know to whom to turn.

Years have passed since the time of the major recruiting campaigns; many religious found themselves turned off by this during their own time of decision that they go to the other extreme of never encouraging anyone to join them in the life they really love.

If any readers of this column are asking vocational questions for themselves or if they know of anyone who is, they will have made an intelligent contribution if they take steps to get assistance from those who have the knowledge to help in such a process. If you don’t know anyone who could help, ask me and I will see that you or the person is able to receive such guidance.

Sister Genevieve Sachse, O.S.B.