PROMOTE VOCATIONS!

We are seeing a real scarcity of vocations all over the world and we have few priests and religious for Church and her mission. Many who would like to join feel that to be a priest today is challenging and feel themselves a rare endangered breed. We need to determine the cause of being so few people coming forward to prepare for the priesthood, there are many reasons. In India, we have a very good tradition of priestly formation. People are very generous and very much involved in the church, and so are the young people. So what could the cause be? I don't want to go on too much about this, but let me just tell you a few of the reasons I've identified.

First of all, becoming a priest is no longer a social status and prestige. It is actually perhaps an instance of downward mobility, and the question is. Who would choose to do such a thing? Who would choose as their profession to go down one step on the social ladder? In the past, of course, this was not the case. Priests were regarded highly and were respected persons in the world, in society and of course in the church. Nowadays priests often come under a lot of criticism, and people feel sorry for them. Society does not accord them the prestige they once enjoyed.

A second reason for the scarcity is that families are getting smaller and smaller. What this means is that when parents have two children in a family they do not necessarily want to see one of them in the priesthood. Things were different when families had seven or 10 or 12 children and were honoured to have a priest in the family.

A third reason, why so few candidates for the priesthood exist is that our society is almost entirely secular, a society where God is disappearing due to the influence of media and technology. Religion is no longer talked about in the families but made use for political gain and to divide the people on some issues. Today we are frightened to speak about Religion in public but do a lot of talking within four walls.

A fourth reason, then, for the scarcity of candidates for seminaries is that many people and many young seminarians grapple with a negative image of the church and of the priesthood. The priest is called and expected to do everything in other words he is jack of all trades in the bargain he loses his real identity. The youth do not find role models they are looking for in order to dedicate themselves to God. This negative image has to be over come and project positive and healthy image among the youth who will definitely would like to be like one of us.

We need to see God and make Him visible through our words, deeds and actions. Let us all try not to reduce God to a force and power to whom we can run only in times of difficulties but a God who is a person. Do not reduce Christ to just a man who works miracles but a personal savior and redeemer and he is not to be projected a prophets like others.

We need to love the Church and take part in her spiritual and material growth and development. The Church should always remain mysterious and priests as mouth pieces of God. The priest who proclaims the word of God is the representative of Christ who speaks through them. We have to give importance to the church as a sacrament of salvation, the Word as sacrament of divine communication, the Eucharist as sacrament, not just a kind of noble symbolism, the Mass at the heart of worship and not as a theatrical event —all of these are crucial parts of our identity. If this is practiced and observed by every faithful then there will be no problems for vocations.

Another reason, that may young people do not want to bear any kind of suffering. And they believe that suffering should be avoided at all costs. They are incapable of giving any deep meaning at all to suffering, and have not suffered at all. We have to show them through our life that suffering leads to glory.

Many vocations come from middle-class families whose parents are deeply religious. Because these parents disciplined themselves, they have a disciplined home. We need to promote and strengthen our families based on Gospel principles. The size of the family is reducing and number of children is limited but right education and religious atmosphere would promote vocations for priesthood. There was never any doubt in our minds that our parents were saints; I suggest it was saintly people who produced all these vocations. Where are the parents today that pray that at least one of their children enter the priesthood or the religious life? Now that there is increase of parishes in India but few priests and religious are working for the spiritual welfare of the laity. More and more laymen are taking active part in liturgy but the crisis of vocations will always remain.

Let us all promote life and family, popularize chastity in the young and in the married, and publish literature to foster these ends. The evils in modern society - the loss of faith, contraception, sterilisation, value-free sex education, abortion and the threatening euthanasia - are not only anti-life but are destroyers of families in multiple ways. What destroys families destroys the Church. Let us pray that the Lord of the only harvest that really counts will inspire the young to serve Him exclusively. And may ever more courageous parents welcome a generous number of children in their homes in this anti-life/anti-family world.