St. James and Rosati

Recently, I was in St. James and Rosati working with the pastor to empower their vocation committee and talk to the people about the importance of everyone in the parish doing their part for vocations. To do their part means to pray, be educated, and invite single men (of any age, really) to consider priesthood single women to consider religious life and married men to consider permanent diaconate. After Saturday mass at St. James, the pastor and I went back to Rolla to have a nice home-cooked steak dinner. Both the pastor of Rolla and the pastor of St. James/Rosati have a seminarian living with them this summer. Dylan, the seminarian for St. James and Rosati was already there so it was good to talk to him for a while.

Sunday I went to mass at St. James and Rosati. I walked away with 23 Called by Name forms representing 12 individuals.

It was time for Support Group. Tuesday I went back to Rosati to talk to the pastoral administrator, to have mass at St. James and then to visit with their vocation committee. I reminded them that vocation committee work is not meeting work; it is project oriented. Decide the project, plan the project, do the project, celebrate the project; rest, repeat cycle. This way the people are keeping the message of vocations in the fore-front and are not burning out on too many meetings without the immediate results they want -- people in the seminary and convent.

I encourage all the vocation committees to take this approach. Hey guys, this is a committee for you: Do a project that you help plan. When the project is over celebrate it and then decide if you want to try another one (one project won't keep the message in front of people) and very few meetings.