It has the power to change the world for generations but is gentle enough to be stifled. A “still, small voice” (1 Kings 19:12) that can be ignored, but not denied forever.
The Lord is always calling young men and women to join him in the work of sanctifying the world, some of them as priests or religious sisters or brothers.
That’s even, or perhaps especially, in countries like Australia where vocations have plummeted over the last several decades.
Research being undertaken by Dr Peter Wilkinson for the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference for instance, indicates that the number of seminarians across the country peaked at just over 1400 in 1961, but by the 1980s there were no more than around 400 men in seminary formation each year.
This year, the Australian Catholic Directory recorded 199 diocesan seminarians and 72 candidates for religious life in Australia, a drop overall from the 2023-24 year when there were 192 diocesan and 102 religious candidates recorded.
Other western countries have seen similar trends, and while the Holy See’s Statistical Year Book of the Church reported that while the number of baptised Catholics rose from 1.376 billion in 2021 to 1.390 billion globally in 2022, the number of priests, religious sisters and brothers and seminarians decreased.
In Sydney at least there is heartening evidence of people responding to God’s invitation to be spiritual mothers or fathers, with seminary numbers steadily increasing and a variety of religious congregations serving the church.
The Seminary of the Good Shepherd in Homebush last year saw 17 first-year seminarians and around 20 young men are currently being accompanied by the archdiocesan vocations centre, as they consider whether to enter in 2025.
“Vocations are real. God is real. The spiritual life is real,” says long-time spiritual director Fr Edmond Travers MSC.
“Out there in the community there will be people who God is touching, usually very gently, and so it’s received in a very embryonic way, at first, the invitation to consider the priesthood or religious life.
“It’s almost a shy kind of invitation on God’s part. The older I get, the more I marvel at how God respects human freedom.
“He doesn’t twist anyone’s arm. It’s often a very light suggestion that you could be this if you choose to be.”
Fr Travers has assisted the Good Shepherd Seminary for more than 20 years, running two retreats for first year seminarians.
The seminarians’ first year concludes with the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola—30 days of silence and prayer—during which each man elects whether to continue his formation or to pursue God’s call elsewhere.
When asked what signs he would look for if asked to meet a young woman or man who felt called to live wholly for God, he said he would only expect a conversation he had “never had before.”
“That’s because each vocation is unique,” he said.
“There’s been a real increase in vocations in the Sydney seminary in the years I’ve been involved with them, and when other priests ask me, ‘What’s the pattern?’ I tell them there isn’t one.
“Except that I personally am impressed that those young men who do come forward are aware of, and in touch with, what God is doing in their life.”
The Archdiocese of Sydney’s vicar for consecrated life, Sr Elizabeth Delaney SGS, said her vocation was “God’s surprise” for her.
She loved St Benedict’s rule but didn’t know the Good Samaritans were a Benedictine order until after she had entered.
While times have changed and there is an increasing emphasis on the baptismal call of all the baptised, and a higher proportion of so-called “late vocations” of people in their 30s then when she entered at age 18, she’s convinced the Lord will always call people to religious life.
“A vocation to a religious life is a gift of God, it’s not my gift, it’s God’s gift to me,” Sr Delaney says.
“To anyone who feels they are being drawn in this direction, I would say listen to the call and don’t be afraid to try. If this is not the right way, God will let you know, if you listen to God through the events and the people you meet.”
Archdiocesan vocations director Fr Daniele Russo says his is a “privileged” role as it brings him into contact with many inspiring cases of men encountering God’s love in an intense way.
Though it usually begins gently, and in parallel with other desires for love, career, or family life, a call to the priesthood often grows insistent enough to be impossible to ignore.
“Bishop Gregory Homeming OCD once said that you don’t really know you have a vocation until you’ve attempted to resist it and notice that it still persists,” Fr Russo said.
“Try and run away from it and see if it follows you.”
Fr Russo says the biggest obstacle he observes for young men considering the priesthood is neither celibacy nor the burden of the church’s sexual abuse crises, but the idea of having to commit to it for life.
At the recent ordinations of Fr Adrian Suyanto, Fr Likisone Tominiko and Fr Charbel Boustany FFI at St Mary’s Cathedral, Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP said that while “you choose a career, a vocation chooses you” but that it still requires sincere seeking on the part of the candidate.
“You discern a vocation in a dialogue with God, responding to his promptings and submitting to the judgement of the church,” the archbishop said.
Fr Russo agrees, adding that, “God leads us in but gives some obscurity to leave us room to make a free decision of our own.”
“It’s not something unique about a vocation that’s different to other decisions in life, that it’s not an imposed obligation, but it’s an invitation to love.
“It’s 100 per cent God’s will, but he wants it to also be 100 per cent our will.”
He said a recent study commissioned by the archdiocese showed that a family background of Catholic practice, and a “normalisation” of vocations to priesthood and religious life, were strong predictors of a future vocation.
In other words, for more young men and women to be courageous enough to give their lives over to the Lord, more parents need to be brave enough—especially given the relatively smaller family sizes today—to ask him to call them.
“If we want more priests, I think the church needs to express their desire for priests, and that takes place in terms of the laity,” Fr Russo said.
“But every priest is also called to lend Christ his voice and encourage young men to consider the vocation to priesthood.
“A priest who encourages someone else to consider the life that he’s living is a sign that he’s in love with his vocation and he’d like others to have it because it brings him joy.
Fr Travers says that former seminarians who decide the priesthood is not for them, often go on to live “exemplary lives” in other vocations.
“I think some of them will be important leadership material in the church for which they were the better equipped for having spent a year or two in the seminary,” he said.
Often of course, God’s call is ignored, and sometimes a person comes to regret that their possible vocation was never allowed to grow to maturity.
In that case, Fr Travers counsels forgiveness for those who may have impeded or not known how to support a man or woman’s vocation to priesthood or religious life, and trust in God who never fails us to bring our lives to fulfillment despite our missteps.
“That sort of thing happens, people can make all sorts of decisions based on what they did or did not receive,” he says.
“I usually quote a witty friend of mine who says he believes God is a golfer. That is, he plays the ball from where it lies.”
With thanks to Dr Peter Wilkinson for information on Australian seminaries.