We give great thanks and praise to the Lord who has been moving quietly and patiently in the hearts of young men and women here in Central Texas.

Raising awareness

Due to calendaring conflicts with other important diocesan celebrations, it was not possible to celebrate NVAW in a prominent way in our parishes, but that conflict led to a new initiative in the diocese: Called By Name Sunday (CBN).

In 2020, the diocese celebrated its first CBN in which priests preached on vocations, shared their vocation stories, and asked parishioners to submit names of men and women they believed could have a calling to the priesthood or consecrated life. That year, over 200 names were submitted, and we were thrilled!

The following year, the diocese invited Rhonda Gruenewald and Leticia Ramirez from Vocation Ministry to speak to our priests and to host our first Vocation Promoter Workshop. Almost 300 parishioners attended and learned how to begin and run a successful Vocation Ministry in the parish. We began to see the fruit immediately. Only a few months later, we celebrated our third CBN, and the number of names submitted skyrocketed to 900!

Two of our seminarians are the direct fruit of this initiative (not to mention the thousands of men and women who received letters from our bishop that planted seeds in their hearts to seek God’s loving plan for their lives), and since Vocation Ministry started, the number of our seminarians has grown to as many as 60!

Our fifth annual Vocation Promoter Workshop will be held Oct. 24. This year’s workshop will highlight the projected growth our diocese is expected to experience in the next 15 years and will show how Vocation Ministry is crucial for the health of the church in Central Texas.

How you can participate

We currently have 750,000 Catholics in the Diocese of Austin, but given population trends, we expect to have 1.4 million Catholics by 2031. The blessing of a growing population brings with it the challenges of providing for the increased needs. While bigger buildings can welcome larger crowds for Mass, they cannot make confession lines shorter. NVAW is an opportunity for us to come together in prayer to ask the Lord of the harvest to send out more laborers to provide for the needs of the growing flock here in Central Texas.

On Nov. 1-7, each parish and school is asked to teach Vocation Lessons in their religious education classes and youth ministries, and I am also asking you to participate through prayer. After our diocese came together for our first Holy Hour for Vocations in 2022, God answered our prayers by giving us 24 new seminarians! Prayer is the only thing our Lord asked us to do in the Gospels to promote vocations (Mt 9:36-38), and in the end, it is the most important thing. Please pray the Prayer for Vocations (below) each day that week:

Jesus our Savior, your Sacred Heart felt compassion when you looked upon the crowd and saw that they were like sheep without a shepherd. We know that the harvest of souls is abundant but the laborers few, so we ask you, the master of the harvest, to send out more laborers. Open my heart and the hearts of my brothers and sisters to your will and raise up abundant faithful servants of the Gospel — devoted and holy priests, sisters and brothers who will spend themselves for your people in the Diocese of Austin. May none of your flock, won at the price of your blood, be without a shepherd to guide them. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

For more information on Vocation Ministry in the Diocese of Austin,

visit austinvocations.com.