Vocation as a spiritual calling
Every autumn, young people head off to school — I’m thinking mainly about those entering college or university.
They arrive on campus with sometimes vague, but always developing, ideas about their futures. They feel the excitement of entering new communities. They anxiously await the new and challenging experiences they know will be coming. They inevitably focus attention on what lies beyond college, especially the competition that will lead to success in a career, for they have learned that the good job is the gateway to the good life.
New students have it in mind to learn how to compete successfully against others, to develop high level professional skills, and, in a new setting, develop further their individual talents, while building their sense of social identity. The idea that the experiences they will have will contribute to clarifying a sense of purpose in their lives is not necessarily a top issue, but that is a hope that many who work with them as teachers, counselors and mentors have for them. The hope is that through learning and experience they will come to grasp not just a direction for their careers but something much more significant — a sense of a vocation.
The links that show up in a web search on “vocation” are overwhelmingly religious and spiritual. The idea of a “vocation” has deep roots in religion, for vocation points to the idea of a calling in life — the Latin word from which vocation comes, vocare, means “to call.”
Vocation is passive — it refers specifically to the idea of “being called.” It conjures up the idea of discovery, of finding out or bumping into what is bigger than oneself — something one comes to feel is vital to one’s very sense of self and must be incorporated or pursued.
In the Christian tradition, vocation points to the idea of being called by God to undertake a way of life that emphasizes love and service to those with whom one lives. In the Middle Ages, the idea of vocation connected to the obligations one held because of social position — clergy had a calling to prayer and religious service, nobles were obligated to govern society and commoners were called to the work of farming and commerce.
In the Reformation era, when certain democratizing influences were unleashed, the idea of a vocation shifted from obligations attached to social distinction to those shared by all people across all boundaries. So everyone shares obligations — to work, to families, to citizenship, to marriage and parenthood. (Martin Luther believed that even the clergy on this view should take on the obligations of marriage and family.) These obligations specified the vocation to which everyone is called, and vocation identified a core of spiritual meaning and a way of connecting to God, to one’s various communities, and to those one loved. Vocation became a way of understanding one’s purpose in life — one’s purpose was to live the life to which one was called.
Vocation is not the same as career. Careers are tied up with self-advancement and the effort to win in the various competitions of life. Careers are driven by ego concerns for success and the rewards of success: financial security, a good reputation and a full sense of self-worth. But vocation is different. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung called vocation “... an irrational factor that destines people to emancipate themselves from the herd and from its wellworn paths . ... Anyone with a vocation hears the voice of the inner self: That person is called.”
Author David Brooks writes in his recent book, The Second Mountain, that career poses the question, “What do I want from life?” But vocation asks the question “What is life asking of me?”
Psychiatrist Victor Frankl, sent to concentration camps during the Second World War, resolved to live true to his vocation in that setting, as one dedicated to reducing the suffering of others. That is what life was asking of him. Frankl would later write, “Life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which life constantly sets for each individual.”
In the older religious framework, one’s vocation was determined by God; in today’s secular world, the meaning of vocation requires more discernment and effort. Seeking to live with meaning and purpose beyond self, however, continues to provide a lure to creativity and engagement with others and it remains a spiritual task. Vocation requires that each of us listen for what St. Augustine, following the Psalmist, referred to as “the call from deep to deep.” That call from the deep comes to us as inclinations — interests we feel compelled to pursue — that are mysterious to us and, if we pay attention, irresistible.
One of the profound tasks in life is to find the vocation — that call from the deep — that is one’s own. Vocation identifies the call that enables us to take responsibility for the world that confronts us, to look beyond ourselves and to step up and contribute not just talent but a passionate sense of purpose. Wedding passion to vocation helps to unify the personality. It makes us whole. The summons from the deep as we come to know ourselves and seek to create pathways to purposeful living is a call to deeper life, a call to find and accept one’s vocation.