De La Salle Santiago Zobel School
HIGH SCHOOL DEPARTMENT
CHRISTIAN LIVING SENIORS
Second Term S.Y. 2010-2011
Hand-out #1, On Vocation in General
Vocation: Historical Survey of Christian Understandings
For Reference: See Course Outline
• The idea of vocation has carried a variety of different understandings in Christian history. Basically these different views are all attempts to explain "What is the meaning and purpose of everyday work for Christians?"
If we start back just before the Christian era we find two sharply contrasting views of everyday work among the Greeks and the Jews.
1. Greeks.
• In the Greek world work was considered to be a curse. Aristotle said that to be unemployed was good fortune because it allowed a person to participate in political life and contemplation. Today it's probably politics that enjoys the low reputation.
• Anyway for the Greeks, society was organised so that a few could enjoy the blessing of "leisure" while work was done by slaves. Everyday work was a demeaning occupation that one should try to avoid. Certainly there was nothing spiritually meaningful or uplifting about everyday work.
2. Jews.
• The opportunity to think about issues and engage in contemplation was also valued by Jews. And when Jesus came on the scene he was only one of many Jewish rabbis or teachers on the block.
• However, it is very significant to note that Jewish teachers were not expected to live off the contributions of their students, but were all expected to have a trade through which they could support themselves.
• Far from being avoided, as far as possible work was to be embraced as part of God's purposes in creation and theological reflection would be engaged in by people who were daily engaged in everyday life in the world.
3. Early Christianity.
• Jesus was known as a carpenter and the son of a carpenter, although there is no example of him continuing this trade during the period of his public ministry. He called some of his inner circle of disciples to leave their fishing nets to follow him. But there are also examples of them continuing to fish at times.
• Certainly he gave no general call for all Christians to give up everyday work and much of his teaching drew on themes from the world of everyday work without any self-consciousness or apologies.
• Paul emphasizes a positive view of work, commending all Christians to continue in their work and to work well. And he plainly continued in his trade as a tentmaker during his church planting ministry. This would seem to be the general Christian pattern for the first century after the Apostles.
4. Distorted Christianity!
• Gradually the Church Fathers began to draw more heavily on Greek and Roman motifs in their theology and the more positive view of work gave way to a much lower view. This is reflected in the view of Eusebius who wrote about his doctrine of two lives about AD300.
• In a similar way Augustine distinguished between the 'active life' and the 'contemplative life'. While both kinds of life were good and Augustine had praise for the work of farmers and craftspeople and merchants, the contemplative life was clearly of a higher order. While at times it may be necessary to follow the active life, wherever possible one should choose the other.
• The one life is loved, the other endured. Very soon it was this view that dominated Christian thinking, until only those people pursuing the contemplative life or a priestly role in the church were said to have a truly 'religious' vocation.
5. Restoring the Balance.
• It was initially through the work of Martin Luther that the 16th century reformers recovered a sense that all of life, including daily work, could be understood as a calling from God.
• According to Luther we respond to the call to love our neighbour by fulfilling the duties that are associated with our everyday work. Work is our call to serve. This work includes domestic and civic duties as well as our employment.
6. A New Distortion!
• How much the "spirit of capitalism" was a true product of the Protestant work ethic or a corruption of it is still debated. Whatever the case, it is clear that with the passing of time the concept of vocation became so closely associated with a person's occupation or career that these words became synonymous and secularised without any reference to the calling of God. So the pursuit of a vocation became an end in itself.
• This is true for both capitalism and Marxism. Both encourage us to look for personal fulfilment through the work of our own hands. Once people worked to live now they are living to work.
• Marxism became attractive when the lack of a social ethic accompanying the Protestant understanding of vocation gave rise to a church that was afraid of conflict and sided with the status quo rather than exploited workers, following the industrial revolution.
7. The Destructive Consequences.
Today we end up with a mixture of destructive consequences resulting from the ways these influences have impacted on our understanding. Five of these are...
(a) Ordained pastoral ministry or missionary service is elevated by Christians above other vocations and they feel the need to pursue these even when they don't seem to fit (medieval monasticism).
(b) The Sunday-Monday Gap: The world of the marketplace is seen as "secular" and depraved: the world of the church as "spiritual" and divine.
(c) Workaholism and the devastating consequences of unemployment- employment is seen as necessary for a true vocation and the source of fulfilment (Marxism and a distortion of the Protestant work ethic).
(d) An inflexible view of vocation that is not adequate to cope with changes in work patterns and career paths and gender roles, etc...
(e) A view of Christian vocation which seems to foster either a strong personal spirituality or a strong social concern, but doesn't often combine these two essential elements effectively.
8. So What Is Needed?
• We need to find a path that will lead us between the twin heresies of divorcing faith from work and idolising work.
• We must rediscover that our primary vocation is the call to follow Jesus. But we must also emphasize that this call embraces the whole of our lives , including our everyday work.
• It needs to effectively combine both the personal and social dimensions of the gospel and nurture a lively everyday spirituality. We need to see ways in which our work is connected to the creating, sustaining and transforming work of God.
Handout on Christian Vocation:
De La Salle Santiago Zobel School
HIGH SCHOOL DEPARTMENT
CHRISTIAN LIVING SENIORS
Second Term S.Y. 2010-2011
Hand out#2 Vocation in General
What is the Christian Vocation?
The 'levels' of Christian vocation according to Germain Grisez, Catholic Theologian/Scholar
1. The first and basic level of vocation common to all of us Catholics is our basic commitment to follow Christ as we are consecrated to Him through the Church in baptism.
This baptismal consecration is sometimes overlooked by many not knowing that those who are non-Catholics but decide to enter the faith as an adult treasure so much this level of vocation.
And many do not know that at this level, we share also the vocation to be Christian with our other Christian brothers and sisters - especially those Christians which have the Trinitarian formula (baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit) in their baptismal consecration.
2. The second level of vocation is in secular language our civil status or in Church language our state of life.
This involves our being single, married, religious or clergy.
At this level of vocation, the classic meaning of vocation is usually delegated only to the religious and the clergy.
But with the new theology and spirituality taught by Vatican II, it is expanded to a broader view that includes the secular vocation of the single person or married couple.
The Church revitalized its concept of holiness to incorporate the call as a universal one to all states of life: single, married, religious or clergy.
3. The third level of vocation is the personal vocation or calling.
This is the level which we must discover for ourselves and if we do indeed discover it, we realize such a great meaning that would otherwise not have been seen if we were just to look at our being single, married, religious or clergy.
Those who have been single or married or in the religious or clerical state for a long time realize how revitalizing, how inspiring, how invigorating, how Spirit- filled their lives become once they discover this third level vocation in their lives.
The personal vocation and calling
At this level of our Christian life, our lives take on a deeper meaning. We are not imprisoned or tied down by the expectations society has of the single, married, religious or clerical state but rather we gain the gift of freedom from the Spirit to realize a particular mission, a particular apostolate, a specific task or job, an individual responsibility, or a unique set of obligations that set us apart and make us feel truly "called by name by the Lord God".
Indeed, at this level, our personal relationship with God has not only been rediscovered but deepened and strengthened with a life in the Spirit that calls us forth to greater and greater awareness of our Christian vocation to follow the Lord and His teachings.
The Christian vocation and calling
Given the three levels of Christian vocation and calling above, we can see that the ultimate aim of following our Lord in our commitment to Him entails going through all three levels. And eventually we are called to discover for ourselves that level of vocation that brings forth in us a far greater love for Him and His Church akin to a wellspring that gushes out living water that never runs dry.
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