National Vocation Awareness Week

For U.S. Catholics, January 13 to 19 is National Vocation Awareness Week, a week for heightened prayer and work for the discernment of vocations -- particularly to the priesthood and to religious life (as a permanent deacon, brother, sister or nun).

Since moving to New York some 11 months ago, I have been mostly going to Sunday Mass at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle on Manhattan's West Side -- the mother church of the Paulist Fathers. The Paulists, founded 150 years ago in 1858, were the first order of Catholic priests to be founded in the United States.

Here's the latest offering from their vocations department:



An aside: the Paulists' vocations director, Fr. Ed Nowak, is a native of Crafton, PA, outside the 'burgh.

And, Monsignor Ed Burns, the executive director of the U.S. Catholic Bishops' vocations office, is a priest of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. In fact, he served at both Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Burgettstown, PA, and at Immaculate Conception Church in WashPA.