The term vocation is most often used to refer to a calling from God to dedicate our lives to some specific state of life. In the conversation about vocations, we often lose sight of some very important points.
Your first vocation is to be a human being. This is, was, and will always be the first call upon your life. And your ability to fulfill and enjoy every other vocation depends on how fully you embrace the call to flourish as a human being.
A mother, for example, if not first a mother or a wife, but a human being. Beautifully individual and wonderfully unique, her commitment to become more fully herself each day is what animates her other roles, vocations, and relationships.
Yes, I said vocations, plural. I didn’t misspeak.
This mother has a vocation to be a human being, a vocation to marriage, and within that vocation may have a vocation to motherhood. Then one day one of her children may have a child and she will become a grandmother. This isn’t just a joyful occasion and a new stage of life. Being a grandparent is a vocation. It is a call within a call.
But all this rests on our passion for being fully alive and fully human! Our first vocation is to be human beings. It’s an easy thing to forget.
Matthew Kelly
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