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Planting Seeds for a Future Church:
Parents serve important role in nurturing vocations
by Sister Rita Musante, OLVM
 Photo: Sister Rita Musante (right), former OLVM vocation ministry co-director, meets with Shelley Woenker, a parent interested in promoting vocations.
I returned home from a vacation and retreat in early October 1997 to find two messages on my voice mail. They were left by a Mrs. Shelley Woenker, whom I had never met. The messages requested that I send Sisters to speak in her children’s Catholic school in Edgerton, OH and in her parish’s CCD program in Hicksville, OH about “why you are a Sister, why you are happy and what you do.” Before I could return her calls, Shelley phoned me a third time and since then our collaboration has been a refreshing and encouraging part of my own faith journey in vocation ministry.
As a parent of six children ages 2-12, Shelley told me that she began to think more deeply about vocations when her parish priest passed out vocation prayer cards asking everyone to pray who had the time.
“I prayed by myself and I prayed along with my children,” she said. “I began to think about how my children do not have the exposure to a lot of sisters or priests, as I did. Then I started thinking, ‘These children are God’s – mine to raise, but help mold for God.’ I needed to change my thinking about letting my children go.”
Looking for an order that would help to promote her personal mission of changing the attitudes of parents toward religious life and exposing her children and others to Catholic sisters and priests, Shelley turned to Victory Noll. She heard of our order through her neighbor whose children were taught by Victory Noll Sisters ministering in Hicksville, OH from 1943 - 1968.
Since our first contact, Shelley’s efforts to nurture vocations to priesthood and religious life have taken several directions. Besides the Sisters’ visit to her children’s Catholic school and parish CCD program, she has initiated two visits of grade and junior high students and their parents to the Victory Noll motherhouse. She also invited School Sisters of Notre Dame, a diocesan priest and a priest from the Precious Blood order to visit the school and CCD program.
“I feel if children are exposed to real nuns and priests, not videos of them, and see that they are really happy opinions will change,” said Shelley. “The children were amazed at the different orders and what they do.”
Shelley’s interest in and call to vocation ministry is very timely not only for Victory Noll but also in terms of the National Religious Vocation Conference’s (NRVC) 1998 focus: parents’ role in nurturing vocations. I used to call it coincidence, but now I know that it was by pure providence that Shelley contacted me. Since I had only been in vocation ministry for six months the input I received from her before I attended the annual NRVC convocation in September 1998, was invaluable. Even though Shelley could not join the group of parents who attended the conference her insights were right on target.
The outcome of preliminary discussions at regional meetings of the NRVC suggested that there are three key challenges for parents and vocation ministers, in promoting vocations to religious life and the priesthood:
- insufficient knowledge about religious life and priesthood on the part of parents;
- negative images of religious life and priesthood projected by the media and by religious and priests themselves;
- hesitation on the part of parents to encourage their children to consider religious life and priesthood because of their strong desire for grandchildren and for their children’s financial success in life.
Victory Noll believes that vocation ministry is a ministry for the Church as well as for one’s own religious congregation. For this reason we are currently in the process of establishing a Vocation Advisory Board made up of eight people who can bring us a perspective on religious life from the “outside” and perhaps help us to see ourselves more clearly. Shelley has already accepted a position on our board that will be meeting three to four times a year.
We also believe that any vocation is an ongoing journey of loving service and of faithfulness to a continual personal conversation with one’s Creator and Caller. Since all baptized persons are called to prayer, service and relational living (community), significant attention must be given to discerning in which lifestyle one is being called by God to live: marriage, single dedicated life or religious life.
Finally, we invite and urge all our readers, especially those of you who are parents of young children and teens, to join Shelley in this awesome ministry of helping young children and teens to better understand and respond to God’s call in their lives!
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