Awakening Vocation

Does God have a specific plan for each of us, or is it more like general guidelines for all of us? How do my gifts and abilities, my personality and particular circumstances, impact my vocation? What is the role of the church in this process? What are the needs of the world that call us to respond? Awakening Vocation explores these questions and breathes new life into an ancient idea - rousing vocation from a centuries-long slumber. Inspired by the broad and inclusive Vision of the Second Vatican Council, the book traces the history of Catholic reflection on vocation and offers a constructive proposal for the present. In plain language, Edward Hahnenberg argues that Catholic thinking on vocation has been frustrated by a deficient theology of grace and that the key to reclaiming the notion of God's call today lies in a Vision of God's self-gift reaching across al of human history and into every human heart. Rethinking vocation in light of a revitalized theology of grace helps move beyond earlier dead ends, opening up new ways of imagining discipleship and discernment within our wonderfully diverse and yet deeply divided world.

Karl Barth (1886-1968), as a young Swiss pastor in Safenwil, struggled to make an organic connection between "the newspaper [contemporary sociopolitical events] and the New Testament." When he discovered "a strange new world of God within the Bible," God became the subject matter for renewing and transforming the world. This discovery helped Barth to integrate the world into his interpretation of the Bible and also impacted his theology of Christian vocation as divine summons to God's special freedom and obedience. Vocation in Christ examines the theology of vocation and reading Scripture among the Naga Christians in northeastern India, in conversation with Barth's theology of vocation. Social-scientific research is employed on congregations and Bible study groups to explore how the Naga Christians understand vocation and Scripture in light of their sociopolitical and religious context. This book serves as an introduction for Western readers of how vocation is understood from an Asian perspective and emphasizes the theme of vocation as Christian witness without accommodating to worldly values. It readdresses Barth's theology of vocation, which calls for a revitalization of Christian vocation in our contemporary situation. The primary claim of this book is that vocation is God's calling to obedience, and devotion to the love of God is reciprocal to the love of neighbor.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius have had a tremendous impact in the history of the Church, while the Song of Songs describes mystical union with God in prayer. Written following the format of a personal retreat, Awakening Love includes chapters tracing the themes of the Song of Songs as a very Christian prayer and meditation.

In the thick of modern life, we are tempted to forget what we are doing and why we are doing it. We are busy socializing, building careers, and looking for fun—but what’s it all for? The ancient concept of “vocation” has recently gained popularity as we return to questions about the meaning of life. Almost all religions include the idea that divine purposes should guide our lives; Christianity has particularly accented it. The God who called Israel and sent Jesus has something in mind for us. God’s call challenges us, but also opens us to the best sort of life imaginable. In Living Vocationally, the challenge and the joy of the called life is thoroughly explored. Part one considers the benefits of living vocationally, biblical traditions of call, and subsequent Christian understandings. Part two examines why vocation pertains not only to careers, but indeed touches every dimension of our lives and encompasses our full journey through life. Because every person’s life includes many callings, some very difficult, part three considers the virtues we need to live the called life well. Living Vocationally demonstrates why to have found a calling is to have found a good way to live.

The divide between the sacred and the secular life has dogged Christians for centuries. Even today, many Christians and church leaders still assume that the workplace is inferior to pastoring, Bible study, mission trips, and the like. This volume provides a different approach: it surveys the persistence of the sacred-secular divide in Christian history to develop a more robust theology of vocation while engaging with both the Old and New Testament. Charles offers a vision for numerous ways Christians are called to live faithfully in the so-called secular world.

Called: Recovering Lutheran Principles for Ministry and Vocation traces Lutherans' views on ministerial call and constructively reorients the call to Luther's doctrine of vocation. The book provides insights to those considering the office of ministry and encourages all believers to live their spiritual priesthood in response to neighbors' needs.

"The language of vocation and calling can encourage faculty and students to venture out of their academic silos and to reflect on larger questions of meaning and purpose. With contributors from across the disciplines, the book demonstrates that vocation can reframe current debates about the role of higher education today"--

Arguing against the critical commonplace that Evelyn Waugh’s post-war fiction represents a decline in his powers as a writer, D. Marcel DeCoste offers detailed analyses of Waugh's major works from Brideshead Revisited to Unconditional Surrender. Rather than representing an ill-advised departure from his true calling as an iconoclastic satirist, DeCoste suggests, these novels form a cohesive, artful whole precisely as they explore the extent to which the writer’s and the Catholic’s vocations can coincide. For all their generic and stylistic diversity, these novels pursue a new, sustained exploration of Waugh’s art and faith both. As DeCoste shows, Waugh offers in his later works an under-remarked meditation on the dangers of a too-avid devotion to art in the context of modern secularism, forging in the second half of his career a literary achievement that both narrates and enacts a contrary, and Catholic, literary vocation.