The Day of Prayer for Vocations and the Day of Native Vocations, which the Church celebrates next Sunday, April 25, was presented this morning in a press conference broadcast by Zoom.
The four entities that have joined together in Spain on this occasion: Pontifical Missionary Works, the Episcopal Conference, the Spanish Conference of Religious and the Secular Institutes, were represented in the presentation and in the testimonies that were shared at the press conference.
Luis Manuel Suárez CMF, responsible for the area of vocational youth ministry of CONFER, has been in charge of explaining the campaign and the image that illustrates it: train tracks that converge in an image of the world with the cross of Christ superimposed on it. As Luis Manuel Suárez pointed out, it is a call to all believers to "offer life, because any vocation is to offer life".
This year's campaign "Who am I for?" is, more than ever, an appeal to Catholics, especially young people, to open their lives and hearts to the call of God in any of the manifestations of vocation: priestly, consecrated, lay, married... as well as to ask the whole ecclesial community to pray for these vocations and, obviously, to provide financial support, always necessary, especially in the most needy churches where more vocations are being raised up at the present time. In fact, in the last thirty years these vocations have doubled in the Catholic communities of Asia and Africa.
Among the testimonies that were part of this presentation was that of Manuel, a seminarian from Toledo, who highlighted how "the phrase of this year's motto is very striking to me because it is a phrase that puts you before your life", and, after explaining his vocation, he pointed out how "in the vocational process I have realized the need for this reality: to focus your life towards God and towards others". His testimony was joined by those of Carlos Armando Ochoa, a seminarian in the diocese of Tarahumara, in Mexico, a diocese that receives help from OMP, specifically from the Obra San Pedro Apóstol, Rocío Vázquez, from the Instituto Calasancio Hijas de la Divina Pastora and Lydia Herrero, from the Instituto Secular Obreras de la Cruz.
All the materials of this year's campaign: song, posters, reflections and prayers... are available on the web. www.paraquiensoy.com.
On Saturday, April 24, at 8:00 p.m., a prayer vigil will take place and will be broadcasted on YouTube, and the Mass of the Day will be rebroadcast on RTVE's La2 on Sunday, April 25, at 10:30 a.m., from the Parish of Our Lady of Peace (Madrid).
