This year Vocations Awareness Week takes as its theme a phrase from St Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians: “We are God’s work of art” (see Eph 2:9).
By these words, St Paul invites us to consider how God has made us and called us to live the “true life” he has planned for us, a life modelled on and guided by Jesus. In many ways, this is nothing more than a call to live our true vocation, our true calling, faithful to the plan and the image God had in mind when he first created us.
For Vocations Awareness Week 2019, “Priests for Scotland” invite young people in our schools or parish youth groups to reflect on how they see themselves as God’s “work of art”: how do they think God calls them? what gifts or talents has he given them to use and how are they using them? how are they discovering their “true selves”? how are they giving of themselves and their gifts to others? In short, we invite reflection on what it takes to be the kind of person God wants me to be, and how, for some, that might mean thinking about a vocation to priesthood or religious life of some kind.
This year’s teaching materials – designed for school use but equally suitable for parish or youth group activities – take four “works of art” (i.e. famous paintings) – to explore themes associated with the idea of Vocation: Rembrandt’s “Return of the Prodigal Son”, Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” and Dali’s “Christ of St John of the Cross”. There are PowerPoint slides and worksheets (as .pdf documents) for the various age-groups/stages which you might want to download.
See the resources on the Priests for Scotland website here: https://priestsforscotland.org.uk/vocations1/vocations-awareness-week-2019/
https://priestsforscotland.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/S1-and-S2-Final.pdf
https://priestsforscotland.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Work-of-Art-2019.png
https://priestsforscotland.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/S3-and-S4-Final.pdf
https://priestsforscotland.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/S5-and-S6-final.pdf
https://priestsforscotland.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/S5-and-S6-Vocations-Week-2019.pptx