who we are called to be

Identity and Vocation

For Jews, Christians, and Muslims, identity is a gift and a calling. We are creatures before we are anything else, fragile and corruptible yet made for a reason, with a unique part to play in the working out of the divine plan. Vocation - such a beautiful word - runs deeper than the usual identity markers. Vocation is fixed from the moment of conception (“before I formed you in the womb, I knew you”), and it is here, if anywhere, that our personality finds its stable center. Yet vocation is also fluid, telic, oriented toward change (“no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”).  (Carol Zaleski, The Christian Century, November 23, 2016, 35.)

Identity and vocation are both specific and generic, both ontic and telic, both being and becoming.

We both are, and are becoming, who we are called to be.

“Before you were knit in the womb, I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5).

Goal: to become fully human, fully Christian; to become who we are called to be.

We cannot become again the people that we thought we were but we can become the people we know we are called to be.

You are named both because of who you uniquely are and because you are called to become in Christ a fully human person.

(Max Depree — 'We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.')