You see, there’s a difficult issue facing us in North America and in Europe, and perhaps elsewhere, too—a problem that is hard to address. It’s not exactly any one person’s fault; it’s not anything one person has done or failed to do; and it’s not exactly anything we can solve in a day or a month or a year. I’m not sure we’ve even quite found the right way to talk about it.

OK, what problem? Stop beating around the bush, Lemieux. Well, it’s this whole problem of vocations and the lack thereof.

In diocese after diocese throughout the Western world, parishes have to be closed for lack of priests. Given the current demographics of the priesthood, this will certainly become even more common in the decades ahead.

Which parishes close, which stay open? An agonizing decision for bishops; a deep call to surrender and faith for the parishioners.

Similar problems afflict most of the religious orders and communities of this continent, quite a few of which are almost certainly in their last years of existence.

Now it is true that in every variety of religious vocation and priesthood, there are wonderful, vibrant young men and women who are "signing up" to serve God and neighbor through the Church. It is also true that some dioceses and orders are doing quite well, comparatively.

It’s a simple reality of numbers, however, that not enough young people are responding to the call of Christ to "leave everything and follow Him" to allow the Church to continue serving its members as it has in the past.

Unless things change, the Church is going to look very different ten, twenty, thirty years from now, with fewer and fewer priests and religious serving more and more Catholics.

Yes, the vocation crisis—much lamented over, prayed over, written about, worried about.

We all more or less know the causes, which are many. To name just one, contraception and abortion are rampant among Catholics. It is a rock bottom reality that vocations cannot come from children who are not allowed to be born.

Our society as a whole is aging rapidly, and the lack of vocations in the Church is simply one facet of a society-wide crisis that is coming upon us quickly. Birth rates have fallen below the replacement rate in much of the industrialized world. A people who do not have children are a people without a future.

Meanwhile, in our diocese of Pembroke, there has been much talk lately about building a "culture of vocation." I’ve been pondering that phrase for a while now. What does it mean to build a culture of vocation?

Does it mean putting up a poster at the back of the church? Does it mean having a "unit" on vocation in religion class? Does it mean mentioning the word to children before they are confirmed? Or praying for vocations in church?

Does it mean having a sermon once a year on Vocation Sunday? Do a poster, a class, a sermon, a prayer, make a culture?

"Culture" is all about communal meaning and purpose. Culture is all about the complex system of custom, habit, speech, art, ritual by which the values and beliefs and meanings of a people are passed on to the next generation. What would it mean, then, to foster a "culture of vocation" in the Western world?

The question arises: what are our values, meanings, beliefs? What are we raised to believe life is about? If our answer to that question involves the idea of "vocation," then we are saying that life is about one thing and one thing only: fulfilling God’s plan for our lives.

To build a culture of vocation implies that we first understand that there is only one ambition to set before ourselves and our children, and that is sanctity. Is that how we think about life? Is that how we teach our children to think about life?

What would a culture of vocation look like? Well, are children taught, generally, that life is about loving rather than about having? That life is solely a matter of finding someone or somewhere where you can give yourself away in service and abandonment to God and then doing it?

Or are they taught that life is about getting something for yourself—a good career, a nice standard of living, happiness?

It doesn’t seem wrong to desire happiness or to teach children that life is about being happy. After all, we are made for happiness.

The problem is that we are sinners and consequently identify happiness with immediate gratification, with pleasure, with having things just the way we want them. To identify happiness as the goal of life leads us to the pursuit of self-gratification and self-will.

These don’t make us really happy, of course. Happiness comes from laying down your life. Happiness comes from following Jesus to the very end of life and love, from following him to the Cross. Happiness, true lasting happiness, comes from dying to self, from giving up everything to seek union with God in Christ in his offering for the world, from bearing whatever trial, hardship, sacrifice is asked of us.

And all this flows from knowing the infinite, tender, majestic, strong, passionate love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that is poured upon us at every moment.

Do we believe this, we North American and European Catholics? Do we teach it to our children, proclaim it in our schools, preach it from our pulpits? If we don’t, is it any wonder that our young people grow up unaware that God has a plan for their lives that they should be interested in?

Why should young people care about their vocations if they don’t realize that they have been created for one purpose and one purpose alone: to be saints, to be lovers, to be filled with God’s love so as to give it freely to all, and that nothing else will ever make them happy?

And how can they know this if they aren’t taught it virtually from infancy? And how will we teach it to them if we don’t believe it ourselves?

I don’t know the answers, but I think we have to start by asking ourselves these questions. We have to go down to the depths of what we believe, what we seek, whom or what we serve, what life is about or for.

Otherwise, religious vocations just get presented as one more career possibility, one more life choice that might make you happy, if you happen to be inclined that way—just one more word in a culture, a civilization awash with words, one more poster, one more class, one more option.

A vocation, whether to priesthood, religious life, marriage, or the single life is a love affair that emerges from the heart of God and the heart of a person who is in love with the Divine Lover. There is nothing optional about it, not really. Are we in love with God? That’s the real question.

The question of building a culture of vocation, and the answer to every problem the Church faces in these next difficult decades, begins, continues, and ends in one place: in your heart and in mine.

We have to examine our consciences, and take hold of the Gospel in depth, so as to pass it on to our children and their children. Once we believe in the truth of the Gospel and its promises, the ingenuity of love will teach us ways to pass it on.