Daily Reading for September 9 • Constance, Nun, and Her Companions, 1878
Biblically, vocation does not have any connotation limited to work. Vocation pertains to the whole of life, including work, of course, if and when there is work, but embracing every other use of time, every other engagement of body or mind, every other circumstance in life. In the gospel, vocation does not mean being professionally religious, it has no special reference to the ecclesiastical occupations, it does not imply “full-time Christian service” (as some preachers still put it); it is not about honesty, sobriety, thrift, loyalty, or similar homely virtues on the job, it does not concern positive attitudes and is alien to the success ethic. Moreover, in the gospel, vocation always bears an implication of immediacy—there is really no such thing as preparing to undertake one’s vocation when one grows up or when one graduates or when one obtains a certain position or when one gets to a certain place. Vocation is always here and now, without anxiety where one might be tomorrow, what regard there is for tomorrow and tomorrow’s issues are sufficiently anticipated, so far as vocation is concerned, in today’s unconditional involvement in life as it is. Vocation has to do with recognizing life as a gift and honoring the gift in living. To that, the question of whether another day will be added to one’s life, and if that comes to pass, how the gift will be spent on the morrow, is a distraction or diversion from living of the gift today.
From A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow, edited by Bill Wylie-Kellerman (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994).