Pope John Paul II: Vocation Day Prayer

Vocation Day Message

Given on December 26, 1993 for the thirty-first World Day of Prayer for Vocations, April 24, 1994.

O Holy Family of Nazareth, community of love of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, model and ideal of every Christian family, to you we entrust our families. Open the heart of every family to the faith, to welcoming the word of God, to Christian witness, so that it becomes a source of new and holy vocations. Touch the hearts of parents, so that with prompt charity, wise care, and loving devotion they be for their sons and daughters sure guides towards spiritual and eternal values. Stir up the hearts of young people, a right conscience, and a free will, so that growing in "wisdom, age and grace," they might welcome generously the gift of a divine vocation. Holy Family of Nazareth, grant that all of us, contemplating and imitating the assiduous prayer, generous obedience, dignified poverty and virginal purity lived out in your midst, might set about fulfilling the will of God and accompanying with far-sighted sensitivity those among us who are called to follow more closely the Lord Jesus, who "has given Himself for us" (cf. Gal 2:20). Amen!