Interview: 3 Priorities for Promoting Vocations (especially among young women)

This is the sort of person one should listen to on this topic, a member of the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia (commonly known simply as the "Nashville Dominicans"), which are the powerhouse vocations community for religious sisters in the United States:

There are three high priorities in fostering vocations to the religious and priestly life, said a Dominican sister with 15 years of experience in vocational work.

Sister Catherine Marie Hopkins is now the executive director of the Dominican Campus in Nashville where the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia own and operate Overbrook School, St. Cecilia Academy and Aquinas College.

Recently named a member of the U.S. bishops' national advisory council, Sister Hopkins suggests the three highest priorities in fostering vocations: education, sacramental devotion and youth ministry that exposes young people to both prayer and evangelization.

Her personal vocation story, briefly:

Q: You worked for 15 years as vocation director for your order. What was the key to finding your own vocation? Did your own experience help you to aid other women in discerning theirs?

Sister Hopkins: The key to finding my own vocation was the realization that God had the plan and I just needed to discover exactly what that plan was. It began with inner turmoil at the thought that God could ask such a thing of me, but I very quickly found out that if he were calling, everything that I needed in order to respond would be provided by him as well.

That brought me tremendous freedom and my turmoil was replaced by a very strong attraction. [Read on.]

Also do checkout their daughter community, the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

I had the privledge of studying with some of these young women. I also came across them many times on the campuses of other, secular institutions. They are such a public, living witness in their full Dominican habits, rosaries, smiles and backpacks full of books!