Center for Catholic Education at UD

By Victoria Schoen

While we certainly wish for this blog to serve the purpose of sharing our views and insights with you, it is also a good way for our writers to be able to reflect about their own lives and their own vocational call. We hope that our reflections will allow you to, in turn, reflect personally about the topics that we present. The ability to reflect on our experiences, our actions, as well as our words is an important gift because it makes it possible for us to become better and to move forward as a result of those things – whether good or bad. Reflection connects the past with the present and gives us an outlook for the future that we can strive toward and have some control over. Ultimately I believe that God has a plan and a mission laid out for each of us but He also calls us to use the moments of our past, including the knowledge that we gain, in order to make choices that will open our lives up to that divine plan and mission.

Here at the CCE, we recently found a great reflection source that we would like to share with you all. The National Catholic Education Association (NCEA) has a program on their website called “Family and Mission Weekly Reflections: Questions for Meditation”. We encourage you to follow the link on the right side of this post and consider subscribing to this program so that you can receive emails whenever NCEA shares new reflection questions. NCEA is an organization that is a part of our CCE family through our partnership and involvement with different events/programs throughout the year. Their website contains many resources that will help you to strengthen your identity as a Catholic Educator and also a Catholic person in general!

I would like to share my reflection with you from NCEA’s reflection questions from Sunday, June 14, 2015 and I invite you to share your reflections in the comments.

The question I will look at is for Catholic Educators: Where does Jesus want me to go to prepare hearts and minds for receiving God’s gift of faith more fully?

Because I am still in the process of studying to be a Catholic Educator, this is a question that is constantly on my mind. Where is God calling me to teach after college? In what school is He calling me to teach in? In what country is He calling me to teach in? For a long time, I was under the false impression that I could only do one thing and fulfill my vocation with one, single job throughout my life. What I have come to realize through my interactions with many different people is that God doesn’t have one end to our stories. Our vocational discernment doesn’t stop when we figure out what we want to do and find our first job. That first job or even the job that lasts most of our lives is not the end to our story. God is calling each of us to do many things in our lives that all relate back to His plan for us. I am open to go wherever God is leading me and to do whatever His will is for me. Yes, I have chosen my major to be Teacher Education because I believe I am being called to be a teacher but that does not mean that I won’t possibly work for a parish or a non-profit organization for part of my life. Teaching is something that will come forth in my everyday life, in the conversations that I have and in the passion that I have for spreading my faith to the younger generation, whether I am in the classroom or not.

For a while now, I have dreamed of being a missionary teacher – I want to travel to different countries so that I can teach theology and serve people of different places and cultures. I also want to work in the Vatican at some point in my life (but who doesn’t dream of working with the Pope, right?). Teaching in any school in any place that allows me to share the love of Christ with my students is what I want for my future. The fact is that all over the world every school and every child within that school needs good educators that can help prepare their hearts and minds for receiving Christ more fully. I know that wherever God calls me to, that is exactly where I am needed at the time. I can only hope that I will have the strength and the courage to take the right opportunities that God plans for me. And I hope that each of you can do this as well.

Let us pray together for the strength and the courage to follow the will of God so that He can lead us to where we are needed. Whether you are an educator or not, God has you right where He wants you because the people that you are encountering in your daily life right now need your presence. 

Written by: Victoria Schoen

Edited by: Susan Ferguson, Barbara Miller, and Regina Lloyd