May 7, 2013

The Archdiocese of Washington sponsored the Nineteenth Annual Eighth Grade Mass for Vocations at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Students from twenty parochial schools came with their principals and teachers for the occasion. In addition to the Mass in the upper church, the archdiocese invited religious communities and congregations to have display booths in the Memorial Hall so that students could meet priests and consecrated religious to learn something about their charisms and ministries. The printed program quoted Blessed John Paul II’s words, “What is a vocation? It is an interior call of grace, which falls into the soul like a seed, to mature within it.” All who participated are hopeful that that will be the effect of the Mass and activities of the day on some of these really interested young boys and girls.