23/04/2026
10 thing to ask yourself when discerning your VOCATION
1. Do you spend time in silence every day?
Silence matters in discernment because God’s call is often heard in stillness, as written in The Bible where the prophet Elijah encounters God in a “still small voice.”
Many vocation directors say a habit of silence is foundational for discerning whether one is called to marriage, priesthood, religious life, or another vocation.
2. Do you ask God what His will is for your life?
-Openness to being called
Are you truly willing to let God lead, even if His plan differs from your own?
-Relationship with God
Do you treat discernment as a conversation with God, seeking, listening, trusting or only as making your own decisions and asking God to bless them?
-Surrender
Are you asking, like Samuel, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening,” or like Jesus Christ, “Not my will, but Yours be done”?
3. What fills you with passion, joy, and peace?
-Your deepest desires
In Christian discernment, holy desires can point toward vocation. What consistently draws your heart toward love, service, and meaning?
-Where you experience spiritual consolation
In the tradition of Ignatius of Loyola, joy and peace can be signs of God’s movement. What brings a deep, lasting peace, not just temporary excitement?
4. Do you have a spiritual companion or mentor to walk with you while discerning?
- Are you discerning alone or with guidance?
Vocation discernment is rarely meant to be isolated. The question asks whether you invite wise guidance into your journey.
-Openness to accompaniment
Are you teachable and open to being guided, corrected, or challenged by someone more experienced in the spiritual life?
5. Are you listening, praying and daring?
-Are you listening?
Not just hearing words, but being attentive to God’s voice in silence, Scripture, prayer, desires of the heart, circumstances, and wise counsel. It asks: Am I receptive to God’s invitation?
Think of Samuel: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
-Are you praying?
This asks whether discernment is rooted in relationship with God, not just personal analysis. Are you bringing your vocation before God consistently and letting prayer shape your choices?
-Are you daring?
This is the striking part. It asks whether you have the courage to risk saying yes to God. Many people listen and pray, but hesitate when a call requires sacrifice.
6. Are you challenging yourself to do more in prayer, daily mass, adoration, or read more scriptures?
-Are you deepening your relationship with God?
Is your prayer life growing, or staying comfortable and minimal?
- Are you responding generously to grace?
The word challenging suggests moving beyond convenience. Are you stretching yourself to give God more of your time and heart?
-Are you cultivating habits that support discernment?
Daily prayer, Mass, adoration, and Scripture help form a person to hear God’s call more clearly.
-Are you pursuing spiritual discipline?
Vocation often involves sacrifice and fidelity. This question can quietly ask whether you are growing in the discipline needed to sustain a calling.
7. Are you talking and questioning those who have already said yes to a vocation?
-Are you seeking wisdom from those already living the call?
Do you look to people who have experience of the vocation you’re discerning?
-Are you serious enough to ask real questions?
Not idealized questions, but honest ones about prayer, sacrifice, joy, struggles, community, and mission.
-Are you testing your discernment against reality?
Sometimes vocation can remain abstract or romanticized. Speaking with those who have said yes helps ground discernment in real life.
-Are you open to witness as a way God may speak?
God often calls through the example of others, the joy, fidelity, and peace seen in people already living their vocation.
8. Are you listening to what others might see in you that you don’t see in yourself?
- Are you open to affirmation of gifts you may overlook?
Others may notice qualities in you, compassion, leadership, prayerfulness, generosity that could point toward a calling.
- Are you willing to let others help you discern?
This asks whether you trust wise voices, friends, mentors, priests, family, spiritual directors to speak into your vocation.
- Can you receive possible calls you have not considered?
Sometimes others see a vocation in us before we do. Many saints first heard the question through others.
- Are you humble enough to accept that self-knowledge has limits?
Discernment is not only “What do I think God wants?” but also “How might God be speaking through others?”
9. Are you considering all your options? Visiting different communities, seminaries, or homes?
- Are you testing a call in real life?
Visiting communities or seminaries moves discernment from ideas to experience. It asks whether you are letting reality help clarify your call.
- Are you actively seeking where you belong?
Different communities have different charisms, spiritualities, and missions. The question asks whether you are discerning not just whether you are called, but where you may be called.
- Are you serious enough to explore before deciding?
It can probe whether you are making assumptions or doing the work of discernment.
10. Are you being mindful or what you are most grateful for and least grateful for to see what gives you the most life?
- What actually gives you life vs. drains you
In vocation discernment, “life” often means what brings deep peace, energy, purpose, and love, not just excitement or comfort.
- Are you paying attention to your inner movements?
Gratitude helps you notice where you experience joy, meaning, or fulfillment, and also where you feel empty or resistant.
This connects with the spiritual awareness taught by Ignatius of Loyola, who encouraged noticing where consolation (peace, hope, clarity) and desolation (confusion, heaviness, loss of direction) appear.
- Are you reflecting on your experiences instead of rushing past them?
Mindfulness here means pausing to ask: What is shaping me? What is God showing me through my daily life?
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Heavenly Father,
You call each person by name and have a loving purpose for every life.
Pour out Your Holy Spirit upon all who are discerning their vocation.
Grant them wisdom to hear Your voice in the midst of noise,
courage to follow where You lead,
and trust to surrender to Your holy will.
For those called to marriage, bless them with faithful love.
For those called to priesthood or religious life, fill them with generosity and joy.
For those called to single life or service in the world, strengthen them to live their calling with purpose.
Remove fear, doubt, and confusion.
Give them peace in prayer, clarity in decision,
and companions who will guide and support them.
May all discover the vocation through which they can love You most fully
and serve others most faithfully.
We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
