Power of prayer works for vocations

If you’re skeptical about the power of prayer in fostering religious vocations, consider the extraordinary example of Elizabeth Louisa Rolls Vaughan.

A 19th-century convert to Catholicism who came from a family that would later help found the Rolls-Royce car company, “Eliza” devoted an hour a day in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament inside a family chapel in Wales.

Praying very intentionally that some of her children would enter religious life, she placed her trust in God.

Of her surviving 13 children (one died after birth), four of Eliza’s five daughters became nuns and six of her eight sons became priests, including a bishop, an archbishop and a cardinal.

Cardinal Herbert Vaughan, Eliza’s eldest child, founded the Josephite Mill Hill Fathers in England, a missionary society that sent priests in the 1870s to the Archdiocese of Baltimore to minister to Black Americans.

The St. Joseph’s Society of the Sacred Heart, based in Baltimore, separated from the Mill Hill Fathers in 1893 to form its own religious society, continuing and expanding the mission to former slaves, free Blacks and their descendants. Today, the American Josephites serve in the Mid-Atlantic, the South, the Gulf Coast and California, providing dedicated outreach to the Black community.

As the Catholic Church prepares to observe the 60th anniversary of the World Day of Prayer for Vocations April 29-30, Eliza’s amazing story is a reminder that prayer really does have a long-term and far-reaching impact.

Eliza’s faithful example and steadfast prayer touched the lives not only of her children, but also the countless lives of the people her children served in ministry around the globe.

If prayer worked for Eliza, why shouldn’t it work for us?

There are many opportunities to pray for vocations in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Several parishes hold special Masses or hours for eucharistic adoration for vocations. Some women’s religious communities set aside special times for prayer for vocations, and the Serra Club supports seminarians regularly with prayer.

Cathy Sitzwohl, a parishioner of St. John the Evangelist in Severna Park (and a cousin of former Baltimore auxiliary bishop Cardinal J. Francis Stafford), even set up a website (spiritualbouquetministry.weebly.com) where people can pray for seminarians, priests and deacons by name.

We can’t, of course, stop with prayer. When we notice young men or women who might make good priests, deacons, or religious sisters or brothers, we should encourage them to think about it. Without pressuring them, we can also make sure our children know religious life can be a beautiful, life-giving possibility.

Eliza’s husband, Col. John Francis Vaughan, had been part of a long line of Catholics loyal to their faith despite persecution in Great Britain. When his wife prayed daily that her children would answer the call to religious life, she did so knowing full well the challenges they would face in a society openly hostile to Catholicism.

Today, we face a hostility of a different nature as religious devotion seems weakened in a secular world that makes it culturally more difficult to express belief in God.

Like Eliza, we can turn to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. 

The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore has a perpetual eucharistic adoration chapel in its undercroft, where prayers for vocations are encouraged as one of the chapel’s special intentions. Scrolled over two arches in the small spiritual outpost is a constant reminder of Christ’s call for prayer, as quoted by St. Matthew: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Let’s all pray for laborers to the harvest.

Archbishop William E. Lori will celebrate a 4 p.m. April 29 Mass for the World Day of Prayer for Vocations at St. Margaret in Bel Air. Father Matthew Himes, associate director of vocations, will preach the homily. All seminarians will attend.

Email George P. Matysek Jr. at gmatysek@CatholicReview.org

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