A Homily for Vocations Sunday...
Fr Richard Reid CSsR, the Vocations Director, preached at all the masses in Bishop Eton on Vocations Sunday. He offers the notes from that homily...

Vocations Homily
Preached at all the masses at Bishop Eton
on Vocations Sunday April 2013
I am now wearing a different hat because I stand before you, not as the Rector of Bishop Eton, but as the Vocations Director of the Redemptorists of the London Province – a fancy title or what?
Today is that wonderful day when we pray for vocations all over the world – so it doesn’t matter where you are today – you might be in Timbuktu or Childwall – we are all today focused and praying for vocations to the priesthood and the religious life.
Unapologetically, I stand here to speak about the wonder of this vocation. I know that many of you have found your vocation in life and that it is sacred and precious to you and I celebrate them also, but today I want to speak specifically about the religious, the priestly or the consecrated vocation.
I want to begin by first of all telling you something of my vocation story, which I think this is an important thing for a vocations director to do.
I should be clear right from the beginning and tell you that I had no intention of ever joining the Redemptorists. I did however want to become a priest and planned on doing that in my home diocese. When I was a boy I thought my diocese at home was great – and I still think that now all these years later. It’s a bit like this archdiocese; it’s a great diocese. In the diocese they have wonderful people, wonderful priests and over the years they’ve had wonderful bishops. So I was going to join my home diocese in Scotland, or so I thought.