The word itself means a call or summons, so that having a vocation means more than having a job. It means answering a specific call, doing what one is meant to do. We find a number of fruitful tensions within the experience of vocation.
Vocations are a way of being and a particular mode of doing in service to others.
Vocations are found in the the combination of praxis and praxis reflected on. Vocations are a way of coming to self fulfillment, while transcending the self that would be fulfilled. Vocations are invited yet one is responsible for discovering the invitation by probing one s deepest desires. Vocations are utterly personal and discovered in the depths of one s interiority but are socially confirmed. Vocations are a commitment to a way of being for others but external circumstances change the way the commitment evolves.