Young Catholics will gather to look at their life choices at Invocation 2010, a festival for young adults to be held in the grounds of St. Mary's College, Oscott from July 2 - 4. The event is aimed at young men and women aged 16-35 who are interested in deepening their relationship with God, and who might be thinking of becoming priests or nuns. They will be offered advice, workshops, and time for prayer and reflection. In total, over 300 people will be attending. Workshops will look at questions such as ‘How will I know if I am doing the right thing with my life?', ‘What is prayer?', ‘What is vocation, what does it mean to my life?', ‘Are you ready to answer a need of the present times?' and ‘Are you ready to give an account of the witness in you?'.

The consultation role of the Diocesan Pastoral Council was the principal topic of its February 2010 meeting. Bishop Christopher, writing in the April DPC Newsletter says: "As you will notice from this newsletter, we have been spending time reflecting on the consultation nature of our Diocesan Pastoral Council. We are still comparatively poor at consulting others about important matters, and generally making sure that people who need to know do know. This is not a failing peculiar to the Church, but we seem to be good at it! It often happens despite the best of intentions, we have more work to do and we may also need to revisit the DPC constitution.

"We have recently been provided with some useful material about vocations promotion. I would want to thank Liz Toy for much of this. We have some urgent issues here - what do we mean by vocation and who would be our target group? Our need to provide more priests for our own needs is plain to see. However this need requires a context, which is that everyone living the Christian life is called in one way or another. How do we nurture both the common Christian vocation and the many more special vocations?"

The Catholic Church celebrates the World Day of Prayer for Priesthood and Consecrated Life on Sunday, 25 April 2010. On this day, the Church in England and Wales encourages young people to consider whether priesthood or religious life might be for them. Over 4,000 posters and other materials have been distributed amongst parishes, university chaplaincies and schools. This event takes place each year on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, also known as Vocations Sunday. The materials sent out to schools celebrate the diverse vocations in today's Church as well as encouraging students to reflect on what it means to be called.

Pope Benedict has designated this year as a ‘Year for Priesthood' encouraging a renewal of our understanding of the gift of priesthood in the Church and encouraging priests to be renewed in their dedication to Christ and his people. This presents a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the priestly vocation and this year's poster links the priesthood to the visit of the Holy Father to England and Scotland in September, which many people are looking forward to with enthusiasm.

Sunday, 3 May is Vocations Sunday, the day which marks the launch of the Catholic Church's annual campaign to encourage young men and women to think about how they've been called by God and to consider whether priesthood or religious life might be for them.

A Vocations Retreat is taking place in Plymouth Diocese from early evening on Friday, 2 May until after lunch on Sunday, 4 May. It will provide a time a prayer, discussion and reflection for those men considering their possible calling to the priesthood. For more information or to book a place, contact Fr Trevor Jordan on 01752 667433, or email pathways_community [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk

My Dear Friends

This Sunday of Easter has for some time been associated with Vocations, a word that has been understood to refer primarily to vocations to priestly and religious life. This association is deeply embedded in our perception of Christ our Shepherd.

However, in recent years we have been encouraged to widen our understanding of vocation.