Missionaries of the Sacred Heart

MSC Vocations

Welcome to the Vocations Page of the MSC Irish Province

Fr. Dave Nixon MSC, Vocations Director, at a Vocations exhibition in Ireland

A Message from Fr Dave...

"Thanks for visiting the Vocations page of our MSC website. You came here because you are searching! We are all searching. Perhaps the greatest search is the one that focuses on what we’re going to do with our lives: Who will we be? What will we do? How will we live? What will we believe in? What will we stand for? Huge questions, but no easy answers.

F or some people the search leads them to wonder, “Am I being called to something different?” Religious life and priesthood are a bit different from the usual. They are not for everyone but they just might be what God has in mind and heart for you.

NEW TO THE SITE

Movie Reviews!

Scroll down towards the bottom of this page to read a monthly movie review that may help in your vocation discernment.

This month:
"Molokai: The Story of Fr Damien"

The late Pope John Paul II once said, “We need heralds of the Gospel who are experts in humanity, and who know the depths of the human heart, who can share the joys, the hopes, the agonies, the distress of people today.” These words capture our own spirit as Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. Maybe they also find an echo in your journey.

Who knows where the quest will lead you? I wish you well in your searching. If I can help you in any way I invite you to make contact with me, because nobody need search alone."

Fr. Dave Nixon, msc Vocations Director
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Telephone: +44 151 228 8845
Mobile: +44 7918 638013

What does MSC mean?

MSC are the initials for the Latin words, Missionarii Sacratissimi Cordis, which mean Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.

Who are the MSC?

We are a group of priests and brothers trying to be and bring the message of God’s love to the world in the life we lead and the work we do. This love is something real and alive - not just a nice idea - the way Jesus makes it real and alive across the pages of the Gospel in the way he treats each person he meets. Read more here...

Our way of life?

Usually living as part of a group or community, we share our talents, time and resources together. Being part of a team means we’re not isolated but have others to support, encourage and challenge us. We live what’s known as religious life, which means a life marked by prayer (personally and as a community), ministries of service and the vows of celibacy, obedience and poverty.

What do we do?

Young MSCs across Europe meet annually

Some other groups and orders were set up to do one particular job, like working in schools or with the sick. But we work wherever and however we’re needed.

As an MSC you could be working and ministering in many different ways.

You could be serving the people of a parish, teaching at university or school, sitting with the sick or their family as hospital chaplain, running a youth club, at development work in a mission country, guiding people through a retreat, lending a listening ear as a counsellor, helping people through the high of their wedding day or the low of a bereavement, and many other things in between.

Where do we work?

Being an MSC means working home or away. Active in 54 different countries, we are divided up into manageable areas called Provinces. The Irish Province stretches out to include Ireland, England and Wales, South Africa, Venezuela, Russia and the USA. Missionary work abroad is voluntary but we support each other in what we do in all sorts of ways.

What are those Vows about?

The three vows or commitments which express what it means to be part of a religious order help us to express who we are called to be.

Celibacy means living the single life in response to God’s invitation but also being part of a community and family spirit, recognising that people need people.
Obedience comes from a deep sense of really listening to what God is prompting us to do and be. There are no voices from the clouds or words written across the sky! So we look to the everyday and ordinary ways God leads us in the people and events we encounter.
Poverty doesn’t mean we run from having material things or possessions. Instead it means using things and time in the service of people, living simply and not hoarding them for ourselves.

Training and Formation

Alan Neville MSC from Cork spends two pastoral years in Venezuela as he prepares for ordination

Becoming a Missionary of the Sacred Heart doesn’t happen over night. Plenty of time and help is given to preparing us for a way of life that is certainly not ordinary!

People interested in exploring if this way is for them usually journey with us for a time of Accompaniment. This is an opportunity to carefully and prayerfully get more of a sense of what we are about and come to know yourself better.

If a person decides to join us he is helped along the many steps of prayer, study, reflection, living and working in our pastoral and missionary settings and sharing our way of life to try it out for size. All this happens before any commitment is made.

Vocation???

Young MSCs in conversation

The two biggest questions in anybody’s life are:

Who does God want me to be?
What does God want me to do?

Put them another way: Who do you want to be? What do you want to do?

What we do with our one, precious, never-to-be-repeated life could be described as our vocation or calling. Everybody has a particular vocation or calling. Working out what it is and trying to live it as fully as we can is sometimes difficult, seldom boring and often surprising ! Trying to work out the answers to these huge questions is often called discernment.

The MSC student community in Venezuela
What should I do? Who will I be?

If you have sensed the tug of God’s voice in your heart that this way of life might be what God has in mind for you, don’t be too surprised. You are not on your own! Others sense it too. It can be a bit frightening, exciting and confusing - all at the same time!! All sorts of questions, thoughts and feelings crop up. “Would it really be for me?” “How can I be sure?” “Am I good enough?” “What will others say if I even raise the idea?”

What Next?

If you want to find out more about the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, or about Religious Life in general, or you just want some help in working through your questions, feel free to contact us:

England:	Fr. Dave Nixon MSC Vocation Office St. Albert's Presbytery 31, Hollow Croft Stockbridge Village Liverpool L28 4EA England
	Tel. +44 151 228 8845
	Mobile. +44 7918 638013
	E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Ireland:	Fr. John Fitzgerald MSC Sacred Heart Parish Western Road Cork Ireland
	Tel +353 21 4800799
	Mobile +353 86 8626007
	E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Resources for the journey...

Sometimes A Book Can Help!

Trying to map out our future can seem overwhelming. Even finding the best step to take next can be tough!

Sometimes taking stock by reading and reflecting on what others have experienced and written about can offer a signpost.

Reviews of two useful books are offered here.

"How to Discover your Personal Mission" by John Monbourquette

John Monbourquette is a priest and a psychologist. His book “How To Discover Your Personal Mission” is written to accompany people who are struggling to decide what path to follow in life.

Knowing oneself better and coming to a clearer sense of what we want to accomplish in life are its main aims. Sections on personal story, the dreams we wish to pursue, practical exercises to focus and strategies for discerning and deciding, all make it a practical guide for people searching to map out their future.

“How To Discover Your Personal Mission: The Search for Meaning” by John Monbourquette is published in London by Darton, Longman and Todd, priced £ 9:95. ISBN 0-232-52452-1.

“Discernment: The Art of Choosing Well” by Pierre Wolff

Choices, big and small, surround us every day. To be human is to be always choosing and deciding. Probably the most important and far-reaching choices we make concern our path in life: where will I live, what course will I do, and what path will my career and ultimately my life take? Where do other people and God fit in with my life choices?

The job of choosing carefully and deciding wisely is often summed up by the word “discernment.” In this book, Pierre Wolff offers a clear and simple guide to deciding well so as not to drift into situations or choices we will later regret.

Using the wisdom and advice of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Wolff reminds us that discernment simply means putting to use abilities we are all equipped with. The question is how to learn to use these abilities when the time comes to make a decision.

The book will takes the reader on the journey of discovering how to use head and heart in order to manage our decisions with greater freedom – being faithful to our deepest self and faithful to God’s dream for us at the same time. In an age when individualism and selfishness can creep in without us realising it, Wolff explains that personal discernment and group discernment can and do go hand in hand. The best decisions are seldom made alone.

Gentle but searching honesty is encouraged by the questions the author puts at the end of each chapter. Our thoughts, feelings, past choices, values and beliefs all combine to make up the ingredients of how we choose what path to take in life. God’s words to us as well as what we hear from family, friends and even foes all provide food for thought but also food for life!

Fruitful choices that will enrich others and ourselves are seldom easy. Time and effort are needed. But we are not alone on the journey of deciding which way next. Others have been there too and others are on that journey right now. This book encourages to learn from their wisdom and to recognise that the tools for choosing well are not far from any of us. Discernment: The Art of Choosing Well” by Pierre Wolff is published by Liguori Publications, 2003.

And sometime a movie too!

It is not plain sailing discerning one’s path in life these days. There are so many options. And, the question about the role God plays in our decisions is not an easy one to answer. We seek advice. We think about our own experiences. We pray. We listen to stories.

One way of trying a story about vocation is to watch a movie, a story - with an ending - that presents us with characters, questions, issues that get our interest, engage our emotions and stimulate our minds. It can contribute to our discernment.

Here is a movie for the month. Our website will add another movie each month. Our movie reviews are provided by Fr Peter Malone MSC, an Australian MSC based in London who works for Signis (the World Catholic Association for Communication) in that area of Media, Faith and Culture.

MOLOKAI

Can there still be heroes? Not the superhuman types, but the types who give themselves completely to others. The men and women who are moved by a religious motivation and lay down their day-to-day lives for others – and sometimes their lives in death.

The 19th century Belgian priest, Damien, was one of these heroes.

Molokai, the Father Damien Story, was written by John Briley who also wrote Gandhi and Cry Freedom. It was directed by Dutch-born Australian, Paul Cox who took his crew to Molokai itself. The film was made in the actual places where Fr Damian lived with the outcast lepers. The Hawaiian island and its mountains provides spectacular backdrops to the action.

The movie boasts a large international and Australian cast. Sydney actor, David Wenham, is a down-to-earth, sometimes cantankerous saint.

The result is a moving story of a saint (beatified in 1996 by John Paul II) with a world-wide reputation in his time for his charity and his social concern for lepers. It is also a serious social justice movie about leprosy in the 19th century and its gradual elimination. (Catholics of previous generations were brought up on the biography by film director, John Farrow, 'Damien the Leper'.

Damien is presented as a down-to-earth priest who volunteered for his work with the lepers knowing that he would not be able to leave the island. The film is more contemporary in its picture of the struggles of a priest in terms of his vows: poverty in living in Molokai and his need for help and funds; obedience in the harsh commands of his superiors; chastity in terms of temptation and testing.

Peter Malone MSC

KEEPING THE FAITH

Uh-ho. This is the film where the trailer shows the young seminarian setting his surplice alight with the thurible coals and then sitting in the holy water stoop to extinguish the flames. Shades of Fr Ted and a touch of Ballykissangel?

Actually, Keeping the Faith is an entertaining American comedy which raises an important question for people who are committed to their Jewish faith or to their Catholic faith: how do you communicate something of faith and religion to a modern TV and movie audience who may not be churchgoers or who have unhappy memories of their life in the church? Keep faith with them so that they can keep the faith? It is easy to preach to the converted and support their faith.

This, in fact, is one of the problems confronted by the two central characters, Jake (Ben Stiller), the young rabbi whom his synagogue like very much (and want to marry him off to an eligible woman in the congregation) and Brian (Edward Norton), the young parish assistant, (who is committed to celibacy). They have a talent for communicating in a contemporary way, especially in their preaching - and their congregations increase almost miraculously.

But, Anna (their heroine whom they last saw at school aged 8) gets in touch and comes back to New York, a top efficient business executive. Well, this being the movies, you can guess some of the complications that are going to arise, especially as regards relationships, making us ask questions about the vow of celibacy and, in these days of some clerical confusion, what is the vocation of the priest. The scene where Brian seeks the help of his old parish priest is worth listening to.

The screenplay is not meant to be realistic in the sense of a naturalistic drama of what happens in either the Jewish or the Catholic community. Rather, the film mirrors, in its comic and emotional way, some of the struggles of religious people today in their personal lives and in their community. Here the rabbi and the priest in an era, as they note, where barriers are breaking down, open an interfaith karaoke club for the elderly!

It's not a theological analysis of religious vocation and modern pastoral care but, in its light and often humorously serious way, it does raise the issues.

Peter Malone MSC

Praying things through...

A vocation Prayer Loving God, You know me by heart and you call me by name. Through Jesus, your Son, you assure me that you are with me always. As I seek to find your way for me, help me to see that I can make a difference in the world. As I discover the talents you have given me, help me to trust that your Kingdom will be established from the smallest of seeds. Amen.
	A Searcher’s Prayer Jesus, light of the world, shine your truth into my confused heart. So many choices lie before me: things I’d like to do and ways I’d like to go. Give me the courage to follow my dreams, and the wisdom to be realistic. As the years unfold, I look to you to guide my searching, bless my working, deepen my loving and keep me safe. Amen.
Exam Prayer Jesus, Teacher and Friend, be with me now as I sit this exam. Give me a peaceful heart, a focused mind and a steady hand. Help me to remember what I have learned, to answer wisely and well, and persevere when I am tired and weary. Amen.