“Your Gifts Help to Nurture Vocations to the Priesthood and Religious Life”

Nurturing an Ongoing Culture of Vocations.

The Bishop’s Appeal provides the resources which enable the Office of the Vicar for Vocations to plant the seeds from which vocations to the priesthood, the diaconate, and religious life will grow. Your gifts help support our seminarians with financial assistance as they undertake the journey to be ordained to the priesthood of Jesus Christ for the Diocese of Albany.

The future of vocations in the Diocese of Albany is promising indeed. Currently there are 33 seminarians and aspirants (individuals seriously discerning a vocation) and more than 109 men throughout the Diocese of Albany who are actively discerning a vocation. The St. Isaac Jogues House of Discernment in Watervliet, New York has 13 men participating in our two-year discernment program which prepares men to go on to seminary formation. There are 6 men who live at the St. Isaac Jogues House of Discernment. With this number, the house is at capacity.

This promising future for the priesthood in our diocese is built upon a rich tradition of faith lived out through the participation of the People of God in the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ. We are all given a share in the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ by virtue of our baptismal call. That baptismal call enables us to share in the mission and ministry of Jesus as Priest, Prophet and King. It is in the living out of that threefold ministry that we are able to nurture an ongoing culture of vocations.

“Commitment to mission is not something added on to the Christian life as a kind of decoration, but is instead an essential element of faith itself. A relationship with the Lord entails being sent out into the world as prophets of His word and witnesses of His love.”

Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium