Story and verse have a spiritual power to help us see life’s complexities, fractures, and joys with fresh eyes. Catholic sisters, brothers, and priests share how literature has helped them grow as human beings and people of faith.
The sacred art form of iconography brings spiritual depth to those who use icons in prayer and those who create them using ancient and established techniques.
Religious communities find unique and varied ways to celebrate their cultural and ethnic heritages.
Loving God, loving neighbor, and loving science all fit together for these members of religious communities.
If you’ve ever taken a retreat, thank a sister, brother, or priest. Catholic retreat centers around the world have largely been built and run by religious communities, who continue to offer these spaces for prayer, contemplation, and learning.
In the United States, attitudes toward migrants and refugees have varied widely, but one group has predictably been on the spot to offer aid, shelter, and spiritual solace: religious communities of men and women.
With nonurban areas in the United States making up 97 percent of the land but only 19 percent of its population, religious serving in rural ministries cover a lot of ground. Here’s a look at some of the ways sisters, brothers, and priests are making inroads in America’s backcountry.
Where do you pray? Hopefully anywhere and everywhere! But it helps to have special places set aside from the distractions of everyday life to get into a prayerful state.
VISION received many wonderful photo submissions of prayer spaces from religious communities. Here are more that were not featured in the print and digital editions of the 2018 VISION Vocation Guide.
Song and verse are among the oldest ways of praising God, and the impulse to be generative is one of the main components of a call to religious life, so it’s not surprising that poets are part of the vast array of creative religious.
Find out what's new and interesting in the vocation-related books.
VISION received many wonderful submissions of poetry by published religious poets for the 2018 VISION Spotlight. Here are more in our online extra.
Like plants, people, too, need to germinate in the right environment before they bloom. One monastic sister learned this lesson from tending her garden. Other religious learn similar lessons by their nurture of nature.
VISION received many wonderful photo submissions of gardens from religious communities. Here are more that were not featured in the print and digital editions of the 2017 VISION Vocation Guide.
The central image of Christianity receives unique expression within religious communities.
VISION received many photo submissions of crosses from religious communities. Here are more that were not featured in the print and digital editions of the 2016 VISION Vocation Guide.
How the ways of monastic life show up in the kitchen.
For writers in religious life, putting pen to paper is their way to give witness to the Word.
Since the arrival of a small group of sisters in New Orleans almost 300 years ago, Catholic women religious have educated, cared for, and served millions of Americans. A recent traveling exhibit tells their story.
Members of religious communities connect beauty and the sacred—and their religious vocation with their art.
VISION received many items about the art of members of religious communities. Here is the art and artists who were not featured in print and digital editions of the 2011 Catholic Religious Vocation Discernment Guide, as well as more about the artists whose work appears on page 136 of the magazine.
More about the artists whose work appears in "Inspired images" and on page 136 of the 2011 edition of the VISION Catholic Religious Vocaton Discerment Guide.
VISION ASKED VOCATION MINISTERS in the U.S. and Canada to recommend some of the best books on life as a priest, religious sister, or religious brother. What follows is a list of some of the good reading they recommend.
Communications and technology are advancing at an incredible rate. Members of Catholic religious orders—as the following stories show—are keeping pace.
"Religious life ought to promote growth in the Church by way of attraction. The Church must be attractive. Wake up the world! Be witnesses of a different way of doing things, of acting, of living! It is possible to live differently in this world.” -- Pope Francis