Vocation

Working in the nonprofit sector, especially as the founding leader of an organization, generally implies a sense of vocation that really is a calling to mission, and the modern Catholic expression of this is through the 1988 Apostolic Exhortation by Pope John Paul II, Christifideles Laici: (On the Vocation and Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World)

Dr. William E. May reflected on personal vocation in the Culture of Life Foundation Briefs.

An excerpt.

“Introduction
My question is whether everyone has a unique, personal vocation. To prepare the way for answering this question I will first summarize what Christians believe about their personal vocation to follow Christ. It is likely that a majority of our readers are Christians, but I apologize to our non-Christian allies in the struggle to make ours a culture of life for some specifically Christian reflections at the beginning of this essay. I do so because as I hope then to show we can speak meaningfully of a unique personal vocation for everyone, including non-Christians.

“Baptism and the vocation to “holiness”
Most of us were baptized as infants when we were unable to make free choices for ourselves. But others, our godparents, stood as our proxies, responding in our name to the call to die to sin and to live in a way worthy of God's own children, to be holy. And, as we grew in the household of the faith, we renewed our baptismal commitment when we received the sacrament of confirmation; and we are given the opportunity to reaffirm this commitment throughout our lives, particularly during the liturgy of the Easter vigil. Christians believe that in choosing to be baptized they have, through their faith and the redemptive work of Christ, “died” to sin and been raised to a new kind of life. They have now become truly “children of God,” members of the divine family and called to be "perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt 5.48). Baptized persons, like Jesus to whom they are united, are now those whose "food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work" (Jn 4.34). They have the God-given vocation to become holy, to become saints.

“This was a central theme of Vatican Council II, whose dogmatic constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, insists that "all in the Church, whether they belong to the hierarchy or are cared for by it, are called to holiness, according to the apostle's saying: 'For this is the will of God, your sanctification' (1 Thes 4.3; cf. Eph 1.4)” (no. 39). In this document the Council also affirmed: “The followers of Christ... must hold on to and perfect in their lives that sanctification which they have received from God” (no. 40). Moreover, the way lay people are to pursue holiness, the Council insisted in its pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world, Gaudium et Spes, is in and through the commitments and ordinary activities of everyday life (see no. 43).”