From left to right: Sister Catherine Joy, Sister Virginia Joy, and Sister Israel Rose of the Sisters of Life at SEEK 2026 in Denver. | Credit: Francesca Fenton/EWTN News
Jan 7, 2026 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Hundreds of young women filled a ballroom on Jan. 4 at the 2026 SEEK Conference in Denver to hear Sister Virginia Joy Cotter, SV, discuss how to follow God’s call and determine one’s vocation.
“When we think about vocation, it’s ultimately a call to love and be loved,” Sister Virginia Joy said during her talk, titled “The Adventure of the Yes: Following God’s Call.”
“Growing up, or even now, you’re probably asked, ‘What are you going to do when you grow up? What’s your major? What do you want to do with your life?’” she said. “I would guess no one has probably asked you, ‘What are you going to do with your love? How do you plan to make a gift of yourself?’ But these are the questions that sit behind a vocation.”
“For some, the word vocation might be completely foreign to you. For others, maybe it provokes a stream of emotions from wonder to anticipation to anxiety. Whatever it means to you, it’s good to take stock of where it sits with you right now and open your heart to whatever God wants to give you this morning.”
Sister Virginia Joy shared that “ultimately, our vocation is not a problem to be fixed or a riddle to be solved … Vocation is deeply relational, personal, and distinct. It comes from the Latin ‘vocare,’ meaning to call, to name, to summon. There’s one who calls and there’s one who responds. It’s a relationship between each individual and God.”
Here are seven ways a person can discern his or her vocation based on Sister Virginia Joy’s talk:
Pay attention to where and how you are called to love
Sister Virginia Joy shared that the questions behind one’s vocation are fundamentally about “what are you going to do with your love” and how you are called to “make a gift of yourself,” not merely what career or role you will have.
Receive God’s love first
She emphasized that the prerequisite for hearing God’s call is first receiving his love, since vocation flows from a relationship.
“When I think about a vocational call, I think of two things: First, God is the one who calls, and it is always a call of love. Second, we are the ones to respond to that call and to love in return. So first, the prerequisite to hearing God’s call is receiving his love,” Sister Virginia Joy said.
Develop a real prayer life and speak honestly to God
God makes himself known in prayer, especially when a person speaks from the heart — expressing longing, confusion, loneliness, or desire for meaning.
Sister Virginia Joy highlighted that “God is looking for a place to break in and make himself known. I trust you’ve experienced it here at SEEK. It’s real. He’s real. And he is in pursuit of your heart. He knows you and he desires that you come to know him. This happens in prayer.”
“But prayer can be challenging because we’re used to instant gratification. We want to see results. And yet relationships, they’re not about results,” she added. “Relationships take time, patience, and trust. Sometimes I think we settle or we allow ourselves to get distracted because real love means facing our weakness and searching for the Lord in times of loneliness, doubt, and even pain.”
Stay close to the sacraments, especially confession and the Eucharist
Sister Virginia Joy emphasized that living in grace and regularly receiving the sacraments helps ensure that a person does not miss God’s call and gains the strength to respond in his time.
She shared with those gathered that she has always found herself making life decisions after “a good confession — decisions to move across the country, decisions to become a missionary, decisions to accept a particular job or begin or end a dating relationship.”
“I know there can be a lot of fear about somehow missing what God is calling me to,” Sister Virginia Joy said. “And I just want to crush that fear because the truth is if you’re staying close to the sacraments, if you’re living in grace, you will not miss what God is calling you to. And because of the grace of the sacraments, you will have the strength to respond in God’s time.”
Live your call to love daily, even before knowing your definitive vocation
Sister Virginia Joy stressed that holiness and vocation are lived now, through everyday acts of love, even before one enters marriage, religious life, or another permanent state.
She asked those gathered: “Where are we called to love?”
“It’s not a complicated question. All the love happens right where God has you — with family, friends, roommates. We are each given so many opportunities to love every day. You might not be in your definitive vocation right now or five years from now, but your call to love is now. Your call to make a gift of yourself is now,” she said.
Recognize your unique gifts
Especially for women, discerning vocation involves recognizing the “uniquely feminine” capacity for receptivity, generosity, spiritual maternity, and leading others to God, Sister Virginia Joy explained.
“As women, we possess a unique capacity for love … Written into our very makeup by design, we as women have space for another, room for another. And the physical capacity — we’ve heard this over the days — the physical capacity to receive and carry life sheds a much deeper reality within the heart of each woman,” she said. “Our bodies and souls are intimately connected and together they tell us something — that our love is receptive, sensitive, generous, maternal.”
Observe where your heart becomes undivided and free
A key sign of vocation is interior freedom and unity of heart, where fear gives way to peace and clarity about where, as Sister Virginia Joy said, one is called “to make a gift of oneself in a total way.”
She shared that while discerning her own vocation her heart was divided — seeing the beauty in both married life and religious life. It wasn’t until she asked in prayer, “What do you want, Lord?” while on retreat with the Sisters of Life that she heard him say, “You. You. All of you for myself.”
“And in an instant, my heart was undivided,” she recalled. “I knew where I was being called to give my love and my life, and I felt more free than I ever had.”
“Your love story is going to be perfectly unique to you,” Sister Virginia Joy added. “God has been preparing something far beyond your expectations and he desires your freedom to respond with an undivided heart. Whether it be marriage, religious life, lay life, there is no doubt he wants you and your unique love. God loves you.”
Read More![‘As men, you’re called to act!’ speaker says to a packed room of young men at SEEK 2026 #Catholic
John Bishop, founder of Forge, speaks to hundreds of young men at the SEEK 2026 conference in the Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, on Jan. 2, 2026. | Credit: Amira Abuzeid/CNA
Jan 6, 2026 / 07:00 am (CNA).
Hundreds of young men at the SEEK 2026 conference in the Fort Worth, Texas, Diocese this weekend filled a cavernous room to learn about what it means to be a man formed by “Jesus Christ and his Church.”John Bishop, founder and executive director of Forge, an organization that supports the family with an emphasis on masculinity, told the young men that “you are much more than your animalistic desires. Live something higher for someone higher.”In his talk titled “God Made Men,” Bishop spoke about how when Adam, the first man, “opened his eyes, he had never seen a woman before. She was completely naked.”“It was a great day for Adam,” Bishop said to waves of laughter. “Adam was the Elon Musk of the garden.”Taking a more serious tone, Bishop asked: “How would Adam see Eve? In his theology of the body, Pope John Paul II said Eve’s body was a manifestation of her soul. Eve had a perfect body, but when Adam saw her naked body, he didn’t lust over her.”“He realized who she was and who he was: made to make a gift of himself to her,” he said.Bishop then turned to what happened next: “What did Adam do as the snake came into the garden?” he asked.“Nothing! The most common, toxic, nauseating sin that runs rampant throughout men in the world is that we don’t do a damn thing.”“When we see our brothers walking into sin, we twiddle our thumbs. When we see our daughters walking out wearing next to nothing, we say nothing. When we’re grandfathers seeing the culture going in a bad way, we watch football,” he said.‘The image of God lives in a man fully alive’“You’re called to act!” Bishop admonished the group. “You might be filled with doubt … but it might be time for you to take the first step.”“The image of God lives in a man fully alive … Study after study shows that when a good man acts and doesn’t hold anything back, when he follows Christ with all [he is], … when he gives himself over [to Christ], the effect of that one man’s life multiplies beyond anything that we can understand,” he said.Hundreds of young men listen to John Bishop’s talk on masculinity on Jan. 2, 2026, at the SEEK conference in Grapevine, Texas. | Credit: Amira Abuzeid/CNAPatricio Parra, a sophomore at Texas A&M University, told CNA that he enjoyed Bishop’s talk because he and his friends have noticed how “society says it’s toxic to be masculine.”Parra said a New York Times journalist asked him and his friends after the talk why his generation of men was so invested in the faith.“There’s a striving for men to want to be men again,” he told her. “As a society, we see male role models on YouTube, but they are deformed. Recently, there aren’t a lot of good masculine models to follow.”Parra said what stood out to him the most after Bishop’s talk was the idea that Adam saw Eve’s physical beauty as the same as her internal beauty and recognized her dignity.“We have to strive to be as masculine as that,” Parra said.He said he took to heart three pieces of advice Bishop gave the men in the audience.First: “There’s no glory without the cross, no sainthood without suffering; so suffer a little bit. Make your body go through hard things,” Parra recalled. “Everything we suffer now will bring fruit for others, including our children someday, who will want to emulate us.”Next, Parra said Bishop advised that young men invest in solid, masculine friendships where they encourage one another toward sainthood.Last, Bishop told his listeners to be like St. Joseph, who, after Adam, was “one of the most manly men in Scripture.”“Joseph never said a word. We just know what he did,” Parra said. “We should do the same: just be quiet and act.”Parra demonstrated a hand motion he and his other friends from Texas A&M invented to go with the words “Zip it and act!” He made a zipper motion across his mouth and then the letter “A” with his fingers.“Don’t just talk about asking a girl out; do it!” he said enthusiastically. “Don’t just think about seminary; go do it!”](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/as-men-youre-called-to-act-speaker-says-to-a-packed-room-of-young-men-at-seek-2026-catholic-john-bishop-founder-of-forge-speaks-to-hundreds-of-young-men-at-the-seek.jpg)
![At SEEK 2026, young Catholics urged to use technology intentionally, as a tool #Catholic
Andrew Laubacher, executive director of Humanality, ahead of his talk at SEEK 2026 in Denver, Colorado on Jan. 2, 2026. Credit: Francesca Fenton/EWTN News
Jan 3, 2026 / 17:56 pm (CNA).
In 2018, Andrew Laubacher, a touring Catholic musician at the time, decided to quit social media completely. Despite his recording label telling him that he was making a terrible decision, he was exhausted from the impact it was having on his life and felt God calling him to make this change.Fast-forward to today and Laubacher is now the executive director of Humanality, a nonprofit organization that “exists to help people discover freedom through an intentional relationship with technology” and offers individuals help to break their digital addiction through a 12-week digital detox program.Speaking to hundreds of young Catholics at SEEK 2026 in Denver, Colorado, on Jan. 2, he explained how social media can become addictive and have negative effects on the human person – including depression, anxiety, and body image issues – and offered tips on how individuals can use technology practically and intentionally.Laubacher began by highlighting data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which showed that the average U.S. life expectancy decreased for the first time between 2017 and 2019 and that “Americans are 10 times more likely to have a depressive illness than they were 60 years ago."Citing the federal data as well as research in Jonathan Haidt’s 2024 book “The Anxious Generation,” Laubacher explained that in 2010 a new feature was introduced on smartphones which led to “drastic increases in anxiety and depression.”What was this feature? The front-facing camera.“When that front-facing camera came out, all of a sudden our lives became self-defining,” he argued.Laubacher shared how he saw this play out in his own life – constantly comparing himself and his life to others, experiencing lust, feeling lonely, and wasting his time mindlessly scrolling through his feeds.“These technologies affected me in many different ways,” he said, “And when I made that leap [off social media] everything got better. My friendships got better, my purity, my productivity, my prayer got better. Everything started to improve.”“So you guys, the way that you've grown up with these technologies has literally changed everything… It's changed the way you think. It's changed the way you behave. It's changed the way you relate to one another. It's changed the way you sleep. It's changed the way you perceive reality,” Laubacher told those gathered. “You have to understand algorithms are literally shaping your perception of what is true. And if you are living your life scrolling and getting stuck into these platforms like me you're not necessarily as you want to be.”Laubacher said that the average 18-year-old in 2025 is on pace to have a 90-year life span. He then broke this down into how many months one might spend doing different activities such as eating, sleeping, going to school or work, and driving. Over the course of one's life, the average person is left with “334 months of free time – this is where you fall in love. This is where you create music, this is where you write that book, this is where you go on the trip with your loved ones. This is where you discover your vocation,” Laubacher said.“Right now, of those 334 months, 93% of that time is going to be spent on the screen,” he said. “At the end of your lives, you in this crowd will have looked at the screen for 27 years of your life." "And friends, my mission is to help you get that time back into your life. So you can invest that time and attention into the things that matter most.”Offering those gathered practical tools to gain more freedom from digital media, Laubacher highlighted three of the 11 ways Humanality’s digital detox program aims to help individuals gain a more human way to be – be light, be giving, and be present.“Be light” focuses on individuals stopping the nighttime scrolling and beginning to acknowledge the difference between daytime and nighttime. Laubacher explained that people spend 90% of their time indoors versus 100 years ago when people spent 90% of their time outdoors. Additionally, when people scroll on their phones at nighttime, the light from the screen tells the brain it’s daytime.“So, our separation from light in the daytime — and you scrolling yourself to sleep in the nighttime — is a huge reason for our mental health slash sleep disorder slash fatigue and exhaustion,” he said.“Be giving” turns the self-centered nature of social media to one where you “start to think outside of yourself,” which leads a person to be “more happy and more healthy when you live a life that is giving,” Laubacher explained.The last way Laubacher highlighted was “be present,” which aims to simply teach people how to be present with themselves, with others, and with God.
“Friends, I want to tell you right now, the scariest, best, most amazing adventure in your life is going to be learning to love God, your neighbor, and yourself,” Laubacher said. “And if I'm honest, I can love people pretty easily, but it's really hard for me to love myself most of the time. And I found that my technologies were not allowing me to get to know the person that God has created me to be.”“These three ways – there's a lot more – but these three ways I think if you start to implement in your day today you'll start to use technology as a tool and get out of these addictions.”](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/at-seek-2026-young-catholics-urged-to-use-technology-intentionally-as-a-tool-catholic-andrew-laubacher-executive-director-of-humanality-ahead-of-his-talk-at-seek-2026-in-denver-colorado-on-j.png)
