Register for two important Summer Institute Workshops

Author: Sister Dina Bato, S.P., Director of Membership

Looking for ways to build upon your skills as a vocation minister and improve your assessment of a candidate’s family of origin and spirituality? The Spirituality and Vocation Ministry workshop, slated for July 18-20, 2026, will address how today’s discerners experience God, articulate their spiritual growth, and assess their readiness for retreats, spiritual direction, communal prayer, and personal prayer. This workshop focuses on how to connect discerners’ diverse and evolving spiritualities to those in our own and other religious communities. It offers practical tools, group dialogue, and reflective practices to help you become a better listener and to understand how some of the ways today’s discerners understand Catholic spirituality connect to your congregational spirituality and to experience God’s call. 

The Impact of Family in Vocation Discernment workshop, slated for July 22-24, 2026, will help you explore how aspects of family-of-origin history influence the discernment and formation process, especially in blended, extended, and multi-generational family structures. This workshop begins with your family genogram as a poignant reminder of how your own family relationships impact interviews with discerners. As part of this session, Ms. Gabriela Miller, a bilingual Licensed Marriage, Family, and Child Therapist, will share her experiences as the parent of a son who discerned and entered religious life, and the impact on the family during his vocation discernment.  

These timely workshops offer deeper insights as we accompany and assess discerners to religious life.  

If you have any questions, please contact Sr. Dina Bato, SP, at dinasp@nrvc.net or 773-363-5454.