FESVOC Vocational Festival – CAR

San José (Costa Rica). On the night between Saturday 9^th and Sunday 10^th August 2025, from 7.00pm to 7.00am, teenagers and young people from different Educating Communities in Costa Rica met at María Auxiliadora High School (ELMA) in San José to experience the first nocturnal Vocational Festival “FESVOC”. During the event, the participants reflected and shared experiences on the path of searching for the meaning of their own life, tuning into the call that God makes to everyone based on their own life choices.

“Connect to your vocation!” is the slogan-invitation to be challenged by the voice of God who calls in different circumstances of life to find its meaning and guide daily choices according to His will.

“Connect to your vocation!” is the concrete way of building networks of love and friendship to spread the message of the Gospel with truth and hope as young Salesians who wish, like Mary, to be faithful to God’s plan, that wonderful adventure which is the vocation – the mission for which you were brought into the world.

Invited and accompanied by the National Commission for Vocational Animation of the Our Lady of the Angels Province (CAR), the young people – boys and girls – experienced intense moments of prayer with nocturnal adoration, Lauds at dawn, and the Eucharist as the conclusion of this vigil. They have also been enriched by shared experiences through dynamics and a treasure hunt, discussing the excuses that are often made when faced with the different calls of the Lord.

The film “La llamada” (The Call) and the debate around the bonfire allowed the participants to share doubts and concerns and to listen to the testimonies of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians – Sister Nazareth Espinoza and Sister Kassandra Cruz – who will make their final vows on August 22, as well as the testimony of Sister Alba Rosa Aguilera, who will make her first religious profession as an FMA on the same day.

The FESVOC encounter was a concrete way to give thanks for the gift of the vocation to religious life and opened the Salesian vocational week at a national level, with the motto “Jesus invites you to sow with Him”.

“May God make grow what we sow and live together with young people (1Cor 3:7), so that they have an abundant life, thanks to the personal encounter with Christ, a fundamental objective of our life as an FMA,” said Sister Paola Martínez, head of the National Vocational Commission, at the end of the encounter.