Pope Francis said the urgency of promoting and encouraging vocations doesn't depend on efficiency or what we do, but is rather centered on the careful attention given to "vigilance and discernment."
"It's having a gaze capable of seeing the positive in the human and spiritual events we encounter," he said, focusing on the need for a heart that's both "amazed and grateful in front of the gifts that people carry within themselves."
This type of gaze, he said, should focus on potential more than on limits, and ought to provide a holistic view of "the present and the future in continuity with the past."
Francis then turned to the conference theme, telling attendees to repeat frequently that "I am on a mission" and not simply that "I have a mission."
To be on a permanent mission "requires courage, audacity, imagination and the desire to go beyond, to go even further," he said, noting that the conference theme's focus on responding without fear serves as a reminder of the many vocation stories they have heard or encountered.
In each of these stories, "the Lord invited those called to go out of themselves in order to be a gift for others; to these he entrusts a mission and reassures them," the Pope said.
He closed his speech praying that those present would feel pushed by the Holy Spirit to "courageously identify new ways of announcing the Gospel of vocation."
Like sentinels, he asked that they would be men and women who "know how to grasp the streaks of light of a new dawn, in a renewed experience of faith and passion for the Church and for the Kingdom of God."
Elise Harris was senior Rome correspondent for CNA from 2012 to 2018.