Students at St. Stephen Martyr School got a lesson in religious vocations last week when Ursuline Sister Rita Joseph Jarrell and Benedictine Father Anthony Vinson visited the school. Religious men and women visited several schools last week as part of National Vocation Awareness Week.

Father Vinson, from St. Meinrad Archabbey, explained to the students, “I am a monk, and I live in a monastery.”

Do monks have TVs, the kids wondered? No, he said.

What’s a monk’s room like? There’s a bed, desk, chair, bathroom and a place to hang clothes, said Father Vinson.

Father Vinson said that monks live somewhat secluded lives with a very regimented schedule of work and prayer. That’s a gift, he said, because it gives the community stability.

“We don’t have to worry about what’s coming next,” he said. “We can focus on prayer.”

Father Vinson graduated from college and planned to go into business, he said. But coming home from an interview, he realized he’d be bored with the business world. He ended up following the calling to religious life he had first heard when he was in the third grade, he said.

He is now director of vocation development at St. Meinrad.

He explained the importance of a vocation in terms the students were sure to understand.

“Think if your parents didn’t follow their vocation to take care of you.” he asked them. “How about if your teachers didn’t follow their vocation?”

“We, each of us, have to decide what to do with our God-given lives,” he said. “The question for you to think about over the next 10 to 20 years is: What does God want you to do?

“There are lots of things I could have done,” he added. “But I had to think about where God wants me to be.”

Sister Jarrell taught fifth- through eighth-graders about the basic values and vows common to those who choose a religious vocation — including chastity, obedience and poverty.

The idea of a religious vocation might have seemed otherworldly to the students who are more concerned with homework, sports and fashion. But Sister Jarrell assured her young listeners, “You’re being called to a vocation in the church — either to lay ministry, religious life or ordained ministry.”

She also explained some of the finer points about religious life, noting that, “I am not a nun; I am a sister.”

Nuns and monks, she explained, are contemplative, leading private lives in prayer. On the other hand, sisters and brothers live out in the world, actively ministering to families.

Sister Jarrell also brought old black and white photographs of herself depicting milestones in her life in an effort to show the students she was once just like them. The youngsters “oohed” and “ahhed” at pictures of her as a baby, making her First Communion and, especially, a photo of Sister Jarrell dressed as a bride when she entered the Ursuline community.

The eldest of six girls, Sister Jarrell said she was accustomed to caring for others. After high school at Sacred Heart Academy, she dabbled with the idea that she would become a medical technologist. But she soon realized “I wanted to be a sister and walk with people in their family life to God.”

She entered the Ursuline community at age 19 and has been an Ursuline for 44 years.

During an opportunity to ask questions, the fifth-graders wondered if there were still nuns around today.

“There are nuns today,” she said. “But not near as many. We need more nuns, and we need more sisters.”