In this context, mentoring refers to an active accompaniment for an adolescent or young adult by an older man or woman. However, our recent weekend focused more narrowly on the advantages of mentoring a single man or woman from our group of Solteros who is dating with the perspective of marriage as a vocation.


Having a good companion is an important relationship for any adolescent or young adult.

Every person who is baptized receives with that sacrament a personal vocation. The majority of the faithful are called (“vocation” from Latin vocare- to call, or name) to matrimony.
Aurelio gave a witness as to how having a mentor was a great advantage to him; a tool that grew in value as he moved forward:
I was older and already had a good job when I met the Lord. After discerning my call to the married state, I figured I would move on pretty quickly into my vocation of marriage. Meeting with a mentor helped me right away to see the need for establishing my priorities in many areas: finances; family-of-origin relationships; use of free time—just to name a few of the bigger ones. Things which I had never considered important were taking shape.
I did not realize I had fears to overcome because I am basically a self-starter and a go-getter. But in the area of personal relationships I was not as adept as business and structural matters. For making decisions to burn bridges and continue forward in personal relationships, I needed to grow in faith; that meant listening to the Lord with input from trusted brothers, and obviously from the woman with whom I was dating exclusively. For several reasons I thought a different man I knew could help me in these areas I was now navigating. My first mentor agreed to the change with enthusiasm and blessings. So, I asked the other friend if he would serve me as a mentor—a friendship I now saw as a channel of God’s grace. He agreed and helped me to set goals for this time of my life and to talk about those goals with trusted friends and to evaluate and clarify them with the woman I was thinking to ask to marry me.
I look back at that experience from a distance of several years. One of our priorities which my wife and I consider very important-- as we move forward with two children, so far-- is to help young people come into their vocation and to serve as mentors when the opportunity seems right in the Lord’s scheme.