RC Asked:
Is the idea of a "vocational call" related to the concept of 'charism'?
Would you like to talk about the universal call to holiness as something more fundamental?
This actually needs very little response. A vocational call, when responded to precurs for the respondant the charisms of that call. (Or so I think--it is probably a good deal more complicated.)
And I just second the notion that the universal call to holiness is above all of this. However, I think the universal call to holiness carries within it a certain obligation to exert ourselves in the realm of prayer; perhaps to the point of obtaining acquired contemplation. Again, all is gift, it isn't as though we achieve these things through ourselves. Everything we receive, we receive as pure gift, even though the work we do is meritorious.