WE ARE ALL CALLED

Some of us were/are lucky enough in life to have had a clear sense of what God was calling us to be/do from the time we were old enough to make a response.  I have friends who are doing the same life work and involved with the very same passions that they first discerned 30, 40, and 50 years ago.  It may not be exactly the same job over all that time, but fundamentally if someone were to have asked them as teenagers, “Who are you?” or “What did God put you into this world to be and to embrace as your deepest, most fulfilled self?”  Their responses would have been pretty much the same now as they were back then.  I used to envy those people because I knew that I was not one of them, and I wanted some clarity about my own identity and the life for which I hoped, as I grew up.  I didn’t get it until years after college, and to a great degree, the calling came into focus by a process of trial and error.  I discovered some of the things that certainly did not satisfy me, or at which I just wasn’t very good.  I asked my friends and family what they saw in me that might lead me in one direction or another.  I took all the career aptitude tests and the personality inventories.  Not much came of that.  

And then, in the midst of all that hand-wringing, a dear friend of mine got cancer and died after a very short illness.  And it was while tending to him that a sense of call and purpose just sort of dropped into my lap.  I wasn’t really looking for it, but suddenly there it was.  Not crystal clear, but strong enough to make me take a chance with a free and enthusiastic heart.  I decided to pursue priesthood, and I remember on the day that I arrived at the seminary, I was thinking to myself, “Maybe this is my call and maybe it isn’t, but even if I don’t last in school I’d be satisfied enough to know that it will have been worth the risk, worth the test.”  It felt very free.  And in fact, it hasn’t always been the same job for me over the years.  Some of it has been in parish work; some of it has been teaching high school; some of it – actually a lot of it – has been in training and teaching seminary students and lay adults in higher-level studies.  But it’s all been related to church ministry.  That’s who I am; that’s my call – until the day that it becomes something else.  I’m not expecting that, but I’ve learned not to lean too heavily on my own predictions for the future when it comes to God’s call.  It can change – sometimes in startling ways.  As the scriptures tell us today and in many other places when God’s call came in search of prophets, apostles, teachers, and evangelists it was rarely the result of those people having searched their own hearts for its desire, and it was rarely because they even welcomed that call.  More often they were either afraid or disbelieving or feeling unworthy – and of course, they were.

In today’s first reading, the great call of the Prophet Isaiah, the call came in a dream, and a thunderbolt out of the blue.  It’s not clear what Isaiah’s career plans were up to that moment, but they most assuredly did not involve being a prophet for almighty God, which was the very thing he was being summoned to do.  His automatic first response was one of dread fear.  And yet, just two verses later, after having been assured by the angel, he knew that he had found his place, notwithstanding the dangers and disappointments that lay ahead.  Those are trials that can be endured, as long as we know that they are happening for the right reasons, as part of being confidently faithful to our call.  

St. Paul in today’s second reading received his call through a personal and unexpected direct encounter with the risen Jesus.  Not through any process of careful planning.  Nothing he would have wanted, certainly, but because he knew that it was right.  He could be content knowing that he was loved and summoned by the living God even though it would involve persecuting and imprisoning the very disciples of which he was now being invited into.  He too was afraid, as were all of those Jews around him, for that very reason.  This wasn’t just a new call for Paul, it was a positive reversal and rejection of the call that he had been so certain about right up to that moment.

And in the gospel of Luke, Peter, and Andrew, James and John already had a calling, with which we have every reason to believe they were perfectly content.  Fishing was what they knew and what they did for a living until this perfect stranger shows up at the shore one morning, commandeers one of their boats, and starts giving them fishing lessons – this Jesus, who has not demonstrated that he knows anything about how to fish.  And, miraculously, they do what he asks.  And more than that; once back on land Jesus gives them a new calling – one for which they have demonstrated no skills at all, and which will demand that they leave behind everything they know, every security, for no reason other than that it is the Lord who is issuing the invitation.  And again, they do it!  Stepping out into the unknown future, armed with nothing other than the assurance that this Jesus is the Man of God who has been sent to them.   

Each of us, each of us is summoned and called for a particular role in the carrying out of the mission of proclaiming the presence of God’s kingdom today.  For some of us, that calling may come in an unexpected interruption in our plans – as it did for me.  For others, it may come in much more spectacular ways.  For some, it may come as a complete surprise.  For others, it may simply come by attending to what we’ve always known to be our heart’s greatest passions anyway.  And for just about all of us, our call will change from time to time.  Parents are called in a way that single people and grandparents are not.  Old people are called in a way that younger working people are not.  Such people are called in a way that others are not.  

It means that discerning our call, our place, our identity, is never a once-and-for-all activity.  It’s a responsibility that follows us throughout the cycle of our lives.  It is the duty of vigilance, of paying attention for however God may be coming at us today, and of being ready and willing to respond immediately when we recognize it.