TO FOLLOW OUR CALL
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
October 20, 2019
A good
friend of mine from college came to school absolutely convinced that he was
called to be a high school math teacher. He majored in math, and in the spring of
his senior year he began student teaching in a local Catholic high school. That
was 38 years ago, and he’s still at the same school teaching math. I’d call
that a very successful discernment of a call.
Another of
our classmates majored in accounting and was quickly hired by one of the big
national firms when he graduated college. He spent not more than a few years in
that job before deciding that it didn’t make him happy. He went back to school
to learn how to become a middle school science teacher, which he has now been
doing for about 25 years. I would also call that a very successful discernment
of a call. I was an economics major in college and began my work life in
banking—and now I’m doing this. I would also call that a very successful
discernment of a call. So just what exactly is a call, and how does one know if
he/she is recognizing it and responding to it well? And why am I asking this
now?
I’m asking it because of the main character in
Jesus’ parable today—the story of the “unjust judge.” Think about that: a
person whose professional life is devoted to doing a job that he either hates
or doesn’t care about. The Sacred Scriptures tell us about his own admission
that he “neither fears God nor respects any human being.” Well then what in the
world is he doing as a judge.?! A guy who has no regard for justice is sitting
in a position of dispensing justice. How could that have happened? He regards
doing justice for a widow as a bother, rather than as a privilege and a duty,
and he capitulates to this persistent woman only because he is worn out and
afraid for his personal safety if he doesn’t do so. I would call that a
catastrophic failure in the discernment of a call.
The same
question presents itself to all of us who call ourselves Christians. We are all
called to something, in virtue of the very fact that we are here. But what? And
how can we be sure of what that “what” is? And this isn’t just a question for
young people who are starting out on the journey of making adult decisions
about careers and family and home and lifestyle. It’s a question that keeps
coming back as the circumstances of our lives change—when we are confronted
with the end of a job or a marriage or a relationship. A call is something that
we carry with us until the day we die—which does not mean that our call is
always doing the same thing in practice throughout our lives. For some of us, a
call from God doesn’t necessarily mean any kind of specific employment or
career at all. It is an open-ness to the moment.
For some, like
my friend the math teacher, it does involve persevering at the same task for
decades. For others, like my friend the science teacher, it means knowing when
it’s time to change course and to follow a new direction. That doesn’t negate
the call that has been. And for others, perhaps like spouses and parents and
children and friends, it means being wise about how to respond in this
particular moment in a relationship, which may or may not be just exactly the
same way that we’ve responded up to now.
A true call
from God is not necessarily a summons to do exactly the same thing over the
course of one’s life—although sometimes it is. A call is an invitation to be
present to the moment, with the grace of God.
That is why
prayer is such an indispensable part of the Christian life—because what the
moment demands of us disciples is ever-shifting, ever-changing. The same call
to be followers of Christ may result in very different looking behaviors from
day to day, season to season, depending upon what is happening to and around
us. Some days our call summons us to be consolers, encouragers, forgivers. And
other days the same call may require us to be prophets, criticizers,
challengers.
Any true
call requires us to be nimble around God’s requests for our service—not locked into
any one way of responding to people. Now and forever. But at the very least we
can know that any life situation that has us despising the very things that we
are supposed to be doing—like the tragedy of the unjust judge in the gospel—is
a failure to discern our call, which is in turn a failure to pray. I remember
our late Archbishop John Roach saying sarcastically that church ministry would
be wonderful if it weren’t for all these people. That’s what I’m talking about.
Embracing
one’s true call at any given time does not necessarily mean doing what seems
easiest or most pleasant or most immediately rewarding. Very often it is the
opposite of that, which is what makes it a call rather than merely a preference.
Prayer doesn’t always provide us with what we want, but it does provide us with
what we ought. And our call from God is not something that we own, but it is
something that we accept and conform ourselves to, and live ourselves in to.
An unjust
judge is a nonsensical person. And so is the Christian who resists the call of
Christ and his church. We only discover what that is through prayer—incessant
prayer, not only in solitude, but especially when we are together here in our
Eucharist.
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