God's Empowerment

Today’s first reading, Jeremiah 1:1, 4-10, presents Jeremiah’s call to be God’s prophet, an instrument in the hands of God to proclaim His message, to reveal God’s presence, and give hope to a people who were facing a takeover by the Babylonian empire and were eventually sent into exile. It was the prophet Jeremiah who warned them of this possibility but also reminded them that, after 70 years, they would return to their homeland and experience, once again, God’s mercy and favor.
Jeremiah’s response  to God’s call came out of his fear and sounded something like: O, God, I am only a boy.  Find someone else! I am not capable of doing what are you asking of me. Please, look elsewhere.” Sound familiar? How often do we not back away from a difficult assignment or a problematic issue. “Oh, God, not again.  I’m too tired, too old, too scared, too weak” or whatever excuse looms in our minds.  We will find one that we hope will stick!

When we do that, however, our focus is on our own resources, our own power and, of course, we are then unable to manage the turbulent waters of any task.  God never asks anything of us without giving us the tools we need, as He did for Jeremiah:  “…the Lord extended his hand and touched…[Jeremiah,’s] mouth, saying, ‘See, I place my words in your mouth! This day I set you over nations and over kingdoms, to root up and to tear down, to destroy and to demolish, to build and to plant.” God does the same for us, giving us the right words and giving us the graces we need to “root up and to tear down, to destroy and to demolish, to build and to plant” that which needs repair, be it a relationship with a spouse, a fellow religious, a co-worker, a boss; be it rooting up and tearing down, destroying and demolishing sin in our hearts and minds and choices; be it building and planting seeds of faith in our children, in a rebellious child. God is there at our side. God, in fact, equips us with the necessary tools to bring about the changes that need to be brought about for our sakes and the sake of others in order that God’s  Kingdom is made real “on earth as in heaven.”

Speak, Lord, Your Servant Is Listening

In today’s first  reading, 1 Samuel 3: 1-10, 19-20, young Samuel is asleep when he hears his name being called.  He goes to Eli, his superior and mentor, thinking Eli called him. He does this three times.  Eli then realizes that it is the Lord who is calling Samuel and instructs him to go back to sleep and if he hears his name called again that he should answer: “Speak , Lord, your servant is listening.”  Until that point, Samuel “was not familiar with the Lord, because the Lord had not revealed anything to him as yet.”  Note the statement “as yet.”  You may not, yet, be familiar with the Lord.  However you will be, that is part of our call as baptized Christians to get to know the Lord and His ways, to put on His thoughts, to recognize His will and follow it.  “I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her” (Hosea 2:14). Sometimes, as we say in the addiction’s field, people have to hit rock bottom before they cry out: “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”   Somehow we need to experience the absolute emptiness of the promises of this world and in that desert come to realize that it is the Lord whom we  seek, and need, that it is His voice for which we need to be listening. Out of our sleep, the Lord calls us to be His instrument in a world darkened by sin, led astray by ego-demands to accumulate material things and to climb the corporate ladder of success while neglecting those of the Spirit. 

Am I ready to be awakened? Do I have a wisdom figure, a spiritual director,  like Eli whom I trust, who encourages me to listen for the Lord’s voice amid the darkness of night?

Fishing according to God's plan

In Today’s Gospel,  Mk 1:14-20, the lives of Simon, Andrew, James and John were totally changed, turned upside down, if you will.  They are fishermen steeped in that way of making a livelihood, probably doing well from a business perspective.  They leave their families and their business and follow Jesus, who simply says to them:  “Come follow me. I will engage you in another form of fishing. Your bait: My Words, the Good News of salvation, the news of another Kingdom not of this world, the royal kingdom promised to your ancestors, a kingdom that will last forever.  And for whom will you be fishing? People of good will. People of faith, the faith of their Father Abraham, people wandering in “the wilderness” of their lives, hungering for the “Bread of Life” and Living Water.”

At our baptisms, each of us was also called to follow Jesus, to bring people to the “Bread of Life” and to Living Water, to bring people to Jesus and Jesus to people.  We were called to be heralds of the Good News that Jesus dwells among us in the Scriptures, in the Eucharist, comes down upon our altars in the sacrifice of the Mass every second of every day somewhere in the world.  We are called upon to teach our children that God is the true Treasure of our lives, that God is the one who empowers us to do good, that God is the One who saves us from this world’s idols and that what the world offers us as the answer to our unhappiness and lack of peace are false promises. Jesus alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life—that is why Simon, Andrew, James and John left everything to follow Him. 

“Come, I will make you a different kind of person, not one seeking “fish” or that which the world says you must have to be happy and powerful and above others  but persons seeking the Truth, the Way, the Life of the Kingdom that last forever!

Heeding the Spirit's suggestions

The first reading of today’s liturgy open with “Get up and head south on the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza, the desert route” (Acts 8: 26).  Philip obeys and encounters a man who is reading the book of Isaiah.  Simply, Philip asks: Do you understand what you are reading?  The man says “How can I, unless someone instructs me.”  We are any one  or all of those characters on any given day.  The Spirit of God nudges us to go speak to, listen to, be with a certain person.  And we respond generously, sometimes fearfully, at other times with joy.  Our faith and our trust in God may be challenged.  At other times we are the one in need of being instructed and God sends another person to us.

Every day we are being drawn by God closer and closer to Jesus Christ, as was the eunuch in today’s first reading. In today’s Gospel, John 6: 44-51, Jesus tells us that no one comes to Him unless the Father draw him/her.  That being drawn is continual throughout our life times.  Without realizing it, we are being drawn into the death of our Lord Jesus Christ and into His resurrection into eternal glory, as yesterday’s Scriptures pointed out:  “The God of all grace…[calls] you to his eternal glory through Christ Jesus… (1 Peter 5: 5b-14).  That journey takes us into the suffering that purifies us, into situations that transform our thinking into the thinking of Christ, into relationships that teach us to love as Jesus loved and to build the Kingdom as Jesus did, being servants of one another.