Perhaps you noticed
something this morning, being the observant people that you are. From now on our cantors will come and
proclaim the responsorial psalm from the pulpit here. We haven’t been doing that these many years
but you have to realize that the psalms are also the word of God. They are from the bible as well. So we proclaim the other scriptures from the
pulpit, we will also when we sing our responsorial psalm our cantor will lead
that from the pulpit as well, so that all the word of God is proclaimed from
the pulpit area.
Many times I wonder when we
hear these scripture readings today, especially the call of Samuel. Like myself many times I think, oh yeah,
that’s just for young people like our servers here this morning. The Lord is calling you, and what is going to
be your vocation in life. But that’s not
really accurate. Each of us, no matter
how old, how young, whatever ways you have served over the years. Many of us will say as I look out upon the
church this morning. What would you
guess the median age in the church is probably right now? What, about 65? I might be a little low? High? But whatever you know, I look around with all
of us here this morning and probably again a lot of us will say, “Well, I
already answered the call long years ago.
I put my time in. I’ve
served. I’ve been on this committee. I did this.
I did that. It’s time for someone
else to take over.” Wrong!
The call to be a Christian
never ends. The call to follow Christ
will follow you and me to the grave.
Once you and I get to those pearly gates then we can say, “Whew, great,
done, accomplished!”
So in the meantime the
calling is still there for each and every one of us.
What I would like to do this
morning is go through each of the scripture readings and just ask a few
questions based on each reading, and you can give your own homily, your own
response.
Looking at the first reading
from the Book of Samuel, the questions I came up with would be:
Is here confusion sometimes
when God calls in your life? It took
Samuel four times to get it right.
Has there ever been a time
in your life when you have missed God’s call? Samuel was a boy at the time of
this reading. We might ask our selves,
“Doesn’t God usually wait until someone is older and more experienced before He
asks him or her to do ministry?” Now
would it be that the grace of the call is enough in itself. At what age?
At what time? At what place? With what people? At what time and position in your life?
What experience did God call
you to give of yourself?
The responsorial psalm,
Psalm 40 says, “Here am I Lord, I come to do Your will.” We might ask ourselves whose will are we
doing? A lot of times we kind of do our
own thing and then we like to pawn it off by saying, “Well, God told me” or
“This is what God wants me to do.” Is it
really God’s will or my own whinings and my own desires that I am trying to
fulfil?
Paul reminds us in our
second reading, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit
within you?” Are we aware of the Holy
Spirit within us? Are we aware of the
Spirit in other peoples’ lives? Or do we
just think we have a corner on it? God
only lives within me, the rest of you—well good luck.
Are we aware that our body
is a temple of the Holy Spirit? That
wherever you and I will go forth this day we will bring the presence of
God? Our body is sacred. We are called to take care of it, to nourish
it, to protect it and to protect the sanctity of life from beginning to its
natural end. Our body is a gift from
God. It’s not ours. We belong to God. Are we aware that we are the temple of God
here on earth?
Do you and I call on the
Holy Spirit for guidance when we need it in our lives? Or again do we just rely on our own
intellect? Our own feelings and
emotions? Do we just do what we feel is
right? Or do we really dig down deep
inside, where the Spirit dwells within us and say, “Who are You Spirit of
God? I need Your help. I need Your presence.” What do we do to block our God’s Spirit
within us? Do we allow all these other
things of the world, of society, the media to block out the Spirit that calls
deep within?
In the gospel when the
disciples are following Jesus, Jesus turns to them and asks, “What are you
looking for?” I think another way of
asking that question, Jesus might have been saying, “What’s most important in
your life? Is it God you are seeking? Is there something about Me, Jesus that
answers that deep desire in your heart?”
We could ask ourselves,
where are we putting our time? Our
energy? How much time to we spend on
frivolous things? What do we do with our
money? What do we do with our
resources? What’s really most important
to us? Jesus, I think is asking us that
question, “What’s really important to you and to me?” How would we answer that?
The disciples then asked
Jesus, because maybe they really didn’t want to answer that first question, and
I think sometime we’re the same way, we just say, “well, uh, where do you live? What do you do?” We say, “Where are you staying?” Maybe probe a little bit deeper, could we not
ask the question, instead of saying, “Where are you staying?” we are asking
Jesus, “Where can we spend time with You?”
Push that a little bit further.
Do you and I really spend time in the presence of God? Do we really spend time with Jesus in
prayer?
Think about it. How much time this day, we might spend
watching TV? Or shopping? Or whatever it might be? But how much time in the course of any day do
you and I spend just alone with Jesus in prayer?
In the gospel Jesus calls
each of the disciples by name. That’s
very significant. He even changes
Peter’s name. When he says, “You’re Simon,
I’m going to call to Cephas” which means Peter with means also rock. Peter became the first pope. He called each of them by name. Do you hear Jesus calling you by name? By your own name? Lori, Mark, Emery, Pat, Gene, Darlene? That takes quiet time to allow Jesus in the
quiet of our hearts to speak our name.
How much time do you and spend with Jesus?
I’ll go back to where I
began, the call never stops. We never
stop being a Christian. We never stop
bringing Christ to others by our caring, our healing touch, by our appreciation
of others, our encouragement, our forgiveness, by deepening our relationships,
by our praying for others. And Jesus
calls each of us by name today.
St. Augustan had to search a
long time for the presence of Jesus in his life. He did just about everything that he could
do. His mother, Monica prayed
unceasingly for him, that he would find the Lord. And when finally Augustan did allow the
spirit within to break forth and he answered that call, one of the great lines
he gave us down through Christianity says, “Our hearts are restless, Oh Lord,
until they rest in You.”
If we find ourselves a
little restless, insecure, afraid, anxious, maybe we are searching in the wrong
places. Maybe we need to allow the Lord
to call us again, by name, today and let the Spirit dwell within us.