What Are You Doing With the Rest of Your Life?

Imagine Jesus walking up to you, wherever you are, and inviting you to follow. Could you do it? Could you abandon the familiar, leave it all behind, and follow into an unknown adventure? What would it take to say YES? What would hold you back?

The stories we encounter in this “ordinary time” of the Church year are “call” stories. They ask for dramatic change. It’s not just “come and see.” It’s not even “try it if you like it” kind of change. These followers of Jesus abandoned their livelihood, left family (including wives) behind and embraced the uncertainty that Jesus offered. They did this on the promise that Jesus would make them “fishers of men.”

I am praying today for all in our parish who are choosing to say YES to Jesus—to follow wholeheartedly, to not hold anything back from the invitation to grow in love, knowledge, and service of God. Pray with me for all of our catechumens and candidates, for all of our couples forming themselves for God-centered marriages and families, for women and men who are discerning their vocation in life. Let’s pray for each of us as we pay attention to the invitations God gives each of us personally, as families and as a Church community. What is God asking us at St. Francis to say YES to? And what do we need to leave behind? What needs to change in our attitudes, in our ways of thinking and in our actions that would make us intentional disciples—followers of Jesus?

Bless us and grace us in our new beginnings!

Can You Hear Me Now?

God called the young Samuel three times before Samuel paid him any attention. How many times has God called me? I don’t always recognize God’s voice. That’s the importance, I think, of having the attitude and disposition that says over and over again—Speak Lord, your servant is listening.

I am also aware that I often depend on others to help me to recognize when and how God is calling me. Like the disciples in the Gospel for this weekend, I need “Andrew’s” or “Andrea’s” in my life that invite me, nudge me, or even beg me to be attentive to new possibilities, to God’s invitations to serve.

At times, I struggle with the capacity to say YES. That’s when I need the company of others who wish me well and will be honest with me in helping me to discern what God is calling me to do.

This week I want to do for others what I have benefitted from recently. I will look for someone that I can encourage to pursue something different—some service that takes them out of their comfort zone and that will make a difference for others. I want to encourage service.

Will you join me?

And so we pray as a community at St. Francis: Speak Lord, your servants are listening. What would you have us do? What are you inviting us to see as a need? And how will we individually or as a community respond?

Let us pray that we may all answer God’s call to discipleship.

• For the whole Church, that we may be a community always open to God’s call and willing to respond wholeheartedly. We pray to the Lord.

• For those whose lives are too chaotic to hear God’s call, especially those suffering from illness, violence, loss, or depression. We pray to the Lord.

• For those who do not believe God calls them because they feel unworthy, unprepared, or too ordinary. We pray to the Lord.

• For those unable to discern God’s will for them, that we may provide assurance, clarity, and companionship. We pray to the Lord.

• For those called to the priesthood or religious life, that the Holy Spirit may guide them in their vocation. We pray to the Lord.

• For all people, may God grant us courage to embrace his precious gift of life, even in the most difficult of circumstances. We pray to the Lord.

Gracious God, open our ears and hearts to your voice. Give us the awareness to hear you, especially when you speak to us through people and circumstances we do not wish to hear. Make us worthy instruments of discernment for those who struggle to interpret your call. Together, may we respond with one voice, saying, “Speak, your servant is listening.” We ask this in the name of Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Humility and the Epiphany

The Magi followed the light of a star to find Jesus, the Light of the World. They came from nations far away—without passports or documents. They are a reminder to us that God loves and calls to himself all his people, wherever they come from, whatever language they speak or customs they have, however they look or dress.

These foreign kings needed humility to pay homage to a “king” who was so different from themselves. For me, this is a reminder that I often have a difficult time accepting other people’s positions on things. The Magi were “stretched” in their understanding of what another kind of “king” can be about. And so can I, if I dare to visit and be in the presence of the difference. Even if I don’t end up changing my mind, I can always reflect on what I learned and see differently from before. I too might have an epiphany—God’s way of revealing something I didn’t understand before.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser has a wonderful reflection on King Herod’s response to the birth of a new “king” at http://www.liturgy.slu.edu/EpiphanyB010718/reflections_rolheiser.html. Herod’s jealousy is a reminder to all of us of how we sometimes become threatened by new life or the gifts of others.

This is a rich story with a powerful challenge: what is my own reaction to new life, especially to life that threatens me, that will take away some of my own popularity, sunshine, and adulation? Can I, like the wise men, lay my gifts at the feet of the young, and move towards anonymity and eventual death, content that the world is in good hands, even though those hands are not my hands? Or, like Herod, will I feel that life as a threat and try somehow to kill it, lest its star somehow diminish my own?

To bless another person is to give away some of one’s own life so that the other might be more resourced for his or her journey. Good parents do that for their children. Good teachers do that for their students, good mentors do that for their protégés, good pastors do that for their parishioners, good politicians do that for their countries, and good elders do that for the young. They give away some of their own lives to resource the other. The wise men did that for Jesus.

How do we react when a young star’s rising begins to eclipse our own light?

Who are the “Herods” in life today?  What is it that Mary, Joseph and Jesus would be running from today?  What warnings do we get that lead us to continue our journey home “by another way”?  What is that other way?

What Makes a Family Holy?

Do you have a favorite image of the Holy Family? What makes it your favorite image? Do you think of your own family as a “holy family”? What is it about your family that is holy? Would you consider putting your family’s picture in this frame with the title “Holy Family”?

As you read and listen to the readings this weekend, you will hear countless examples of what makes a family holy. Abram and Sarai are uncertain and afraid as they ponder the loss of a future when they are childless and old.  God promises them that their family will be as countless as the stars in the sky. Imagine it! Faith and an understanding that family is expansive and includes many who are not even related by blood makes God’s promise reality. Faith isn’t intended to be a personal achievement only; it is meant to be cultivated and grown to include others as brothers and sisters. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called into an unknown future.  By faith, he received power to generate children. He found God to be trustworthy. Do we have a faith strong enough to believe that seemingly impossible things will come to be in our own families?

Simeon and Anna, at the presentation of the child Jesus in the Temple, highlight all that was promised by the birth of Jesus.  Jesus brings peace. He fulfills God’s promises that a Messiah would come. He is one of us, human, and totally a part of the whole world, sent to the Gentiles as well as to Israel. Anna has been fasting and praying for 84 years and lives to see the coming of Jesus through waiting, learning and patience. In our holy families, we too are called to practice waiting, learning and patience.

In a sense, we “present” ourselves to the Lord each and every Sunday, each and every day! We offer ourselves to God, unfinished as we are, expecting to grow in faith and trust that God’s promises to each of us will be fulfilled in our own waiting, learning and patience. At times, we too are called to discern what God is calling us to, to obey something we don’t entirely understand.

This Christmas season gives us an opportunity to celebrate family in so many ways. May it be for us a time to rejoice in our own families. May our love and hope be as strong as that everyone felt for the infant Jesus at his birth.

And so we pray: Teach us, Holy Spirit, how to love as you and the Father and the Son love. Make each and everyone part of your holy family. Let our Nazareths be places of kind words, patience and compassion. Help us all work together for all that is good and pleasing to God who dwells in possibility.

Yes, Yes, and YES!

Mary’s YES changed everything! Can we, like Mary, say “May it be done to me according to your word”? If we really listen to God’s voice, if we are quiet and still enough to be receptive of that word, that voice, what might God be asking of each of us? We have been “living in watchfulness and waiting in wonder.” We have been faithful to those promises. What wonder awaits us this Christmas season?

Yes, we listen! Yes, we tell about what we are hearing! And yes, we like Mary can hardly wait to go visit our cousin, or our BFF or another family member to share the good news, even if we don’t fully understand the implications. We discern together, we explore together! And we say YES to all the wonders of new possibilities in our very real, very human lives! May our YES be strong!