May the Peace of Christ Reign in our hearts.
Those of you who are parents… do you remember when you brought your first child home?
Do you remember how you gently laid them in their crib and went to bed only to be awakened a couple of hours later?
Do you remember how long those nightly calls lasted and how many times you got up? Love calls..
You can always tell who the new parents are. They are the ones with the circles under their eyes.
And then when they stopped waking you up to be fed or because of bad dreams or because they were sick,
sometimes you had your whole day planned.
You took this one to soccer and that one to ballet and this one to Boys Scouts and you waited all day with great expectation for that 1 hour before the pickups started.
But finally put your behind in the chair your cell phone rang… Mom soccer practiced ended early can you come and get me ? No rest for you… Love calls…
And then when they were in high school you thought the calls would be over.
However when they were in High School it’s not always them who are calling but rather sometimes its you who calls.
You call after you lie awake in the wee hours of the morning because they are not home.
You call to ask where are you ? You were supposed to be home at 12:00… etc etc etc… love calls
When I worked in colleges we had to have a special class for parents to know how to deal with it when their kids called home upset.
Most of the time they call in the middle of the night and say things like they hated at school or that they were failing all of their classes or had no friends maybe that they were in trouble. Love calls….
And finally when they are married and out of the house…
You say to yourself whew… we made it no more calls until one night you get the frantic call Mom the baby won’t stop crying what do we do.
My grandma Susie used to simple say give him a little schnapps he’ll be ok and I turned out OK. love calls
You guys aren’t the only ones that love calls. Sometimes I’m in bed and all cozy and warm and the phone rings… at 3 or 4 in the morning and someone needs to be anointed or needs something else and it doesn’t matter that I have 7:00 Am mass
I have to be honest … I don’t jump out of bed and say hurray love is calling no quite frankly… sometimes I say God you owe me one.
Or I say Lord, make sure the priest gets out of bed when my Mom needs him.
Love / God calls.
Dear friends we’ve all experienced that throughout our life love will call,
and when love calls it is really God who is calling.
We’ve experienced that God rarely calls at a convenient time or comfortable time.
We know that when God calls it’s almost a given that we will have to sacrifice a little of ourselves and our comfort or our plans or our will.
When God calls and we answer a little bit of us has to die and in some small way we will have to pick of up the cross and carry it for a while.
That’s what God did when humanity needed him.
In today’s readings we learned a lot about how God calls.
First of all we learned that quite frequently God or love calls in whisper. God’s call is not always easy to hear.
We learned that God calls over and over again…
Because Samuel missed God’s call in the first reading God did not give up on him but kept calling.
We learn that when God calls sometimes it’s hard to understand what exactly our response is supposed to be.
In the first reading we also saw that it took Samuel several times to understand what the call was.
In the Gospel it is clear that John felt called to introduce his followers to Jesus…
He did so knowing full well that they would leave him and follow the Messiah…
Yes God’s call is almost always involves sacrifice.
In the Gospel we also see that when God calls he meets us half way.
When John disciples started to follow Jesus timidly he met them half way. He stopped and turned around and saying “What are you looking for…” he opened the door for them…
And finally in the Gospel we see that when God calls us to a deep more meaningful, more sacrificial life… it is our task our job, our privilege to calls others.
Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. didn’t just keep his call to himself. He found Peter and said we have found the Messiah… He shared to call.
Good People
All of this begs the questions.
Do we regularly answer God’s call?
Have we been willing to answer God’s call even when it meant letting go of our own plans and surrendering our will ?
Have we been willing to share God’s call with others?
Following God’s call is just like taking care of our kids it is a life time job.
God will never give up on us he will continue to call us until our very last breath.
The world needs people to say yes to God and yes to love, pray God that we respond with generous hearts.. when He calls.
Amen
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