Psalm 40: 8-9

Whether we like it or not, all of us who have been baptized have been called by God. We have been called to share in the life of Jesus, to walk according to His example as we journey through life.

Have you ever wished that you were alive when Jesus walked the earth? Many people have had such a fantasy and imagine that they would have been eager followers of Jesus, putting the backsliding apostles to shame. Oh, really? Jesus calls each of us to follow Him today just as surely as He called the disciples nearly two thousand years ago. He is still calling us to change. He is asking for a change of attitudes, for new values and for a lot more than the practice of old pieties. Jesus’ call for change is a call for death and resurrection: death to the old, selfish person and rising to the new life of the Gospel. Resurrection means new life, here and now; and not only in the next life after we die.

How many times have you told someone to call you? How many times has someone taken you at your word, called you, and, received a rather cool response? Such an experience is probably not all that unfamiliar to most of us. Why? Because the majority of calls we receive are interruptions of one kind or another. They unsettle us because they intrude on our routine. They make demands on us. Calls are like that. They are intrusive and all but force a response. The call from God is no different. Whether it comes quietly or with fanfare, God’s call intervenes in our lives, insists on being heard. How we respond to that call makes all the difference in our lives. God is calling you to a new life of the spirit; He is calling you to abandon the old ways of jealousy, anger, gossip, slander and mean-spiritness. He has sent His son into the world so that we can follow Him; not the way of the world, not the slippery slope of sin, but the way of Jesus who is the way, the truth and the life.

The greatest thing you can do with your life is answer the Lord’s call. As the Old Testament psalm asserts, we must be willing to say: “here am I Lord; I come to do your will.”

Fr. Hugh Duffy