Matthew 4:12-23
Dear Friends,
Today’s Gospel has the frequent Biblical theme: the call. From Abraham down to Paul there are repeating variations of the Biblical call. It is a common human experience. The call is one of the basic ways we all experience God. The pattern is a vague sense of promise of a better future with the demand of letting go that tends to be very specific and concrete in our daily lives.I would like to share a personal experience. When I was in seventh grade, I made a mistake of signing a card telling a Carmelite vocation director I had once thought about being a priest. I quickly repented and got over it but he hounded me for the next year and a half trying to get me to go the Seminary located five hundred miles away at Niagara Falls. My choice was football and a growing awareness of how interesting the young ladies were becoming.
Little did I know how fast high school football would come and go. In my first three years we won the city championship. In my final year I was the quarterback and co-captain on the first team in four years to lose the city championship.
I took it very hard. My world was crushed and I was really hurting. Little did I know that I was being called into the Jesus game where you win by losing, in other words, “For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 16:25)
I was confused and I had to make a decision about college. I had several scholarships to college for football with the prospect of more to come but basically none interested me.
Finally, one day that I recall clearly (2/8/54) I was walking home from school and I was in front of my parish church. A thought came to me: I will go to Niagara. With that decision peace began a very slow ascent in my heart over the next several weeks.
I was facing a real change but I was up for the consequences of the decision in some vague way. What was not vague was I had rediscovered a sense of purpose in my life. Over a lifetime of reflection a few things have become much clearer about that February afternoon:
- I was making a decision to go to a place, Niagara, the seminary. Later I would bring into focus much more slowly the idea of becoming a priest and a Carmelite. Eventually, it would become clear that all this is about making Jesus the center of my life.
- Now at the age of eighty-one I am hard pressed to identify any decision that has been more influential in my life.
- Only over many years did the consequences of this first response to the call get fleshed out with countless other responses to the repeating call from a God who takes us where we are and is very patient with us.
