Matthew 4: 12-23
Dear Friends,
Today’s Gospel has the frequent Biblical theme of the call. From Abraham down to Paul there are repeating variations of the Biblical and very 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.
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.
I was confused and I had to make a decision about college. I had several scholarships to college with the prospect of more but none basically 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.
- Now in my final years, I am hard pressed to identify any decisions 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 ongoing call from a God who takes us where we are and is very patient with us
