January 18, 2021
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the 2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B) on January 17, 2021, at St. Austin Catholic Parish in Austin, TX. The homily is based on the day’s readings: 1 Samuel 3:3b-10, 19; Psalm 40; 1 Corinthians 6:13c-15a, 17-20; and John 1:35-42.
Today, we observe a brand-new celebration here in the Diocese of Austin, entitled “Called By Name” Sunday. Every priest in the diocese is invited to tell his vocation story today. The Diocesan Vocations Office has provided envelopes as you leave church today to write down the names of any young men you feel the office may want to invite to consider priesthood, and the names of any young men or women you feel the office may want to invite to consider religious life. If you’re uncomfortable sharing someone’s name in this way, then please consider inviting the young person yourself. Otherwise, they may be like Samuel in our first reading, but without an Eli to help them discern God’s call!
We have wonderful readings today about God calling people to service, some of them by name. Granted, they’re all men called to religious vocations, but don’t let that get in the way of the idea that we are all called by name to be God’s children and to build up God’s kingdom.
Let us take a moment to celebrate that our God is a God of love and mercy, always eager to engage with us, even if we’ve ignored his calls in the past.
Six or seven years ago at the University of Tennessee, I worked with a materials science graduate student whose ability to procrastinate was epic. One day, as a joke, she began to riff online, inspired by the vocational call of God to Jeremiah:
The word of the LORD came to me: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a student of thermodynamics I appointed you. “Ah, Lord God,” I said. “I do not know how to study, I am too hard-headed!” But the LORD answered me, Do not say, “I am too hard-headed.” To whomever’s class I send you, you shall go: whatever I command you, you shall study.
She was onto something. Whenever we hear stories of God calling people – be it the call of Jeremiah, the call of Samuel, or the call of Mary, to name a few – we should reflect on how the story applies to us. The Bible is not history; it is our story. It gives examples of how we humans experience God.
When the Christian community reflected back on our shared story of faith, the first meeting of Jesus with the two disciples was such an important moment that they even noted when it happened: four o’clock in the afternoon.
For most of the past twenty years, I’ve thought that the moment that I was called by name was about eleven o’clock in the morning on Saturday, May 26, 2001, in the choir loft of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Pittsburgh. That’s when I first heard God’s call for me to consider the Catholic priesthood. But now I realize that there were other moments before that – ones that I don’t have the dates memorized – when God was calling me but I didn’t recognize it because I didn’t have an Eli there to guide me. It took me nearly 15 years to recognize the distinct wisdom I received on the night of my confirmation in November of 1987. It was nearly a decade before I realized the life-changing impact of discussing the upcoming diocesan synod at the University of Rochester in September of 1992. By the time I reached a Sunday afternoon in September of 1999 in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, I sensed that God was calling my name, but I didn’t know yet to what God was calling me.
When I received the lightning bolt revelation in the choir loft in 2001, the Elis in my life were ready to help. As I tentatively shared with friends that I thought perhaps God was calling me to the priesthood, many of them immediately said, “I always thought you’d make a good priest.” Why hadn’t they told me before I had done all that hard discernment on my own?
Today, more of the people called by God to religious life and the priesthood are probably like me – people who haven’t had many opportunities to get know religious sisters, brothers, or priests while they were growing up. They may need our help more than ever in, ahem, “tracing the call” to make sure it’s coming from God. So, if you know someone who’d make a good religious sister or brother, or if you know someone who’d make a good diocesan priest, take an envelope in the lobby when you leave Mass today or email the diocesan vocations office. If you know a man who’d make a good deacon, please talk with Deacon Billy. If you know a young man who’d make a good Paulist priest, please reach out to me directly! If it feels too weird to share a name with us, by all means, tell the person directly that you think they should explore this invitation from God… since the direct approach is always more effective and more authentic. And if you’ve never invited someone to consider a vocation for the Church, please take some time to reflect: how is the Holy Spirit supposed to operate in the world without our help?
Even in this challenging year, I LOVE my vocation as a Paulist priest! My life has such purpose and meaning. Everything I’d done before – in music, in engineering, or in teaching – has helped me to flourish now. The pandemic has shown the huge network of friends I’ve made around the country, from journeying with them at both the saddest and the most joyous moments of their lives. I wouldn’t change my vocation for a moment, even on the days when it’s challenging!
My friend’s riff on the call of God to be a thermodynamics student did not end with God’s command to go to whomever’s classes God sent her and to study whatever subjects God assigned her. It ended with this reassurance:
Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you – but not yet.
I don’t think she knew it then, but God’s promises were coming true. She soon created a lovely poster of her riff on Jeremiah, illuminated with test tubes intertwined like Celtic knots, with a medieval-style fire-breathing dragon warming one of the beakers. God soon delivered her from the study of thermodynamics and invited her to become a professional artist, specializing in religious works. It’s no wonder that, as a formerly desperately-procrastinating materials science engineer, she became a great sculptor in relatively quick time.
Even that grad student, who lamented that God was allowing her to languish, was called by name to something life-giving. If it could happen to her and it could happen to me, why shouldn’t it happen to you and to all your loved ones?
In our gospel today, Jesus looks two of John the Baptist’s disciples in the eyes, and asks, “What are you looking for?” On this “Called By Name” Sunday, let’s celebrate that we have the privilege to answer that shockingly intimate question. After a year when so many of us have felt “stuck,” perhaps God is calling you by name to something new and exciting, or perhaps God is working through you to call someone else to a new, life-giving adventure!