Is fear stopping you from answering the Lord's call?
When the Lord calls him to service, the prophet Isaiah feels
unworthy: Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am
a man of unclean lips… But the seraphim makes it possible for Isaiah to
accept the Lord's call by purifying his lips with a burning ember, and Isaiah
can now respond wholeheartedly, Here I
am, send me! Thus cleansed of his
sin, Isaiah, like the psalmist in Psalm 138, can proclaim God's name, profess
his faith, and speak to others of the Lord's kindness and truth, giving
witness to all the world in the sight of
the angels.
Like Isaiah, the fisherman Simon does not feel deserving of
the Lord's call in Luke's Gospel: falling at the knees of Jesus, he says, Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. But Jesus knows he is a man of faith, and
he articulates Simon Peter's call: Do not be afraid; from now on you will be
catching men. Paul also recognizes
his own prior hesitation at the call to serve:
For I am the least of the
apostles, not fit to be called an apostle… Knowing the obstacles he himself
has faced, Paul calls the Corinthians also to live faith they first knew in
Christ: hold fast to the word I preached to you.
It's easy to convince ourselves that we are incapable,
ill-suited to serve, a bad choice as an apostle; it's very hard to convince ourselves
that the Lord is constantly at work in our lives, purifying our lips and raising us up. Fear blocks us; doom
silences us. But the Lord touches us and
opens us, making speech possible again.
Upon leaving the temple, Isaiah will never speak in the same way again; called by Jesus, Peter will never fish in the same way again; Paul, descending from his horse,
will, by the grace of God, know
radical conversion.
Consider this: What
if we are called to ongoing conversion daily, according to which today simply can't
be like yesterday? What if we are called to start each day anew, with an opportunity
to make decisions anew? Each day we
wake, and we fear -- but Christ is there to touch our lives, to lead us past our fear, to help us
open to the Lord's call, each day, anew.
This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.
Image source: Wordle
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