Are you receptive
to the Lord’s call in your life?
When the future
prophet Samuel hears a voice in the night, he thinks it is the temple priest
Eli calling to give him instructions, and Samuel is ready to follow those
instructions: Here I am; you called me. In
fact, as Eli soon reveals, it isn’t Eli’s voice at all, but God’s, and so Eli
instructs Samuel in the proper response to God’s call: Speak,
Lord, for your servant is listening. Samuel,
called at a very young age by God, will fulfill his duty as prophet with a
sense of readiness all his life long.
His ears are open to obedience, openness that is
itself, as Psalm 40 notes, a gift from God, and so Samuel can follow the law prescribed for him because he
has taken that law into his very being, placed it at the very core of his
existence.
When the first
disciples hear the voice of Jesus in John's Gospel, they do not realize that that voice is of
divine origin, nor do they know what they are being called to do. Come
and you will see, Jesus tells them: Come
and see where I’m staying; come and learn from me – in other words, follow
me! Come, hear the call, and respond
with the whole of your being, body and spirit, as Paul tells the
Corinthians: glorify God in your body – whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one Spirit
with him. This is the kind of
commitment necessary to respond appropriately to God’s call.
We are all called
to follow Jesus; our receptivity, our willingness to listen, are at the core of
our first action as disciples. Our call
is to serve, though we may not know, at first, what form that service will
take. But one thing is clear: we must be open in every moment, receptive,
willing to hear the call of Christ and to respond with the whole of our
being. It is for this that he came; it
is for this that we live, ears open to
obedience, ever ready to do God’s will.
This post is based
on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
