Chosen, Not the Series

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    When I was in elementary school, one of the biggest highlights of the day was recess.  At our small parochial school, St. Mary in Williamston, whether it was warm or cold, we would play soccer on the asphalt parking lot.  But, before we could play, we had to choose teams, which meant that the captains had to pick whom they wanted for their team.  Of course, the captains would always pick the best players first, and it was a great ego boost if you were picked early, rather than being picked last.
    We hear about a lot of choosing today, in all three readings.  God chooses Amos to prophesy, though Amos wasn’t really looking to be picked.  Jesus picks the Twelve Apostles, and sends them on their mission to assist Jesus in proclaiming the Gospel.  And St. Paul, in our second reading, reminds us that we have been chosen “before the foundation of the world, to be holy.”  Do you consider yourself chosen?
 

The Calling of St. Matthew by Caravaggio

   God did choose you.  He chose you, not only for life, but for holiness, and for witnessing to His life, love, and truth.  You were chosen for holiness and witness when you were baptized.  At that moment, your life was not about you, but about the mission, about showing by the way you live and what you do that you belong to God and that true happiness is not found by giving in to passing pleasures, but by restraining ourselves, dying to ourselves, so that we can live most freely for God. 
    From baptism to your confirmation, you were being prepared for the mission.  You were (hopefully) being taught the basic truths of the faith, and being schooled in virtue so that you could more easily choose the good and reject what is evil.  You may have not decided to be chosen (many were baptized as infants), but you also didn’t decide to be born; that choice was made for you.  And your parents hopefully loved you enough to decide which foods you could eat to help you grow into a healthy human being.  Again, you didn’t decide that for yourself, but your parents wanted to give you the best foundation possible in both your earthly and your spiritual life.
    When you were confirmed, you didn’t decide whether or not you were chosen.  You were already chosen in baptism, and nothing can stop you from being chosen from that point on.  Each person, after baptism, has a seal, a character, that is indelible, which cannot be washed away.  So many children are wrongly taught that confirmation is them choosing to remain Catholic.  Once a  person is baptized, that person is always a baptized Catholic, whether that person chooses to live the faith or reject the faith.  Confirmation, is where you stand before God and His Church and say that you are ready to witness that life of Jesus in your own life, and that you are ready to share with others the faith you have received.  And God sends His Holy Spirit upon you to make that witness possible.  God confirms His original choice of you and continues to give you the means by which you can respond to that choice. 
    Perhaps this is a new message for us.  Perhaps you’ve never heard this before.  But you have been chosen.  Amos was accused of choosing himself, of belonging to a prophetic guild (think of it as a club for prophets).  But, he tells the pagan priest, Amaziah that he did not volunteer, but God chose him to speak God’s word to the Israelites so that they could turn away from their sins and live for God.  Perhaps you feel like you’re not stepping forward to witness to God by your words and deeds.  But God wants you anyway to speak His Word to a world that needs to hear it.
    Perhaps you do feel chosen, but you don’t feel equipped for the mission.  You might be like the Twelve Apostles, whom Jesus chose, but then who needed some time spent with Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit before they were ready to witness to Jesus.  The Apostles weren’t the smartest people.  They came from different political backgrounds, and would compete with each other for the place of honor.  But, through spending time with Jesus, hearing His truth, and by the gift of the Holy Spirit, they were empowered to proclaim Christ by their lives and by their deaths (St. John the Apostle was the only one who was not martyred).  The same can be said for us.  If we want to live according to our Divine election, we need to spend time with Jesus, and ask Him to stir up into flame the gift of the Holy Spirit that we received at Confirmation. 
    No matter whether we feel chosen or not, St. Paul says that we are, chosen to exist for “the praise of [God’s] glory.”  As a married person, as a parent, as an employer or employee or retiree, as a priest, as a deacon, as a sister or brother, as a child, as a student, in every walk of life, we have been chosen, and our eternal salvation depends on the response to that choice.  We may witness in big ways, or we may witness in small ways, but may God encourage us as those He has chosen for His team, which, in the end, is the only team that will win.

Drafted for the Gospel

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

There are things for which we want to be chosen.  As adults it’s often the job that we applied for, or maybe it’s the significant other that we’ve been dating, whom we hope will ask us to marry.  As children we may want to be chosen to be on the team with our friends on the playground, or for the school play.  I think we all know that the reality is that we often don’t get chosen for the things we want.  Maybe we don’t get the job; maybe we get dumped; maybe we don’t get the role we want or are not on the team we want.

A young man I know from when I was a priest in East Lansing, Cooper Rush, was chosen again and again for football teams, despite ever-increasing odds not to be chosen.  He was the quarterback for Lansing Catholic, holds records for an MHSAA playoff game, led Lansing Catholic one year to the State Championship (where, ironically, Lansing Catholic lost to Flint Powers).  He then was chosen to play quarterback at Central Michigan University, and was very successful at Central, going to bowl games and even holding a FBS Bowl Game record for most touchdowns passes in a Bowl Game.  Currently, he is a back-up quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys.  And besides being a good athlete, he is also an upstanding man.

The odds of him making it to the NFL weren’t that good.  One stat from 2015 says that there were 1.087 million high school football players.  Of those, 310,000 high school football players were seniors.  Of those, only 70,000 were chosen to be on an NCAA football team.  Of those, on 20,000 played on an NCAA team.  Of those 20,000, about 15,500 were college seniors.  Of those 15,500 seniors, 6,500 were scouted by the NFL, and only 350 were invited to a combine to show their football skills.  Of those, 256 players were drafted by the NFL.  The odds of being chosen for high school, college, and professional football are about 1.6 out of 100.

The odds of being chosen to preach the Gospel, however, are much better.  Every baptized person has been chosen, drafted, we might say, to preach the Gospel both by deeds and words.  And while we might not think of ourselves as a draft pick, we heard in our first reading and Gospel about some unlikely characters who are chosen.

In the first reading, we hear about Jonah being asked by God to preach to the citizens of Nineveh.  God asks Jonah to tell them to repent, to turn away from their sinful, pagan ways.  Jonah didn’t want to go; he hated Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire which had exiled the members of the northern kingdom of Israel.  Jonah even tried to run away, but God did not abandon Jonah or let him off the hook.  And even when Jonah preached repentance, he hoped that the Assyrians would not listen, so that God could destroy the pagan empire.  Probably not a first round evangelist.

And in the Gospel we hear about Jesus calling the first apostles: Simon, Andrew, James, and John.  They were not rabbis.  There were not the educated elite of Judaism.  They were fishermen.  But Jesus saw something in them that He knew would be important for having as disciple.  It wasn’t always obvious to others, though.  Peter always seemed to speak before thinking, denied Jesus during His Passion, and even almost ran away from his martyrdom in Rome.  James and John were the ones who asked for a privileged spot in the kingdom of God, in front of the line of the other apostles, and asked Jesus to call down fire upon the Samaritan towns when they wouldn’t receive Jesus on His journey to Jerusalem.  And even the other apostles were not seemingly the best catch: Matthew was a tax collector; Thomas doubted; Simon wanted to violently overthrow the Roman government; and they were all uneducated, simple people.  And yet Jesus called each of them to preach the Gospel.

You may not think it, but Jesus has also called you to preach the Gospel.  When you were baptized you were committed or you committed yourself to being a disciple of Jesus, to conforming your life to His, to sharing with others the good news of what Jesus has done for us (freeing us from sin and death).  You may not think you have what it takes, but Jesus does.  And even if you feel like you need to know more, that’s why we have Bible studies, and faith sharing groups, and formational events both here, in the greater-Flint area, and across the Diocese, events like the Men’s and Women’s Conferences.  If you don’t feel like you have what it takes, then work towards that goal of having what it takes.  Make your faith life more than simply coming to Mass on Sundays and holydays.  Get involved in deepening your faith and maybe volunteering in our parish ministries.  You might just be the one to bring another person to Jesus.