Leaving For Life

1Kings 19:16b, 19-21

Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11

Galatians 5:1, 13-16

Luke 9:51-62

The readings today are just the kind of readings that Catholics on Call is all about—about the call of vocation and our human response. What can we learn about vocation and response from them?

The first thing we can learn is how radical God’s call is. A vocation is not a job or a profession. It’s about our whole life’s direction. This is why Elisha “burned his bridges,” so to speak—sacrificed the oxen with which he plowed his fields—before he followed Elijah as Elijah’s successor. It’s why Jesus is so insistent on those people who wanted to follow him or whom he asked to follow him had also to leave everything behind: security, family, possessions, livelihood. It’s why Paul insists that discipleship has nothing to do with the “flesh” (focusing on oneself) but with life in the Spirit (being fully focused God and on others).

A second thing we can learn about vocation is patience with and tolerance toward those who don’t follow the call. It’s interesting that Jesus doesn’t condemn the people who seem to hesitate to follow him. He just tells them what discipleship entails and leaves it at that. Even more clearly, when James and John want God to destroy the Samaritans who refused Jesus and his disciples hospitality, Jesus rebuked them, not the Samaritans, and just moved on to another village. Actually, we don’t really know whether those hesitant people eventually followed Jesus. We do know, however, that not all Samaritans were closed to Jesus’ message. In John’s gospel we read about the Samaritan woman and the people in her village that were very open to Jesus, and in the Acts of the Apostles we read about the Samaritans whom Philip converted. Could those Samaritans in Acts have remembered Jesus’ attitude of patience and tolerance when he had visited them during his ministry? We don’t know, but we also don’t know when the seeds of a call that is once sown in people’s minds will begin to germinate and bear fruit. The God of Jesus is a lot more patient than we are.

Jesus’ and Paul’s demands about vocation may sound too radical, almost undoable. But I don’t really think that this is the case. As I mentioned already, we’re talking about a basic direction for one’s life, not just the way that direction plays out in concrete circumstances. It’s a decision on which our life depends. It’s here that some thoughts of Pope Francis can help. He speaks of a “profound law of reality” that is embedded in human existence itself. That law, he says, is “that life is attained and matures in the measure that it is offered up in order to give it to others.” Our lives grow, he says, when we give it away, and “it weakens in isolation and comfort.” He goes on to say that “Indeed, those who enjoy life most are those who leave security on the shore and become excited by the mission of communicating life to others” (Evangelii Gaudium 10).

The fact is, if we’re not willing to do that—to leave everything, to stop living in the “flesh” and give ourselves over to the “spirit,”—we will actually never become fully human, never become the persons that God has called us to be, never become really free. Jesus and Paul call us to leave for life. Jesus’ call to discipleship is a profoundly religious call on the one hand, but “religious” does not mean being added on or extra. The great German theologian Karl Rahner once wrote that there is a paradox in human life: the more we open ourselves up to God the more we become human. We think the opposite is the case, but it’s not. Our achievement of humanity is in direct proportion to how much we give it away. The classic American songwriter Richard Rogers said much the same thing in a short song he wrote:

So what Elijah to a certain extent, and what Jesus and Paul clearly demand, is not impossible. It still is hard, though, and the leaving they call for is certainly the decision of our lives—literally! Maybe we can’t quite do it yet. Maybe there’s something that keeps us from giving ourselves over to discipleship—fear of losing control, fear of losing friends, fear of what our family might think, fear that if we burn our oxen we may never get them back again. Maybe we’re not yet convinced that leaving so much behind will actually save our lives. Maybe we need a bit more time.

That might be OK. After all, it’s a big decision. This is perhaps what the story about James and John and the Samaritans tells us, or what Jesus’ answer to those who hesitate means. In Jesus’ patience and tolerance—as often opposed to our own impatience and intolerance—we see the incarnation of God’s mercy. The call, the vocation, will always be there. The invitation will never be revoked. God will be ready when we are. It will always be demanding, though,—even scary. But it will not go away. Elijah, Paul, Jesus all tell us that leaving is for life. Hopefully, if we don’t know yet, one day we will have the courage to know what this means.