In my almost thirty years of priesthood, people of different ages and from all walks of life have approached me with some anxiety and even despair wondering if they were at the right place and doing the right things in life. Yes, we are all in the same boat. It is like waiting for friends at airports, we might worry if we have the right date, right flight or maybe the right airport. We could worry about whether we are at the right school, the right job, the right company, and the like. The more personal our area of choice and decision, the more insecurity presents itself. This all gets even more problematic when we insert the question of what God is calling us to be and do.

The Gospel today is an account of Jesus’ calling his first four disciples from their lives of fishing to lives of finding. The disciples are all being called into relationship. The catch is, the deeper that relationship, the more trust is needed to walk into its future. What attracted this four to leave everything? They were leaving family, occupation and the known (day to day living) and as they journeyed in relationship with Jesus, they were to become familiar with the insecurity of the unknown.

Through the waters of Baptism we have been blest and sent. We are all invited to follow Jesus and the Apostles into our own ways of living out our mission. But we are aware that we are all human with some frightening limitations such as our not knowing the future and the outcomes. What we have in common with Jesus and the Apostles is our basic call to do God’s will. What is that exactly?

God’s will is to love us, give us life and bring us to maturity in Christ. God’s will is for us to be human with all its limitations and strengths. Just like the apostles we are invited to the same trust of God to which Jesus was invited in his Baptism. We are baptized into him and his way of loving his Father; he trusted. What we are called to be and do remains the same, trust that who we are and what we are doing is what God’s love wants to give us.

There are scriptural passages that arrive occasionally to affirm us and our choices. They push us out into deeper waters or pull us into deeper relationships with Jesus on the shore. We experience promptings of the Spirit which comfort us and give us the assurance that we are in the right place and doing the right things in life.

Fr. Crisente de Rivera, SVD
Rome, Italy
The Word in Other Words