“Your Vocation and John the Baptist’s” by Colleen O’Sullivan
Hear me, O coastlands, listen, O distant peoples. The Lord called me from birth, from my
mother’s womb he gave me my name. You
are my servant, he said to me, Israel, through whom I show my glory. (Isaiah
49:1, 3)
My soul
also you knew full well; nor was my frame unknown to you
When I was made in secret, when I was fashioned in the depths of the earth. (Psalm
139:14c-15)
John
heralded his coming by proclaiming a baptism of repentance to all the people of
Israel; and as John was completing his course, he would say, ‘What do you
suppose that I am? I am not he. Behold,
one is coming after me; I am not worthy to unfasten the sandals of his feet.’ (Acts 13:24-25)
All who
heard these things took them to heart, saying, “What, then, will this child
be?” For surely the hand of the Lord was
with him. The child grew and became
strong in spirit, and he was in the desert until the day of his manifestation
to Israel. (Luke 1: 66, 80)
Piety
Study
Some people go through life like veritable
tumbleweeds, simply tossed from one thing to the next. Wherever
the wind blows, they are borne, never asking themselves if this is what God
intended for them. That God, however,
does have a plan for each of us, I have no doubt. And it is our lifelong job to discern that vocation
and live it.
In today’s first reading, the prophet
Isaiah says he was named and called by the Lord from the moment he came into
this world. In the Hebrew Scriptures, to
be named is to be known. Your name
revealed a great deal about you. Isaiah’s
name meant “God is salvation.” Isaiah
was destined to be a prophet from the very beginning, reminding God’s people that
salvation is to be found in God.
John’s name, too, had
significance. Left to their own devices,
his elderly parents might have named him after his father, Zechariah. But Zechariah had been silenced for months before
the birth for his lack of faith in Gabriel’s message that he and Elizabeth
would have a son, and he wasn’t about to go against the angel again.
The child was named John, which means “God
is gracious.” And immediately people
began to wonder who this infant would grow up to be if he wasn’t destined to follow
in his father’s footsteps. We know that
John was the one sent to prepare the way of the Lord. John preached in the wilderness and he
baptized people, always with the admonition that he, John, was not the Anointed
One. No, the One so longed for was so great
that John didn’t think himself worthy even so much as to unfasten his sandals.
Action
In a broad sense, we all share John
the Baptist’s vocation. We may live it
out in ways that differ greatly, but we’re all asked to point others to God, to
draw our family members, friends, co-workers and neighbors into Christian
fellowship with us.
Writing Daily Tripods each week is one
of my ways of living that out. I have a good
friend who travels around the world, often to fairly remote areas, to offer missionaries
pastoral care and counseling they otherwise have little or no access to. Some people volunteer as Stephen ministers in
their parishes. Others are lectors. Some are ordained to the priesthood. Some are parents teaching their children what
it means to be family and what it means to be a member of the family of
God.
Sometimes we’re even pointing the way
to God without being conscious of doing anything special. Years ago I worked with a young woman who was
moving to another city. She wrote notes
to each person in the office before she left.
In mine she said that my faith had bolstered her wavering faith and
brought her back to the Church. I had no
idea!
How are you living out your
vocation? Has that changed over time?
Picture: Jacopo Tintoretto, Birth of St. John the
Baptist (c. 1563), Church of San Zaccaria, Venice, Public Domain, Wikimedia
Commons
