Inspiration, Invitation and Institution
January 17, 2021: 2nd Sunday in Ordinary time
Samuel 3: 3b-10,19 ; 1 Corinthians 6: 13c-15a, 17-20 ; John 1: 35-42
Our life is a call and more specifically our Christian life is a demanding call. Having reflected last week on the Call of Jesus, last week with his Baptism, this week the Word speaks to us of our call from Jesus! It involves an inspiration, an invitation and an institution!
The first reading, from the life of Samuel highlights the inspiration we have received. Inspiration is from within. It requires that we are attentive in order that we do not miss it. A friend of mine recently resigned his job and opted another underpaid job. When asked why, he said that he felt that the former job was keeping him away from the Church, eating away his Sundays and a great portion of even the other days. I asked him how he did come to decide on such a thing. And he said, 'I just felt it'. It is significant to note that he had very recently become a Catholic, in spite of strong resistance from the rest of his family.
Inspiration is the intervention of Spirit into our concrete lives, making us discern the will of God and work out our salvation. There are directions that come our way, as to what to do and what to choose, and if only we are attentive to the signs and events, we would know exactly what choices to make! At times we care so less about what God wants of us, that we decide on something wrong and reap the fruits of it - complaining that the Lord is too hard with us! How great a gift inspiration is!
The Gospel extends the invitation to come and see. The fact that we are inspired is undeniable, for every one of us is guided and led by the Spirit who resides within us (as the Second reading reminds us). But the crucial element is for us to 'see'... to take note of... to understand what we are inspired about. The invitation is to behold the message from the Lord, to make our contact with the Lord an experience and not just an appointment.
There is a standing invitation from the Lord to belong to the Lord, in body and soul, in spirit and mind, in time and space! The invitation is at the same time a challenge, challenging us to belong to the Lord. That invitation and challenge has been age old - Hear O Israel, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your might and with all your strength. That love is indeed a challenge to belong to the Lord and to the Lord alone.
The call to be a Christian is not a call of an individual, it is a call to be a communion of persons, to be an institution. It is a call to form One Body with the Lord - united with the brothers and sisters in love, instituted into a sign of hope to everyone around who is looking out for something to hold on to in life. The world today may appear so critical about Christians, but it is only an expression of the expectations they have of us: that as one family of hope-filled people, one institution of Christ filled persons, we radiate the joy that the humanity stands in need of.
Let us be attentive to the inspiration within, heed to the invitation from above and belong to the institution that we are called to become - the Church, the people of God, the believing Community, brothers and sisters in love!
