Thursday – Nativity of St. John the Baptist

Gospel – Luke 1:57-66, 80

We Are Called ……

Judean Desert

We are called….!  How would you finish that sentence?  Some of us would answer with our name and perhaps how we came by that name.  I am called Bill, first-born son, named after my father.  And then, since we share that name in common, I could speak about how much alike my dad and I are in action and temperament with our name-sake.  Such a conversation reveals a lot about who we are, where we have come from and our connection with the past.

We celebrate today the Birth of John the Baptist.  It is his mother Elizabeth who insists that he will be called John and not Zechariah after his father.  He will be called John even though no one else in the family has that name.  He will be unique. 

But there can be another meaning to that phrase!  And it speaks not to the past but to the future.  We are called!  Isaiah, in today’s first reading was called, called to be a prophet, called to be God’s spokesman.  St. Paul, in the second reading, was called, called to spread the Word to the Gentiles.  And John the Baptist was called to be a voice crying out in the desert, to proclaim a baptism of repentance and the coming of the Messiah!  This other “calling” speaks not of the past, but of the future, what we are called to become!

We are all called…!  Called by a name that reflects our connection to our family, to our shared past.  But we are also called by name by God to move forward, to proclaim, in our own way, the Word of God, in our words, in our actions, in our relationships with others.  We are all called….! What are you called?  What are you called to be?

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