Getting Ready to Pray

The Promise-Maker is at it again, as is the first promise-keeper. Abram hears the calling-God and the dramatic request to leave both his familiar homeland and the security of his lineage.

Both of these are precious treasures in the time of Abram. He is given a promise of a new land and a new kind of family lineage. So, he did go out from his familiar homeland!

There is the added promise that his family would be the very one by which other families and nations would be blessed. As “Abba,” he would be father of the nation Israel and the Father of Faith, by his trust that what he heard was real, was true.

The marvel is that he believed in a communication that was not the usual manner of relating. He became a “second Adam,” who heard and obeyed and presented Israel a model for their listening to God and living according to what is heard.

Reflection                   

The Gospel presents us with the mysterious communication followed by a faithful response, and Jesus’ enactment of it.

The transfiguration is an intimate picture of Jesus again listening to who he is and a sharing that identity with his friends. They enjoy being with Jesus and each other, but this event calls them to a deeper acceptance of Jesus and what their relationship with him is going to cost. They are truly met.

Being truly met is to be moved to respond and to change our outlook and our goings out. Vision moves to mission, to a doing of something. But how does one know really that the vision, the voice, the call, the intuition, are all real? Maybe we’re just talking to ourselves and saying what we want to hear in the first place?

I love being a Companion of Jesus, a Jesuit and a priest. I would say I heard a call, trusted it was from God. Like Abram, Moses, Elijah, Jesus and all his followers including you this reader, how did they know?

Is it success that ratifies a calling? I am adequately successful (they haven’t kicked me out, yet, from Creighton). I am quite a happy fellow; does that qualify me as certain of being called?

Maybe the Transfiguration was nothing more than a trans-hallucination and the frightened three were under the spell or subtle influence of a quite powerful personality. Perhaps Abram was just out standing in the Mediterranean sun too long.

The presence of other real possibilities makes a wonderful framework for that which is central to these readings and our prayer. Abram left, and the disciples left the mountain of the vision. So, in Scripture and in our lives, vision leads to mission.

If there is a calling-conference from God, it will never be to just sit there and enjoy the good feelings or the sense of being special. Intimacy is a prelude to a distributing of life in some fashion or other.

We will know that there is a calling and not a dreaming by the fruitfulness of the life after the appearance, or urging, of a “still small voice.” This fruitfulness might not be in the ways of the world. It is a deepening of trust in the Caller and a living that trust whatever happens.

Lord, let Your mercy be on us as we place our trust in you
Psalm 33