- Called Despite Our Fears - BY HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS - Open Mind, Faithful Heart - 

                                                 -  Reflection on Following Jesus  -

YOU WERE CALLED, and now you are preparing to receive the ministry. You may be thinking, "At last we've arrived!" You may experience this preparation from the perspective of the "big moment". This can be harmful for us because without our being aware of it, it can lead us to relativize the ministry we are going to receive. To avoid doing that, our perspective should be that of the chairos, that is, of "God's time," which transcends all the "moments" of our existence. here, then, our question should be: Where do I stand? What is the foundation of my vocation?

IT WILL HELP US to recall the words of Jesus: "On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?' Then I will declare to them, 'I have never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.' Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell - and great was it fall!" - Matthew 7:22:27 -

"AND HIS RUIN WAS GREAT." Those words remind me of the Lord's warning about the devil who, after being expelled from a possessed person, attempts to return with seven others so that "the last state of that person was worse than the first" - Luke 11:26 - So again we as the question: What is the foundation of my being?

FOR AN INITIAL MEDITATION, I propose that you consider the ministerial mission you will receive. Having been formally commissioned, you will be confronted yet again with this reality: you are created and saved by the same Jesus who now calls you to serve as ministers, and you will therefore need to exercise the discerning generosity required for greater service in this specific mission.

MUCH TO OUR CONSOLATION, sacred scripture has preserved for us the special relation that was established between the Lord and those he sent on mission: Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Joseph and so many others. All of them felt deeply on their inadequacy, in the face of the Lord's request: "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt" - Exodus 3:11 - "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips" - Isaiah 6:5 - "Almighty God! Behold, I do not know how to speak for I am only a youth." - Jeremiah 1:6 - "I need to be baptized by you and do you come to me?" - Matthew 3:14 - even Joseph, who made plans "to dismiss Mary quietly". - Matthew 1:19 - There is a initial resistance, the inability to comprehend the magnitude of the call, the fear of the mission. This sign is from the good spirit, especially if it does not stop there but allows the Lord's strength to express itself through human weakness and to infuse that weakness with consistency and solidity. "I will be with you, and this shall be the sign that I have sent you: when you have brought forth the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God upon this mountain" - Exodus 3:12 - "He touched my mouth and said: 'Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven" - Isaiah 6:7 - "Do not say, 'I am only a youth'; for to all whom I send you, you shall go, and whenever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you" - Jeremiah 1:7-8 -; Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness" - Matthew 3:15 - "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit." - Matthew 1:20 -

IN GIVING US A MISSION, the Lord grounds us; he gives us a solid foundation. And he does not do so with the perfunctory attitude of someone giving us an ordinary task to perform, but with the empowering might of his Spirit, so that our identity is sealed by the very way in which we are made to belong to that mission. Identity is tied up with belonging, and for us belonging means participating in what Jesus grounds - and Jesus grounds us in the Church, in the holy and faithful people, for the glory of the Father. Perhaps, our fears and insecurities arise from the same feelings that moved Moses, Isaiah, John, and the other great figures to fight shy of their mission when it was first proposed to them. If so, then all we have to do is allow the Lord to speak to us and to help us place our fear, our pusillanimity, and our self-regard in their true perspective.

JESUS ESTABLISHED the kingdom of God. By his words and by his life he founded it once and for all. Belonging to that kingdom is for a value we cannot refuse. Jesus establishes us as pastors of his people and that is what he wants us to be. In speaking of our own foundations, we cannot prescind from this pastoral dimension of our lives. I think that for this meditation we may be helped by reviewing a pastoral document that summons us to allow ourselves to be established anew as pastors by Christ our Lord. I therefor propose that you read some passages from Evangelii Nuntiandi. Let us reflect on ourselves in the light of that teaching in order to draw some profit from it. 

JESUS HIMSELF has a mission: "Going from town to town, preaching to the poorest - frequently the most receptive - the joyful news of the fulfillment of the promises and of the Covenant offered by God is the mission for which Jesus declares that he is sent by the Father. And all the aspects of his mystery - the Incarnation itself, his miracles, his teaching, the gathering together of the disciples, the sending out of the Twelve, the cross and the resurrection, the permanence of his presence in the midst of his own - were components of his evangelizing activity" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 6). Through this evangelizing activity Christ "proclaims a kingdom, the kingdom of God; and this is so important that by comparison everything else becomes 'the rest' that which is 'given' in addition - cf. Matthew 6:31-33 -. Only the kingdom therefore is absolute and it makes everything else relative" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 8). It is the Lord who establishes the kingdom.

Therefore do not worry, saying, "What will we eat?" or "What will we drink?" "What will we wear?" For it is the Gentiles strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. - Matthew 6:31-33 -

We may continue this mediation by contemplating the different ways in which Jesus describes "the happiness of belonging to this kingdom............. - P A G E  O N E -