Calling: 25 January 2009

Dear Friends,

For a long time I referred to myself as “the first-born son my father never had”. You see, dad was an avid outdoorsman – he hunted small and big game and fished…a lot! When I reached the appropriate age, I was solicited (expected) to accompany him on his hunting and fishing excursions, all but deer hunting – that was his time with his adult male buddies. After all, it was family tradition for father and son, (pictured are dad and grandpa) or in my case daughter, to go hunting and fishing together. We went duck, goose and pheasant hunting. I endured winter weekends on frozen Lake Winnebago ice fishing and long days of sitting in a dark shanty, listening to of all things the then Marquette Warriors basketball games on the radio, during the February sturgeon season. Sundays were particularly difficult as the call to get up came at 4:00 in the morning so we could drive to Chilton to attend 5:30 Mass before heading out for a long day of ice fishing (never mind I had to nudge him to wake him up after the sermon). As a teenager, and a daughter, I really would have much rather spent my “free time” on weekends and after school during hunting and fishing seasons with my friends. Very early on I grew weary of those early morning calls to get up and get ready. But I went with dad, sometimes begrudgingly, to places I really wasn’t always thrilled to go.

Today’s first reading from Jonah (3:1-5, 10 - for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time) relates the middle of the story of God’s call to Jonah – a sort of happy ending telling us a snippet of Jonah accepting God’s command to travel to Nineveh (a great city of the Assyrian Empire, an enemy of Israel), to relay God’s message of warning for the people there, the people’s repentance and God’s mercy upon them. What we hear in this Scripture reading today doesn’t tell us is that this is the second time God told Jonah to go to Nineveh. The first time, Jonah ran away, was thrown into the seas and swallowed by a “large fish” dwelling there for three days and nights before God saved him from this peril. Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh! But God indeed called Jonah a second time, and this time Jonah went to Nineveh and did what God asked of him.

When we search our hearts and listen for the voice of God within, what do we hear? Sometimes what God is calling us to do or be is challenging or uncomfortable. Sometimes we may decide God is asking too much of us. Sometimes we may feel God wants us to go places in our hearts, minds and lives we would rather not go. But God keeps calling – never gives up on us and continually and abundantly loves us so deeply. And eventually, as people of faith, we remember God's love for us, relent and follow God’s call.

One autumn afternoon, when I was about 16 years old, my dad and I were traveling the back roads in search of those elusive pheasants. Once again I wished I hadn’t had to go hunting with him. But at one point he stopped the car in the middle of the road and sat silent for several minutes. The next words he spoke touched my heart deeply: “Just look at how beautiful the colors of the trees are”. It was then, after countless calls to get up and go hunting or fishing that I saw so clearly his love for nature and realized for the first time spending this time with dad was so very precious.

What is it worth to us to answer the call of God? Imagine what we will discover!

Peace on the Journey.