SEEL Preparation Week Day 3 - Luke 5 27-32 The Call of Levi

 After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were at table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”

I have been sitting with this passage for some time this morning, longer than it takes a sip down a cup of coffee. Now that I am halfway through a second cup, I am ready to commit my thoughts to the page, I mean screen, I mean page. Whatever. 

The bolded words "Follow me" resonate and echo in my heart and head. The echo, however, sounds different from the words sent out. What I am hearing in the return comes from the invitatory, Psalm 95:

Oh, that today you would hear his voice. Do not harden your hearts….

The message is clear and it bounces wildly inside my otherwise quiet morning. Follow me, I read and then in the next breath I hear the caution to not harden my heart. I am bothered. Why? What is so vexing this morning? Perhaps it is because the notion of being called has been on my mind frequently as I work through the process of creating a course titled "What are you looking for?". The answer, of course, is God. We are always searching for him but we are still startled to hear his voice. The path of my thoughts is simple and repetitious. I feel a sense of unrest even as I sit surrounded by his creation watching the dawn come on slowly into a cloudless sky. Multiple birds begin to visit the feeders just a few feet from where I sit, wings fluttering and chirping at each other, me and, most often, just to hear the sound of their own song. 

Perhaps it is because I fell into conflict with my wife when I felt offended she took exception to me not having followed her requests about minor things more closely. I had rationale and justification for what I had done but she was not having it. I was angered and did not respond well. When the exchange petered out, I was left with the lingering awareness that whenever I am upset, the problem is with me and not the problem itself, no matter the cause. 

Here is the rub, or at least part of it. If I choose to follow him, if I obey him, it means I need to listen to him at the level of encounter. Following him means we must, we are invited, to hear his teachings and embrace them. Does he teach us anger is wrong? No, not completely. He was portrayed as being angry but the result of his anger is expressed in his drive to separate us from what causes us to sin. I think of the passage about Jesus driving the unscrupulous vendors from the temple. My anger does not arise out of any altruistic sense of wrong needing to be righted. It is to protect my precious ego. 

The rest of the paragraph from Psalm 95 continues to describe how the people tested and angered him with their rebellious lack of faith. I can't strictly say my behavior angered him. That would be egoistic. What I can say with certitude is he would have me respond differently. With compassion. With self-awareness. With forgiveness. With patience and the list of terms continues.

As I close in prayer, I ask him to help me avoid my ego and to face the world, especially my family with humility and compassion which inspire a need, and a desire to serve. 

Amen. 

SEEL Preparation Week - Day 2 "The Good Shepard"

John 10 1:17

“Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber. But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they recognize his voice. But they will not follow a stranger; they will run away from him, because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.” Although Jesus used this figure of speech, they did not realize what he was trying to tell them. So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came [before me] are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. A hired man, who is not a shepherd and whose sheep are not his own, sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf catches and scatters them. This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father, and I will lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd. This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.

Who are the other sheep not of this fold? The world of the unreached people of the world who have not heard His voice? Is it those sheep who have listened to the word and believe but have chosen paths different from what the beloved disciple would think proper? Might it be me because I have not indeed abandoned my self-directed struggles to be unique? Is it possible I am being pointed toward sheep who belong to the fold but are not sure of their place or feel a need to be pulled closer to the sound of his voice?

As I ponder and wrestle with these thoughts, suddenly the sound of the clock ticking has become thunderous. The benign rushing noise of the water running through the lines beneath out to the sprinklers has become impossible to ignore. The words, the ideas, and the message I am to receive today are difficult. No matter the answer, I may be called to action of some kind and it is always my preference to be lazy. Maybe I am overthinking all of this and the unusual volume of routine sounds might be the result of me sitting in this space wearing my hearing aids and I am not accustomed to the new volumes. What is certain, however, is the fact I have committed these thoughts to the blank page points to what is normal for me. I am often distracted when I focus on reflective prayer on something divine. 

If the sheep outside the fold represent the billions of people of many different beliefs, I think of my cousin Rusty and his wife Penny who are focused on the work of being missionaries to the sheep around them. I admire their singleness of purpose and have committed to supporting them in prayer and companionship. Their calling, however, is not my own. My charisms call me in other directions so I will continue my reflective prayer for other answers. 

It feels more appropriate to focus on the sheep who have chosen other paths, those who belong to the fold but need more and myself. Feeling the call to teach and touch those who have wandered or doubted, I will finally turn to myself. Am I willing to embrace his call to me that I hear again today to feed his sheep? My answer for today, this morning, is yes. 

The clock's ticking and the running water hum have faded into the background. I hear his voice. 

Amen. 

SEEL - Preparation Week Day 1 The Samaritan Woman

Today's post marks the beginning of a 9-month-long retreat on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Viewing faith through the lens of Ignatian Spirituality is an interesting sojourn for someone who has been immersed in Benedictine Spirituality for more than a decade. And away we go...

John 4 1-15

He had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” [The woman] said to him, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the well is deep; where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks? Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Today this statement strikes me: "Jesus had to pass through Samaria."  This was not strictly true. While Samaria lay between Galilee and Judea, most travelers from Galilee chose to cross the Jordan into Jordan and then travel south to Judea and cross back the river back into Israel. Samaria was hostile land and Jewish travelers tended to avoid the danger by going around rather than through Samaria. Jesus did not have to go through Samaria yet it was still necessary. Why? He had an appointment to keep with the Samaritan woman, so he puzzled his followers by going directly to a specific town not necessary on the way to Judea and then to then pausing at the well of Jacob after shooing away his disciples. There he waited for her to come, and she became the first disciple not born of the historic Jewish faith.  

I have reflected on this passage many times and often use it to introduce folks to Ignatian contemplation; each new examination offers a new revelation. Today I zeroed in on verse four. I am overwhelmed by the recognition that the meeting at the well was not just some serendipitous happenstance. He went out of his way even though his followers would have been reluctant to make a potentially hazardous diversion. 

What comes to me this morning is the sudden recognition that Jesus will go to great lengths to encounter us in a way that can redirect the arc of life as it did for this woman. In prayer, I am assured he has traveled from afar to meet me where I am and invite me to be in his company. Me. He has come to me. He knows me in the same he knew the woman. He is asking me to drink from the wellspring of everlasting life. Me. He has invited me, a sinner, a person of inconsistent and incomplete faith to drink from the cup he offers.

The woman responded to the invitation with wholehearted and complete acceptance. I wish to do the same. I accept the offer. The woman rushed back to her hometown to tell others of her experience and bring them to meet Jesus. I am in a different setting, at a different time with a different calling but I pledge to live today in a way that might allow others to encounter Jesus through me so that they might be encouraged to go to the well to meet him.