Word to the Wise
Saturday, July 12, 2008 - Saturday in the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time
[Isaiah 6:1-8 and Matthew 10:24-33]Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" "Here I am," I said, "send me!"
The terrifying and majestic vision of Isaiah's call to prophecy has always put me in mind of a similar experience recounted by the great Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ, in his wonderful poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland. The very first stanza contains these lines: Thou has bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh, And after it almost unmade, what with dread, Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh? Over again I feel thy finger and find thee. There is a terrifying intimacy in a true call to prophetic and priestly service. One can become aware in a very profound and humbling way of one's inadequacies for the task ahead. This awareness never completely goes away, even if wisdom and confidence in God's help do make it possible to carry out the ministry. It was this awareness that led me, at the time of my ordination, to put the above quoted line from Isaiah on one of my ordination cards. Isaiah's protests, like those of the other prophets when called, are dismissed by God. (Read Moses' arguments in Exodus 3!) The "finger of God" is on all of us. Perhaps some of us experience this in ways like Hopkins or Isaiah or Jeremiah, or even like St. Paul, but most of us eventually will "feel" that finger if we are open to God's touch in prayer. God will supply for our weaknesses and inadequacies if we give ourselves to his task! AMEN
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