Often times I feel unworthy to be in this line of work, so to speak. It’s easy to look back on my life and realize I am just a construction worker. My grammar is lacking. I believe my manners are often quite crude and my humor unbefitting of a man called to ordination. It would be easy to say “God, surely you want to call someone else.” Moses tried that and look where he ended up? Amos in today’s first reading talks about his own experience with God’s call. He was just a worker. Not a scholar or a genius. God told him to go, do this. He did.
This morning as I was walking meditating on these readings, I happened upon some pylons near the bridge. One of them had a hollow place where a stalk was growing. Nothing else around it, no dirt, no water. Just a plant growing in the middle of this wooden shaft. It is easy to miss that the wood around it protects it. It’s been removed from a world that might have been harsh and protected by the walls of this fortress. Then we get this story of a paralytic who is told to get up and carry his mat.
What does that mean to us? I believe Jesus is calling us to remove ourselves from the places that keep us from being healed. He wants to free you from that which paralyzes you, that which makes you think you’re not ready. To bring you home to the Church. To me, that’s the very essence of the image I took this morning on my walk. The church is like that log, it places walls around us to protect us from the elements. A wall that doesn’t keep us from walking outside of it, but shows us the very way to live our lives to grow into eternity. It’d be easy to lay on our mats and wallow in sin saying I’m not smart enough, I haven’t studied, I need to grow more first. God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called. Jesus is saying to us right now: “Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.” Come home to the Sacraments. To the Mass. To confession. To your family. Come home.
A reflection on the readings for Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time: July 2, 2020.