• Jonah 3: 1-5

Using broad strokes, the author of Jonah makes a precise point.  He presents Jonah as fighting God at every step, but he finally accepts God’s call, if begrudgingly.  Nineveh was one of the neighboring superpowers which was a constant threat to God’s people.   Yet, “the word of the Lord came to Jonah for the second time” to go to his people’s enemies with God’s message.  Jonah went to the huge metropolis, (which took “three days” to walk across), got as far as one day’s walk into the city and began to deliver his message: “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”  The people of Nineveh “believed God,” “proclaimed a fast” and “everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.”  When God saw that the people had responded to the message delivered by Jonah, God had a change of heart and said:  God will not destroy Nineveh and it did not happen.

• Psalm 62: 6-14

The psalmist has learned through the vicissitudes  of life to trust God as her hope, salvation, stronghold, safety, honor and refuge.  However, she has no delusions about people, whether important or unimportant, in everyday matters.  Do  not be dazzled by human “lies” or the influence of human “oppression.”  Do not have “illusions”  about cheating others; “though it bears the fruit of wealth/set not your heart upon it.”  Although God spoke “one thing,” the psalmist heard “two things:”  God is the only source of honest, reliable “strength,” and the core of that “Strength” is “kindness.”

• I Corinthians 7: 29-31

Paul’s apocalyptic asceticism was quite common among contemporary religious sects.  He advises dispensing with basic human activity, personal and social, “for the present form of this world is passing away.”

• Mark 1: 14-20

Matthew, Luke and Mark follow the narrative that Jesus did not begin his public ministry until after John the Baptizer had been arrested and that Simon Peter and Andrew, then two other brothers, James and John, were the first followers who accepted Jesus’ call to accompany him on his journey and his work.  All four men made their living as commercial fishermen, so Jesus tells them: “Follow me and I will make you fishers of people.”  Mark’s details of the story of their calling emphasizes that the invitation Jesus issued was short and direct and their response was immediate, leaving their co-workers and family.

The writing of Jean-Luc Marion is so supple that it is a sensual experience to read.  His important book, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Giveness, culminates in a dazzling analysis of the nature of “the call.”  (pp 282-319)

He makes these crucial points:

  “…a call… decides the choice of a spirit, a soul, a life.”  (p. 283)

one “takes a call upon himself [sic]” (p 285)

and, therefore, “assumes unambiguously the role he [sic] who knows himself subjected to a seduction” (p. 286)

which means that “it is necessary to decide if you want it or not” (p.286)

and if one accepts the call, she becomes “a prism… who converts the one [call] into the other [a response] (p. 296)

“only the response performs [completes, makes actual] and the gifted [responder] renders visible and audible what gives it self to it only by corresponding to it in the act of responding, ‘Here I am’ ”  [Marion continues with the example    of   Samuel’s call and response; [see last Sunday’s reading and commentary.]

call always precedes us, literally because it precedes our birth in the hopes, aspirations, longings, passion of our parents; “I am born from a call that I neither made, wanted, nor even understood.” (p. 290)

at the beginning, who is calling me can be ambiguous, even unknown, but it is given a name “through their [the responder’s] response, a full name to the caller of the call.” (p. 298)

at some point, the called “will pass beyond the name given in response in order to confront in order to confront his own anonymity.”  “At this moment, the child becomes an adult… that he should make a name for himself [sic].” (p. 301)

“no advise or counsel, no friend or enemy, can do anything for the gifted [called] in the situation of giving itself over or not.” (p. 307)

indifference or even denial of the call is an option, but remember that in your decision, you are making “the choice of a spirit, a soul, a life.”  “…the history of the gifted is due to the sum of its response, which draws it near or distant from the call.” (p. 295)

Marion’s brilliant analysis of the nature of “the call” as a human experience vividly illuminates today’s readings and gospel.  For the believer, God’s call can come form anywhere, from anyone at anytime.  It calls us out of ourselves and into the lives of others.  At first, its source or authenticity may not be clear.  It may not come at a convenient time nor, if we are honest, even is it something we are looking for or wanting.  It could even ask us to do something for someone we really despise, (just ask Jonah!).  It could ask us to leave behind all that is safe and secure, (ask the brothers, Peter and Andrew or James and John).  But, as Marion so precisely delineates, if we respond, the call becomes actual, meaningful, effective, real.  Jean-Louis Chretien puts this matter very succinctly:

“that to which we respond gives itself to us in the response that we give to it.”  “Whoever fails to respond simply does not hear and has not heard.  But whoever responds is exceeded by that which calls forth his [sic] response.” (The Call and the Response, p. 25)

A “call” always takes us outside ourselves, comes in expected but also unexpected ways, involves us meaningfully in the lives of others, and in the end is given a “name.”  As we own it, we realize we are making “the choice of a spirit, a soul, a life….”