Wherever You Send Me

At the beginning of the Book of Jeremiah we read the beautiful, yet daunting, exchange between God and the namesake of the book. "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you." (Jer. 1:5) Jeremiah, clearly awestruck and dumbfounded by the Lord's call, insists upon his unworthiness citing his young age.  God objects and calls on Jeremiah to go wherever He sends him and to say whatever He tells him and to do so with "no fear before them, because I am with you to deliver you." (Jer. 1: 8)  Jeremiah is called.  And so are we.

Fr. Robert Barron, in his book The Strangest Way, describes the call in this way: "And friendship with God - not simply worship, discipleship, seeking, or ethical uprightness - but real intimacy with God entailed, I discovered, a giving of self that mirrored the radicality of God's own gift of self in Christ. The point of the Christian life is to be holy with the very holiness of God, and this means conformity with a love unto death." (Barron, The Strangest Way, p. 11) In the end the call is a complete abandonment to the will of the One in Whose image we are created.

This is the challenge of the Christian journey.  Faced with obstacles, both from within and from the outside, each of us must daily "die to ourselves" for the sake of the call.  Of course this can only be done through prayer, taking part in the sacramental life of the Church (especially the Eucharist), learning about our faith, and selfless giving.  It can only be done through growing a true friendship with God.

I raise the above thoughts as a preface for my announcing a little project that I know God has placed in my heart.  Quite frankly, God has been pounding away on this for almost a year and I have found lots of great excuses to ignore His promptings with the most used one being that "I am not worthy."

Beginning with my next blog I am going to begin to write a reflection for each of the Venerable Pope John Paul II's general audiences which make up his "Theology of the Body."  Now there are many, more learned than I, who are better equipped to take on such a project.  However, I take God at His word, "have no fear," as I embark on this journey.  My thoughts on each audience will be brief - less a theological treatise and more an effort to prayerfully reflect on the little things that God will place in my heart and mind as I move through each audience.

This will be my contribution to the growing body of work which has been inspired by the late pope's masterpiece - the "theological time bomb (as George Weigel famously and prophetically described it)" that has begun to have a tremendous impact on the modern world.

"Wherever you send me, I will go.  Send me Lord. Send me Lord. Whatever you tell me, I will say.  Send me Lord. Send me Lord." (Franzak, "The Call")

Michael Lavigne