This third essay is a reflection on the second week of the
Spiritual Exercises, a period in our spiritual journey when we learn how to
follow Christ as his disciples. During
this part of the journey we are drawn to make decisions to respond to God’s
love by loving God more fully and doing God’s work in the world.
Note: Updating this essay would have required a complete
rewriting, so rather than doing this I have left the essay as I wrote it a year
and a half ago and I included a short update at the end.
As a young person quickly approaching being a “real adult”
(i.e. completing my schooling), friends and family continuously ask me what I’m
going to do when I graduate or what kind of a job I will get when I
graduate. I have reluctantly developed
answers that will satisfy those who are asking me. I say something like “I’m going to work for
an international faith-based justice organization or I’ll work in a faith-based
setting in the US educating people about injustice.” However, these answers that I’m giving make
me uncomfortable in part because I have no idea if or where I’ll get a job, but
more importantly this response makes me uncomfortable because it is not a true
answer to the deeper question I long to answer: what is my call?
The place where I have most clearly felt the call of Christ
is among my friends in El Salvador. The
call I have understood is to love, to be loved, and to have compassion. More specifically the call is to love, to be
loved by, and to have compassion on those who are on the margins of society:
the poor, the oppressed, the voiceless.
Love and compassion are emotions, but I think of these words primarily
as verbs. In this regard my call is
clear to me: I am called to be a person who loves, is loved, and has compassion
on others. I still struggle to
understand exactly how I am to live out that call, but I rest on the fact that
I am called to follow Jesus’ example and love my neighbor as myself.
I think I have felt the call so clearly among my Salvadoran
friends because they set an incredible example of living out the call of Christ
in their own lives and because Jesus is so present among and within the
Salvadorans. Through forming
relationships with my Salvadoran friends I have come to understand what it
means to be a human, a child of God, and I learned about the responsibilities
that come along with being connected to people all over the globe. Through finding Christ in the Salvadorans, I
have come to better understand Jesus and recognize him working in the world and
in my life.
This call in my life induces uncertainty and fear in me, but
at the same time it brings about certainty and peace. The uncertainty comes because I have no idea
where such a call will lead. The call
creates fear because I know I will have to give up things and people in my life
that have brought me comfort. I also
fear that a call to love and have compassion on the marginalized will bring me
great pain and perhaps suffering. Even
to get this far in understanding and living out my call has required me to put
my safety in God’s hands as I spent time in El Salvador where violence is far
too common. I can only imagine that living
out my call will require more sacrifice, and yet this is sacrifice that I
welcome.
My call brings me certainty because even if I do not
understand it completely, I know that if I ever lose my way all I need to do is
return to following the example of Christ by showing and receiving his love and
by having compassion on Christ in the world.
As broad as my understanding of my call is, it still provides clear and
certain guidance. No matter how scary my
call seems, it does come with peace. In
my call I feel Jesus walking along side me providing guidance and strength to
me. I am not alone.
Despite my efforts to listen to the call I know I have not
listened as well as I should have. Too
often I let the expectations and norms of my friends, family, and culture get
in the way of my call. I let my own
expectations and opinions as well as those of others manipulate my call. I find myself wanting to live a life where I
know I will be safe and comfortable, but the call tells me to live a life where
safety is not guaranteed and I will be asked to step out of my comfort zone
again and again.
Update: This essay discusses many of the same themes I wrote
about in my recent post: Reevaluating. The call I understood for myself when I wrote
this essay above and the call I understand for myself now are very similar,
really I just use different words now.
This similarity over time is either is a good thing or a bad thing,
hopefully good. Like I did a year and a
half ago, I still struggle to completely understand how exactly God wants me to
live out my call, but I think now I am doing a better job of listening and
being willing to follow what I hear from God, no matter what it’s going to cost
me.
In this essay, I wrote that I have most clearly felt the
call of Christ while in El Salvador. It
is still the case that El Salvador is where I have most strongly felt Christ
calling me, but in the past year I have frequently experienced moments at my
jobs and in other parts of my life that have reassured me that I am doing what
Christ has called me to do and being what Christ has called me to be.
