Fr. Paul D. Williams, Jr., St. Joseph's, Dalton, GA
I remember when I was about 10 years old I used to pray a lot. Believe it or not, I was a pretty devout kid. I would pray each evening before going to bed, and I remember most especially one prayer that I prayed each night, I said: “Dear God, I love you as much as I love everyone in the whole world.” Now I don’t know if that was a perfect prayer, theologically, but I think God knew what I meant. But then there was another prayer, that I prayed just once, as I remember. For some reason, I prayed, perhaps rather boldly, “Dear Lord, I want to be a part of your plan.”
Well, a few years went by, and I eventually lost the piety of my youth, and I got to the point where I had pretty much no faith at all, and I didn’t practice any religion till the end of college. But, God never gives up on us, and as I was graduating college, I had a conversion experience, and I began my faith anew. And the funny thing about it was this: the first thing I remembered, when I came back into the faith, was that prayer, telling God how much I loved him. I guess he was reminding me that he loved me too and that he didn’t forget the prayer of my youth. But later, when I began to feel a calling to the priesthood, I remembered also the other prayer, asking God to let me be a part of his plan. God is also faithful to his promises and be careful what you ask for.Well, today we are finally back to “ordinary time” in the Church, and as we begin the New Year, we are beginning again our yearly path through the Gospel. We’ve just celebrated the mysteries of Jesus’ birth, and now, in today’s Gospel, we see the beginning of his public ministry, where John the Baptist shouts out, “Look there! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Jesus was revealed to us in the manger as the Son of God, and now he is revealed to us in public as a Savior who has come to take away our sins.
So, again, this is a time of beginnings, and perhaps it would be good to reflect back on when we first began our Christian journey, when we first encountered Christ, when we first chose to follow him. And, as you have probably learned, no two stories are the same. Some of us were “cradle Catholics”, born into the faith, as it were, where the faith has always been a part of our very being, something we never questioned or doubted, because we never needed to. Others of us probably just went through the motions growing up in the faith, until we had an experience which made the faith real to us. Others perhaps just grew lukewarm over time, until we saw a need to recommit ourselves. Others still, like myself, may have left the practice of the faith for a time, “fallen away” as it were, only to come back later, either after coming to our senses on our own, or after a dramatic experience which brought us back to the faith of our youth. Still others, and I see this a lot, are adult converts to the faith who came to the Catholic faith because of the witness of a Catholic friend or spouse, or perhaps after long searching.
In whatever way we came into the faith, in whatever way our faith began, and no matter where we are on the journey now, the most important thing we need to understand about our faith is that we must first and foremost encounter Christ, and there is no reason why we cannot begin that encounter anew today. If you truly want to live your faith, then you must encounter Christ on a day to day basis - in the big things and the small things of life: in our work, our family responsibilities, and in whatever way God has asked us to serve him.
As St. Paul says, “you have been consecrated in Christ Jesus and called to be a holy people.” And that call goes throughout our entire lives. If we have fallen away, the call is to come back; if we are lukewarm, the call is to renew ourselves; if we are still searching, the call is to seek Christ; if we are lost in sin, the call is to “Look there! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” If we are already fervent, then the call is to further consecrate ourselves to Christ, so that he may make us, as Isaiah says, “a light to the nations, that [his] salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
