God Is Calling
The Calling of St. MatthewMichelangelo Caravaggio1599-1600Many years ago, flipping the channels on my television, I ran into a beautiful PBS special about Michelangelo Caravaggio. It was love at first documentary. In all the years of liberal arts school, how had I never heard of him before. Everyone was all, "Rembrandt, Rembrandt, Rembrandt," but here was a man who was just as much a master of chiaroscuro, of light and darkness.Take The Calling of St. Matthew. Here's Levi hanging out with his friends at the end of a day of work, after raking in some serious dough. God knows how many people they swindled that morning. Can't you just hear the clink of the money on the table? Sitting in the darkness of his life, Levi looks up, startled, when the door opens and a shaft of light breaks in.
God Incarnate, the True Light, who searches the hearts, walks into the room. He lifts His hand to point at the tax collector sitting at the table. Though he sits among his friends, Matthew is marked, known by God. Our Lord raises a hand drenched in light to pull the man from his old life in the shadows to a new one.
St. Matthew points to himself in utter astonishment. Could this Man, this Prophet, this Wonder-Worker, be calling me? His eyes wide, his lips silenced, he looks at Christ Jesus.In our life, too, God calls us. We point to ourselves in disbelief: "Are you calling me, God?" And the Lord always replies, "He who has ears let him hear!"I certainly felt called from the moment God put Abouna in my life. As two college students, walking the grounds of our great University, we were more than a little startled to find each other. I remember so clearly pacing an abandoned pedestrian bridge clothed in midnight on the phone with my dearest friend Elena and hearing the words come out of my mouth in the same moment I realized them to be true: "I feel like God is telling me to marry this man. I feel like saying yes to this man is saying yes to God and His plan for my life."Dear reader, I married him.From there, it was just a matter of learning with and from him to say yes to God whenever He called. So when He called again, this time calling my husband to the priesthood, in the dark of another night, like a beam of bright light from which you cannot hide, we could not but say yes again, terrified.When St. Matthew heard and heeded the call of Christ, he went from a tax collector, unknown, hated, and meaningless to history, to the author of the first Gospel, preacher to billions over time.God always calls us. He always opens a door and asks us to go through it. Sometimes it's saying yes to something. Sometimes it's saying no to something else. What will your answer be to His call? Can you trust Him enough to hand him the reins?
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