“The journey of faith is a gift of a loving God who takes the first step and waits patiently, silently, almost shyly for the human response,” writes Vincent Sherlock in Sacred Space: The Prayer Book 2025.
One of my earliest memories of a loving God was preparing for my First Reconciliation. The second-grade class at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in Brooklyn, circa 1962, faced our first encounter with God in the confessional with unspoken trepidation.
Launching a “new” relationship with a loving and awesome God weighed on our tender hearts. We soon felt the lift of forgiveness for our infractions, meeting a God who filled our hearts with absolution and a feeling of love.
That sense of wonder and connection marks our first and deepest encounters with God. When we come to him, we find that he has been waiting for us patiently, with open arms, and yes, shyly. We praise and petition; we make our feelings known. We express a conscious desire to know what God wants for us. We wait to hear an answer, and desires take shape in the stillness of our hearts. Then we hear God’s call.
“Everyone has a calling,” explained a theologian speaking at the ordination of four who had been called to this moment. “But how many of us are listening?” he challenged.
The theologian asked us to recall an admonition from childhood: “That is un-called for.” Many of us listening remembered a parent’s voice when we stepped out of line. If un-called for is a step away, then what is the opposite?
God is calling each of us; he wants us to seek his will. God is not hiding from us, though at times it may seem that way, when our desire to be in control blocks all sight of him. When we take control, we fall back on disordered pride and a focus on ego, power, and material wealth—all things that lead us away from God.
When we go it alone, we draw from a list of worldly influences that are all about us and not about God. We cling to our desire to control, to be right, or to be liked. We judge harshly or deny our mistakes. We try to appear perfect or as though we have it all together, and we rush to acquire possessions and insist on our own way, or even get in our own way.
In our hubris, going our own way relegates God to the back seat as we motor through the world. “I got it. I got it. I don’t got it,” comes to mind, from the 1977 Mel Brooks comedy film, High Anxiety. The “don’t got it” always rears its head.
The opposite, then, of un-called for stepping away is prayer. In prayer we seek what is solid, reliable, and real. In God, we find our true selves in healthy humility, service, and surrender. What is God calling us to be and do? Just ask; the next move is ours to make. Undeniably, there is plenty here to work on for the rest of our lives.
Our faith progresses only when we open up and allow God to speak to us. I have to remind myself to stop talking to God and allow him to talk to me. The Examen can help here. As we reflect on our lives and our actions through the prayer, there is God, waiting for us, watching us all along. Maintaining a daily dialogue with God deepens the conversation, often prompting a realization that we return to during the day.
Our relationship with God is anything but stagnant when we bring our needs, concerns, and observations to prayer. In the silence of our own prayer spaces, we will find God is waiting to hear our burdens and supplications and to love us fully. It is through this gift of love that we hear the truth that God is calling. And this we know for sure: there is no other gift we need.
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