Jordan Paul

Dear Friends,

Over the past month or so, I’ve been wrestling with the idea of calling. Perhaps it’s because I’m currently serving on a parish discernment team. Or perhaps it’s because I’ve been a relatively unhappy lawyer since graduating law school up until recently, when I finally started doing something I feel really great about. Or, perhaps, it’s just that I read a lot of theology in my spare time.

To be sure, calls happen. The frustrating part is discerning them. Is this a calling? Am I the type of person that God would call to something? Is it possible for something that you want to also be a calling? How do we draw the line between wanting to be called to something and actually being called to it?

Imagine my surprise then when I read the lectionary for today and found that today’s second reading is the beginning of the conversion of St Paul. It’s one of the more dramatic passages (and a very clear call!)  in the New Testament—Paul, a pharisee, a persecutor of early Christians, someone who participated in the martyrdom of St Stephen—was called to be a missionary. Most of us will probably not experience a call this clear. But, increasingly, I’m inclined to think that that’s by design. After all, St Paul was called on his way to persecute more Christians! I’d like to think that most of us don’t spend our lives doing that. So, while Calvinist theologian Johann Lange wrote that there is “no fall so deep that grace cannot descend to it” about St Paul’s conversion, most of us do not need grace to descend that far. In Rite I, we hear the summary of the law:

“Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments
hang all the Law and the Prophets.” 

We already have our direction from the summary above. We should live it out. And when we have a nagging, persistent feeling in the back of our mind that we should switch direction, do something differently, or change our perspective on something, we should do it. A call is an invitation and we should accept it, even if we’re not entirely sure where it will lead.

In Christ,

—Jordan