Wednesday of the Twenty-Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the Day
RB: Ch 7:44-48
Mass: Jb 9:1-12, 14-16; Resp Ps 88; Lk 9:57-62

No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.

Something comes to mind with Jesus' rather straightforward words. There seems to be a phrase that has become part of contemporary parlance amongst those who are thinking about pursuing a religious vocation, namely, that she or he is 'discerning her vocation'. Sometimes it is best to just go for it so to speak while remembering Job's words to his friends: 'God is wise in heart and mighty in strength;' He does great things past finding out, marvelous things beyond reckoning' (Jb 9:4, 10).

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) has this to say, taken from today's Magnificat reflection:

There is a moment of Jesus Christ which one cannot put off and calculate and say: 'Yes, I want it all right, but at the moment it is still too risky for me. At the moment I still want to do this and that.' One can miss the moment of one's life, and with prudence gamble away the real worth of one's life never again able to recover it. There is a time of being called in which the decision is present, and it is more important than what we have thought out for ourselves and what is in itself quite reasonable. The reason of Jesus and his summons have precedence: they come first. This courage to defer what seems so reasonable to us in favor of the greater thing that he is, is decisive not only in the first moment but continually on all parts of the way. It is only in this way that we really come close to him.

Ministers of Your Joy: Scriptural Meditations on Priestly Spirituality 
(Cincinnati: Servant, 1989).

LET YOUR 'YES' MEAN 'YES,' AND YOUR 'NO' MEAN 'NO'.

(Mt 5:37)