Called by God
It’s not every day you turn 150 years old, but when you do, it’s an occasion for rejoicing. It’s also an occasion to return to first principles and ponder what was true then and how it remains true today.
This week’s Feast of St. John the Evangelist, which we kept on Wednesday, was the 150th anniversary of the day when Father Benson, Father Grafton and Father O’Neill made their profession of vows, thus giving birth to our community. They had been living together since sometime in the summer of 1865 and for years before that, each of them had been considering such a step for themselves. I would guess that the same is true for each of us. Long before we arrived on the doorstep here, God had planted in our hearts the desire to live for God.[1] It is this desire, implanted in our hearts, from which our vocations spring. This desire for God, comes from God. Father Benson reminds us that we must always remember that God does nothing for us without our seeking. We must seek, though it be God’s desire to give.[2]
So what was Father Benson seeking? What was this desire for God which God first planted in his heart? What is this desire for God planted in your heart? Very early on in the life of our community, during the summer retreat of 1874, Father Benson said this: So must we always be watching to live in the power of that divine love, reproducing, or rather not reproducing but actually proving continually that calm, dignified life of the Incarnate Word of God, ‘I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’[3] It was this constant, continuous, abiding sense of the indwelling Incarnate Word of God for which Father Benson sought. It is that same desire, I think, expressed perhaps in different ways, that has brought each one of us here. As we say in our Rule of Life:
We whom God calls into this Society have been drawn into union with Christ by the power of his cross and resurrection; we have been reborn in him by water and the Spirit. God chooses us from varied places and backgrounds to become a company of friends, spending our whole life abiding in him and giving ourselves up to the attraction of his glory. Our community was called into being by God so that we may be entirely consecrated to him and through our common experience of the glory of the Father and the Son begin to attain even now the unity that God desires for all humankind. “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”[4]
We are here for no other purpose than to give up ourselves to the attraction of God’s glory. That is our vocation, and as such it is a gift given by God speaking deep in our hearts through the power of the Holy Spirit. It was no accident that those first three members of our community found themselves living together in that house on the Iffley Road in Oxford. It is no accident that we find ourselves in this place. We are here because we have heard the call of God and great is the joy of hearing this voice, as it calls.[5]
I don’t often think of my vocation as either a gift or a joy, yet I know when I take it for granted it loses its sense of urgency. It is for that reason that Father Benson insists we should listen for God’s call and examine ourselves whether we are following still, constantly, perseveringly, diligently, triumphantly. Because whatever it be to which God calls any one, the hearing of that call is the very anticipation of heaven.[6]
The image of heaven is a hard one to conceive, but it is something we have all glimpsed. We may not have seen it today, or even yesterday, but every so often, ever so briefly, yet ever so blindingly, we have all glimpsed heaven in this place. We know what this life can be, even if it is not so all the time, and so we pray with the Psalmist: This shall be my resting-place for ever; here will I dwell, for I delight in her.[7]
Like our predecessors before us, like Father Benson himself, we have come to our community in response to the call of Jesus to follow him.[8] We have come, and know this to be the place where God’s glory abides. We have come and found here a glimpse of heaven.
It may not feel as if we are living in heaven. We may not feel as if we are drawing closer to heaven. We may not even feel we are drawing closer to God and so Father Benson challenges us: as God speaks, He requires us to listen. The voice is of no value to those who are deaf. And God speaks, to how many, alas, who never hear Him! We have put the world aside – for what purpose? In order to come and hear the voice of God. We are come here in order to listen to God speaking in our souls. We must take care, then, that we really listen attentively, listen devoutly, listen obediently, listen gratefully. The voice of God has called us apart in order that He may speak within us, and we must say, ‘Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth.’ When God finds us really listening for His voice, then does He take great delight in us;….[9]
And God’s delight in you, is worthy of your rejoicing in God.
Our vocations, brothers, are gifts from God. They are to be treasured, and savoured; they are to be delighted in, and they are to be given thanks for, because in them we come to see the face of God, who in turn delights in our longing for Him.
One of a series of addresses given by James Koester SSJE to the brothers of The Society of Saint John the Evangelist at the Friday morning Eucharist in the monastery chapel. Originally given on 30 December 2016. Earlier in the week the community had celebrated the 150th anniversary of its founding on the Feast of Saint John the Evangelist, 27 December 1866.
[1] Benson SSJE, Richard Meux, The Religious Vocation, The Objects of the Society, chapter 1, page 37
[2] Ibid, page 41
[3] Ibid, page 44
[4] SSJE, Rule of Life, The Call of the Society, chapter 1, page 2
[5] Benson, The Religious Vocation, Of the Call of God, chapter 2, page 49
[6] Ibid, page 49
[7] Psalm 132: 14
[8] John 1: 43 and others
[9] Benson, The Religious Vocation, Of the Call of God, Continuous, Abiding, and Progressive, chapter 4, page 71