“What Are You Doing for Others?" - 2nd Sunday Homily

It's enjoyable to work with young people with their vocation to either marriage, religious life, single life.

privilege and honor and joy.

And sometimes it's easy when it's so apparent by God, for a couple of me early on, see God's providence at work or it does happen at a young age, a man or a woman might hear the

call to be a priest or a nun.

But a lot of times it's hidden, as our single young people can very much testify to.

It's like finding a needle in a haystack.

to find the right person to marry, especially these days.

And for those who have some sense of a call to religious life to know for certain, but over time and experience as a guide for them, a director, you start to pick up on

patterns, those who are called to that life.

But they identify with Isaiah, the Lord for me as his servant from the womb.

Like they're ready to serve the Lord.

And they want to know in what particular vocation are they to serve.

The general call is there for each and every one of us from the womb.

The Church calls on the universal call to holiness.

It means to serve God and others.

God formed each of us as his servant from the womb.

Martin Luther King had a great quote.

Imagine that.

A great quote about service.

said, life's most persistent and urgent question is, how are you serving others?

He called it most persistent and urgent question.

How are you serving others?

That's holiness.

To give yourself to God and to others.

Now we hear about John the Baptist in the gospel.

And there are clear parallels with him or identification with him with Isaiah.

John leaped from the womb in his mother's womb in the presence of Christ.

Knowing he's called to be the forerunner, the herald of Christ.

and to be a light to the nations, literally the nations of the world.

He still is John the Baptist, the light to the nations.

Each of you and me, it means to be a light to the world around us.

But John, a light to the nations and the salvation, his father said about John, Zechariah said, you bring knowledge of salvation to the Lord's people.

My salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

So John very much a part of this call.

And sometimes you and I are called to be John the Baptist.

Sometimes we're called to be Christ to others.

Sometimes we're called to bring the light directly to people in darkness.

The Lord says, not to be my servant, but to be a light.

And you know people in darkness better than I do.

There's some people that you can reach who are in darkness.

And the Lord formed you from the womb to be a light to them, to bring the light of Christ directly to them.

And sometimes you are to talk about the light, to bring people to Him, as John did.

And other times that you're not a person.

Talk to spouses I work with, or parents of adult children, or even siblings.

They want to get X, Y, Z person back to Christ.

but they're not the one to do it.

So they pray for a John the Baptist type person, someone to point out Christ, to bring him or her to him.

So this happened recently, the last few months, through our Adoration Chapel.

By the way, if there people here for the party, we have a big, huge, 150 person party downstairs.

For the Adorers it is a party room.

I have not seen Founders Hall look like this before.

It's going to be wild.

It's going to be fun.

Have fun.

So there was a man in our community who had fallen away.

think he was raised Catholic, fell away far from the church, fell into religious darkness.

But buddies with one of our parishioners who was on the Adoration Organization chart, one of the hour coordinators.

and promoting it to his friends.

You gotta check it out, this adoration's awesome.

So he mentioned to his friend, who's in this darkness, and the next thing you know, the guy's coming to adoration and like, what is this?

This is crazy.

Maybe crazy good, I don't know.

So he brought me in months ago, talked to him in the chapel, and very interested, and then just recently, this past week, kind of frantically called me on Monday.

I need to talk, I need to talk.

And I was not available.

We're getting together soon.

But he spent hours in the Adoration Chapel.

Hours in the light of Christ.

Because his buddy had said, check it out.

Like John, behold the Lamb of God.

Behold the light of the world.

You're in darkness, check out the light.

That's what you and I are called to.

called to lead people to Christ.

It's been there since we've been in existence.

Called to be His servant from the womb.