God Doesn't Want This Boy To Die

THE CALL

How do we view our own call to serve our Lord God?  Each of us as Bishops, Priests, Deacons, Religious or Lay persons?  We all have our individual calling to serve.  If it isn’t in some capacity to serve the Church directly, then we must see our call as serving one another.

When we hear that call to serve the Church, we must set prayer into action.  “Here I am Lord, are you calling me?”1  Only God knows that answer. 

Then how do we know we are being called?  We know because we respond in a way that we cannot explain at the time - answering a question we don’t remember being asked.  We may have done something abruptly in our life without truly knowing why we did it.  This happened in my life.

It came in the form of a move that uprooted my family from my hometown in the fifties.  Be it a job change or just a dramatic change in our prayer life, our response is a mystery even to ourselves.

God sometimes prepares us for service to Him well in advance of the time He will actually use us.  You might say we go through a period of testing and trial.  God calls each of us by name, to serve Him in different ways, according to what He has gifted us.  Good health, life experiences, talents, and yes, even miracles.  Yes, I have had a miracle happen in my life.  For those of us who might be a “Doubting Thomas,” God may first have to prove He is truly working in our lives.  My proof was a near-fatal accident that involved my daughter and me. 

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I stated earlier that we must put prayer into action, because for some of us, as scripture says, “We have ears but do not hear; eyes but do not see.”2

A calling can be such a beautiful personal experience; an ongoing life long process, as it has been in my life.  When I was living in Norfolk, Virginia, I was approximately 4 years old.  I came down with an inner-ear condition of unknown origin.  My temperature had risen to past 105 degrees and the doctors were unable to bring it down.  I remembered my mother telling me later; she prayed to herself, “God, you don’t want this boy to die!”

The doctors told my mother that I was literally burning up; burning up with this uncontrollably high fever and that she should have a priest administer the Last Rites of the Church (now known as the Sacrament of the Sick, a healing sacrament).