Dec 22: The Dedicated Life

Jan Victors: Hannah Giving her Son Samuel to the Priest (detail)

Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Advent

Reading I: 1 Sm 1:24-28

“For this child I prayed; and the Lord has granted me the petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives, he is given to the Lord (NRSV, 1Sm 1:27-28a)."

When I was a youngster, there seemed something sad, O Lord, about the story of Samuel. After his mother prayed so long to have a child, once her prayers were answered and the child was born, in fulfillment of her promise, she had to surrender him. And so Hannah was childless again. And poor little Samuel. He had to give up his parents that he might stay with the old priest Eli at the shrine. It is interesting, Lord, that we tell the same story about Mary who went to live at the Temple. Anna, even the name is the same, also gave up her only child to satisfy a promise that she and Joachim had made.

It is Jesus in his preaching who finally makes sense for us of these apparently harsh stories. Jesus tells us, Lord, over and over, that there is only one reality that truly matters for us and that, Lord, is you and your coming kingdom. Our lives are chaos unless we first choose you, Lord, and then order everything else under that choice. If we make any created reality the center of our attention, be it spouse or children or parents, it will only mean confusion and worse for us.

Jesus tells us that every one of us, not just a chosen few like Samuel and Mary, must dedicate ourselves to you. Dedication does not mean that we must spend our lives at the shrine or Temple. To the contrary, most lives are to be lived out in the family, in the marketplace and in the public arena. Choosing you first, Lord, however, does mean bringing focus into our lives. It means organizing all of our talents and earthly commitments around you as you call us forth into the future.

The would-be disciple said that he wanted to follow Jesus but that he first had to bury his father. No, one must choose you, Lord, first and then go to bury one’s father.

Samuel and Mary were brought to shrine and Temple by their parents to be dedicated to you. In reality all of us have made that dedication in our own name in our first response to you within the womb. That dedication should be renewed by us at every moment, as it is with great solemnity at our baptism. Help us, Lord, to say “yes” once more at this very moment and then again and again throughout our earthly lives into eternity.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.