No Looking Back ~ A Reflection on the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

1 Kings 19:16b, 19-21

Ps 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11

Gal 5:1, 13-18

Lk 9:51-62

In the reading from the 1st Book of Kings, we find Elisha in a quandary because he has been chosen by God to follow Elijah as his attendant.  Elijah had given the invitation by throwing his cloak over Elisha as he was plowing his fields.  Elisha apparently was quite well to do because we are told he was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen.  What to do?  Should he say goodbye to his father?  What would happen to his oxen?

But we know that Elisha accepted the invitation.  He did not return to his father...  He slaughtered his oxen and broke up his plow for firewood.  Then he boiled the flesh of the oxen and gave it to his people.  He didn't look back.  He left everything familiar behind to go with Elijah...

We see a similar occurrence in Luke's Gospel.  Jesus invited specific people to follow him, but often they gave reasons to delay accepting the invitation. "I need to bury my father," said one.   "I want to tell my family goodbye," said another.  And so the moment of immediately responding to the Lord's call was lost.  Luke doesn't tell us whether these people returned later and became  followers of Jesus.  We only know that at that moment, their worldly cares appeared more important than Jesus' invitation to become one of his followers.

How many times have we been invited by the Lord to follow him?  To trust him...  And how many times have we had our own plans and followed them instead?  The psalmist understood the Lord's love and concern for him.  He called God his refuge, his counselor, his confidante... and he was filled with joy because he knew that God would never abandon him.  The psalmist had accepted God's invitation.

That same joy can be ours...



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