Click here to read the Sunday readings from the USCCB website.

With this Gospel, the calling of Andrew and Peter, I always think of my own vocation to the priesthood.  I started discerning about 10 years ago this month.  It all started when my sister got married on January 15th, 2011. 

It was quite the memorable wedding, she had the flu that day, barely made it through the ceremony, rallied for the reception, and then proceeded to give the flu to about 300 of her wedding guests!

But at that wedding, at my home parish in Tama, I did not take a date.  I had been dating a gal on and off for a few years, but I decided not to take her, and I am pretty sure that Fr. Mike Mescher noticed that I was alone.

So he asked me the following week if I would want to go to a “thinking of priesthood” dinner with the Archbishop.  So I accepted Fr. Mike’s invitation and really began my official discernment.

Then, during Lent, my parish hosted a parish mission and Fr. Mike had invited a priest named Fr. Patrick to be the speaker.  

When I met Fr. Patrick, he asked me what my name is, and I said Andy, and he said, “So your full name is Andrew, right… do you know what Andrew did in the bible?  He brought his brother to Christ.  Maybe you should bring your brothers to Christ as a Priest like Andrew did.”

That was a pretty direct call, especially from a guy I had never met before, but I listened, it made an impact on me, and I counted it as one of the many external calls on the way to the priesthood.

In spiritual discernment, to the priesthood or even everyday things, we must listen for internal calls and external calls in order to do His will.

In today’s readings, we hear of many external calls where God directly communicated with someone or used someone else to call someone. Samuel was called by God externally. Eli helped guide him in that process. Andrew and Peter were called externally by God as well.

Internally, though, there was something going on too.  Think about Andrew here, Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist.  He wanted to be a disciple of the Messiah when He came, like many people, so when John the Baptist said, “Behold the Lamb of God,” Andrew followed his internal desire of following the Messiah, of following Jesus.

So, when trying to make spiritual decisions, we should pay attention for these internal and external calls.  I gave an example of one of my external calls, but let me also give you an internal call example.

Fr. Patrick had a friend named Chris who worked for my parish in Tama as the DRE.  Chris had been in seminary with Fr. Patrick, but he wasn’t sure if he was called, so he stepped away and took this job in Tama, and he was there for 3 years.

At the end of this time, I think it was 2009, Chris quit his DRE job and went back to seminary, thus, when I was 27 years old, he became the first seminarian I had ever met.  Tama is like the desert of the Archdiocese of Dubuque, we never got any seminarians coming to visit, definitely not like the city of Dubuque.

Anyway, I found myself jealous of him that he was going to seminary.  Why was I jealous?  I had a good girlfriend, I had a good job, I had a lot of good friends. 

In fact, several of those friends had gone back to school to get their MBA’s, their Masters degrees, but I had no desire to do that, and suddenly I am jealous of this guy who is going off to seminary.  I really had to pray and reflect about what was going on in my heart there.  

A couple of years later I realized that was part of my internal call, my desire for learning in seminary and serving as a priest. God was working on me internally. He had placed this desire on my heart and I needed to listen to it. 

An internal call is discovered through prayer and reflection. We reflect on the desires God places on our hearts, what might they mean? How long have we had them?  Have others been called like this before? Is the desire of God, meaning, is it in line with the commandments, the beatitudes, and/or the Church?  

In prayer, we ask God questions and listen for His answers.  Sometimes we hear them internally, we might wonder if they are from God or from ourselves, but when they are matched externally we can be more sure in our discernment.

So discerning the priesthood is not much different than any other time in our lives when we are trying to discern the will of God.  

Sometimes our what we think is an internal call doesn’t seem to match what we experience as our external call, it is then that we keep praying, we keep discerning.  We need to look to our Eli’s and our John the Baptist’s for the external confirmation of our internal desires.

But when our internals match the externals, it is then that we need to act, we need to take that next step forward in faith, because we know the Lord will be with us.  In that first reading it said, “Samuel grew up, and the LORD was with him, not permitting any word of his to be without effect.”

An important step of discernment is taking steps. You can never know what God’s will for you is for sure until you take a step out in faith. If it’s the wrong step, He’ll let you know and you can change. If it’s right, well keep on going.

And oftentimes God doesn’t give us much more than the next step.  He opens the doors, expects us to walk through them one at a time, without really knowing the full plan.

The Word of God is living and active, in scripture and in Jesus Christ himself.  Who are the Eli’s and the John the Baptist’s in your life? Are you taking the time to listen, to pray and to reflect?  Where do you have desires to grow in your faith?  Do you have the strength and courage to act?

Also interestingly about this Gospel is whenever I see this line, “Behold, the Lamb of God” I think of the part of the Mass where I hold up the body and blood of Jesus for everyone to see, and I repeat these words from John the Baptist, “Behold, the Lamb of God.”

Behold, when we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, we recognize that He is staying with us! Andrew asked Jesus that day, “Where are you staying?” And now we realize that Jesus stays with us, and that is how we can have these internal calls as well, because He lives within us.

So pay attention to these external and internal calls.  God loves you, and He is with you, He guides you through others, but also through your desires.  Jesus Christ brings us truth and grace to help Him do God’s will in the world.