For this week’s homily please watch the video below.

Nobody goes through life alone. We may think we do, but from the beginning others are part of our life. They care for us, guide and support us; they’re with us. So whatever we may think, we don’t go through life alone.

Our two readings today, the 2nd Sunday of the year, tells us that. Our first reading is a wonderful reading from the Book of Samuel. The young boy Samuel is sleeping in the temple near the ark of God and he hears someone calling him, but he doesn’t know who it is or what’s happening.

 So he goes to the old priest Eli and asks him. “Did you call me. What do you want?” “No I didn’t call you, go back to sleep,” the old priest says. Three times this happens. 

Eli is supposed to be the young boy’s mentor, but sometimes mentors don’t have all the answers.

Finally, the priest recognizes this isn’t a nightmare or the boy’s imagination.  Go to sleep and when you hear that call say, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”

We don’t go through life alone. Above all, God’s with us. God’s a quiet presence in our lives, and we recognize him only by listening, by humbly listening. “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening. 

Our reading says young Samuel was not familiar with God. None of are, I suppose. But one of the most important things we do in life is to become familiar with God, to recognize the presence of God in our life.

And how do we do this? By putting aside things that preoccupy us, that make us self-absorbed and self-centered, humbly recognizing the presence of God as we go on day by day .”Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.” 

We have to admit we are living in a world today that seems to recognize God less and less. Our culture is almost deaf to God’s presence, and that deafness brings about a loneliness that’s part of life today. There’s a lot of loneliness in our world today. We’re missing the wisdom of God.

We’re not meant to go through life alone.

Our gospel reading from John’s gospel is about the call of the disciples. Like Samuel, their call involved listening, listening to Jesus. “This is my beloved Son, listen to him,” a heavenly voice at the Jordan River says when Jesus was baptized. The followers of Jesus are called to listen to him. We miss so much when we don’t listen to him.

Our reading reminds us also that people were brought to Jesus by someone else. John the Baptist points him out to some, Andrew brings his brother Peter to him. Philip brings Nathaniel. There are people always with us in life, inviting us, supporting us, pointing things out to us, and we in turn are called to invite and support others. 

We don’t go through life alone. We go to God together. We belong to a church. Some people today believe they don’t need a church anymore. They can do it all themselves. But we go to God together.

Dorothy Day, who worked for the poor in the last century over in the Bowery in New York City and was one of the great women of our time, was asked why did she stayed in the church. She was a pacifist against war; she often got into conflict with bishops and fellow Catholics over her strong positions. She was asked why she kept going to church if she found so much opposition there.

“I had heard many say that they wanted to worship God in their own way and did not need a Church in which to praise him, nor a body of people with whom to associate themselves. But I did not agree to this. My very experience as a radical, my whole make-up, led me to want to associate with others, with the masses, in loving and praising God.” (p. 139)

She wrote that in her autobiography, “The Long Loneliness,” a spiritual classic from a woman of faith living with broken humanity.

We are not alone in life. God is with us. We need to grow in familiarity with God. We go to go together.