You did not choose me: no, I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit,
When I was in High School, some of the happiest sports I participated was touch football. I was never very good at but it was fun and I built relationships with the ragtag group who played after school. We would play in the Florida heat and put up with sand spurs and the relentless Florida sun.
When it came to being chosen, I was always last or next to last. The important thing was that we all had fun. Glory was the impossible wins of little things and sometimes the game itself. Some of the guys worked part=time in a grocery store, one worked in his dad’s garage, and I worked for my dad’s trailer park. If the timing was right, we had a game. We had moments of glory that no one saw. We had friendships that lasted all our lives.
At my First Holy Communion I believe the Jesus choose me. I was seven years old. He did not choose me to be a star player but a player You did not choose me: no, I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, The important thing is that He chose me to bear fruit. I will never be a Mother Teresa or a Pope Francis or a Bishop Fulton Sheen. I believe this because all my Life I have tried to sin and Jesus always turned me around and said to me in a way that I was His and couldn’t be happy sinning because I would never be happy doing anything other than His will. When you are chosen by Jesus you are His. You were chosen as well.
When I was in Denver, Colorado in 1974 I worked for the Denver Dry Goods in downtown Denver. I worked in credit and would have lunch with various employees. I was friends with a girl named Patty who was the lingerie buyer for the store. She was engaged to someone else in Phoenix AZ. I could have tried to take advantage of her before her wedding. Jesus said that I had to respect her commitment and the vows she was going to make. She was not Catholic but was taking classes to convert. I couldn’t treat her with anything but respect because not doing it wasn’t right. I pray that she and her husband had a happy life and happiness with Jesus as the center of their lives. I wanted to make those vows with her but that is not the path that Jesus chose for me.
When we are chosen by Jesus, we don’t feel good when we don’t do what He wants. This means that be love one another. ‘This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you. Jesus, we cannot love one another by causing anyone else or us to sin.
This is the negative side of our nature and relationships with our fellow man. We also have the good we do by loving one another as Jesus wants and not what we want. Every day we have the choice of baring fruitful relationships with our neighbors, at work, at church, at work, and at the grocery store. Everything we do bares fruit for some human contact. We were chosen to bare this fruit with Jesus.
Remember when we bare fruit that Jesus wants, we also are chosen for His team. We have the Good Sheperd to lead us. We are chosen to His flock and His team.
God Love You Always
Bob Burford
PS: Please Pray for Pope Leo XIV. Please Pray for Cancer victims and their caregivers. Pray for the conversion of Russia and the salvation of the Ukrainian and Russian people and their soldiers. Pray for the Holy Land. Pray for peace! The impossible could and can happen. (Saint Rita) Never deny God! Pray for justice for immigrants! Pray for justice for our President and all government officials! Pray for Immigrants! Pray for Peace!
