Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Who Am I

Before I begin this reflection, and before you continue reading, I invite you to pause and listen to the song “Who Am I” by Casting Crowns. After you’ve heard it, come back to this reflection.

I’ll be honest. I was supposed to write this reflection earlier in the week, and one of my colleagues reminded me today that it was due (thanks, Alfred!). But in true fashion, I believe God’s timing is perfect.

As I write this, I’m sitting at the Tenderloin Children’s Playground, watching my students interact with K–5th grade children from the neighborhood as part of our Moreau Catholic High School Junior Immersion. This retreat experience is rooted in service, walking with the community through homework help, play, and enrichment activities. Watching my students engage so fully and so genuinely has been incredibly moving.

As I reflect on this weekend’s readings, one phrase keeps echoing:
“God doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called.”

Looking at my students “doing the work” gives me hope. It reminds me that modern day disciples are being formed right here, in real time, through real relationships and acts of service.

In this week’s Gospel, Jesus calls His disciples and invites them to follow Him, promising to make them “fishers of people.” That invitation makes me reflect on how God continues to call each of us, ordinary, imperfect people, to step into His work in the world.

And if I’m being completely honest, I often ask myself, Why me?

Why would God call someone like me? I don’t feel qualified. I don’t always feel worthy. I carry my own struggles, mistakes, and moments of shame. There are times when I feel far from who I think I “should” be. So why would God choose me as His instrument?

Yet, this reading gives me hope. It reminds me that God calls each of us to something meaningful in our own unique way. Unlike a world that constantly tells us we’re not enough, pushing competition, comparison, and endless striving, God sees beyond our flaws and invites us anyway.

I think about this often in my roles as a teacher and coach. When I teach skills or guide students through content, I’m asking them to trust the process, to trust repetition, growth, and even failure. I invite them to shape their own understanding and confidence through experience.

But that invitation only matters if it’s accepted.

In many ways, this mirrors God’s invitation to us. God calls us not just to believe, but to trust. And trust doesn’t grow overnight. It’s built through relationship, through moments of showing up, through consistency, and through lived experience. Just as I must build relationships with my students and athletes before they trust me, God patiently builds relationship with us, meeting us exactly where we are.

So I leave us with two questions to reflect on:

• Recall a time when God called you to step into a place or situation you didn’t feel ready for. Why do you think God called you there?

• How difficult is it for you to accept God’s invitation, and what might be holding you back?

Like the song, says 

"I am a flower quickly fading
Here today and gone tomorrow
A wave tossed in the ocean (ocean)
A vapor in the wind
Still you hear me when I'm calling
Lord, you catch me when I'm falling
And you've told me who I am
I am yours, I am yours"