God Is Seeking You

17 August 2026  Ezekiel 24:15-23

“…at evening my wife died. And on the next morning I did as I was commanded.”  (Ezekiel 24:18)

Some people go to work, and at the end of the day, they leave the work behind. With others, work goes to them. It never leaves, but follows them around. It is the difference between a “job” and a “vocation.” A vocation goes where you go. You travel with it every day – doctors know this, also police officers, nurses, teachers, priests, and, as in the case of Ezekiel, prophets.

Ezekiel’s work went where he went – even when his wife died he couldn’t stop being a prophet. Even something as personal and painful as the loss of the joy of his heart and the delight of his eyes was an occasion for explaining to the people the disastrous folly of their ways.

We like to think that it is always we who are seeking God, but in fact it is the other way around. God is always coming after us. That’s the difference between a vocation and a job.

All believers have a vocation that follows us around, too. It isn’t just priests and deacons, bishops and popes. Priests are called to sanctify the Church; laypeople are called to sanctify the world (cf. CCC 897-98, 901, 910). There is nowhere any of us can go where we are not instruments of the Church’s mission. It has been well said that the Church doesn’t have a mission; the Church is a mission, and by virtue of our baptism and confirmation we are all instruments of it.

Take just the matter of Bible reading. The oldest prayer in the Bible is the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9), and it makes no distinction between clergy and laypeople when it comes to attentiveness to the words of Holy Scripture –  all of us are called to “speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise.” All believers are called to talk about scripture all the time. And it is more intense a calling even than that: “And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand” –  we are all called to think about scripture as often as we look at our hands. “And they shall be as emblems between your eyes” – being this kind of people is supposed to be the most obvious thing about us, as obvious as a tattoo on your forehead.

Because being a believer is not a job that we can leave behind at the end of the day, but a vocation.

And if you are not doing that, Ezekiel says, you shall waste away” (24:23). Actually he meant something a little more blunt than that. He says “you will rot.”

God isn’t kidding around, and He isn’t waiting around, not even when spouses die. Discipleship always follows us. Everywhere.

A traditional Advent hymn has us sing,

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,

And with fear and trembling stand;

Ponder nothing earthly minded,

For with blessing in His hand,

Christ our God to earth descendeth

Our full homage to demand.

This isn’t a “nice” hymn. It tells us to shut up and pay attention, because God is coming and demanding the homage that is His right, and our duty by nature. Then He gives Himself to us as food, not as an anti-anxiety medication; not to make us feel better, but to make us like Himself (cf. God is Not Nice, Ulrich Lehner, p. xi). Discipleship is always coming to us because God is always coming to us. We like to think that it is always we who are seeking God, but in fact it is the other way around. God is always coming after us. That’s the difference between a vocation and a job.