“Each of you has received a special grace, so like good stewards responsible for all the different graces of God, put yourself at the service of others. If you are a speaker, speak in words that seem to come from God; if you are a helper, help as though every action was done at God’s orders; so that in everything God may receive glory, through Jesus Christ, since to him alone belong all glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.”
1 Peter, 4:10
In the classic road movie, The Blues Brothers, the paroled convict Jake and his brother Elwood are trying to put their old band back together to raise money for the cash-strapped Catholic orphanage they had grown up in. However, most band members had moved on and were not directly convinced by Jake’s invitation to rejoin this band ‘on a mission from God.’ And yet, in the end, the band gets together to do a show, and the orphanage is saved. So what made them do it? Religion or the love for making music, or both?
How often do we question our motivations when we say yes to a request? Or do we just blindly go with whatever comes our way? How do we allocate our time and our talents? To what end?
A couple of weeks ago, I received a call from my old band asking whether I would like to rejoin them. It brought back memories from the first time I was asked to join them. I was barely sixteen and had to cycle through the rain to get to the rehearsals with my trombone in one hand and navigating my bike with the other. I left the band when I became a Dominican friar. Therefore, I was excited to receive the call, but I also wondered if a friar and a priest be on stage with a cover band. So I prayed over it and talked to the brothers.
The answer came while I reflected on the opening words of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Church in the world Gaudium et Spes. If it is true that the Church shares, as the document states, in the “joy and hope, the sorrow and anxiety of the people of our time,” then I should be going out in the world to go to places where expressions of this joy and sorrow, hope and anxiety can be found. I believe music is a form of art that tries to express what it means to be human today. It tells stories of human triumphs, failures, and even the hope for salvation.
I understand the invitation to rejoin the band as grace in action. It is a divine call to use my talents as a musician to learn to stand more in solidarity with the world and become a better preacher for the salvation of souls. And the bonus is that I love playing the trombone in a band, my old band, something I thought I would never be doing again.
Like the Blues Brothers, I am on a new mission, using my talents as well as possible. And I am having fun too! What about you? What is your mission in life? What are you using your God-given talents for? Are you having fun?