Understanding God's Gifts: Called and Gifted in Christian Life

Readings for Mass and Virtual Homily for January 26, 2025, Third Sunday of Ordinary Time; Fire in LA; Snow in New Orleans 

Readings for Mass this Sunday

• Nehemiah 8:2-6, 8-10

• Psalm 19:8-10, 15

• 1 Corinthians 12:12-30

• Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21 

Dear Friends and Family,

The first reading and the Gospel passage today continue the theme of abundant graces in play which we looked at last week.  Rather than try to find new ways to talk about a "year of favor from the Lord" (today's passage from Luke) with this homily, I want to zero in on the twelfth chapter of the First Letter to the Corinthians, in which Paul continues with the theme of last week's passage, the theme that the Spirit gives gifts to all believers.  

After a fairly extensive metaphor in which Paul compares the workings of the Christian community to the workings of the human body -- each part with its own function and importance, but all parts together necessary for the body to function -- the apostle then lists various giftings, or charisms from the Spirit to individual believers.  Paul lists numerous sets of skills and abilities entrusted to members of the community, from those called to be apostles, prophets and teachers to those whose gifts vary from administration to speaking in tongues (vss. 28-30).  

In our time, the Church has utilized a variety of methods to help priests, parish staff, lay leaders and volunteers understand and deploy their gifts and abilities, two of which, the Gallup-based Strength Finders battery and the Siena Institute's Called and Gifted workshops, I have taken.   

Both of these assessments employ a "forced choice" method of discernment; that is, the person taking the "test" identifies one priority over another over a very wide range of choices, until an eventual pattern appears.  This method is utilized in a number of standard personality and character-strengths batteries such as the Minnesota Multi-Phasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), the Miller Analogies Test and the Edwards Personal Preference Test.  

I had to take a couple of these inventories as an undergrad at Berkeley, being an RA, that is, a member of the staff in the dorms.  The Housing Office brass wanted us RAs (the initials stand for Resident Assistant) to know our strengths and weaknesses, with regard to being in a position of authority over 200 students living in our particular dorm.  There were, at that time, four RAs per dorm, and the hope was that among the four of us most of the strengths would be represented, so that a fair and easy administration of Housing Office policy might naturally emerge.  Gifts distributed, in other words, for the overall benefit and functioning of the community.

Twenty years after my time at Cal, as a member of a parish staff, not yet a priest, I twice in five years attended a Called and Gifted Workshop, developed by the Siena Institute (a Catholic organization dedicated to, among other things, helping to develop leadership among the laity).  The "test" (assessment is a better word) administered during these workshops identified some core elements in my own future discipleship, including a likely charism for celibacy and a deep capacity for evangelization (that is, teaching and exemplifying the faith).  

Later, as a seminarian, I underwent a series of psychological assessments, including the MMPI and the Meyers-Briggs battery -- which told me I was an artist as well as a likely evangelist.  My priestly formators (that is, the men and women charged with seeing to my progress toward ordination) were very respectful of the fact that the "tests" were consistently telling them that, in Brawn Sullivan, they had an artist on their hands; a writer, independent and inclined to think for himself.  These understandings assisted my mentors in assisting me, on the path toward ordination, which path, after all, requires some real submission to outside authority.  Independent thinking is all well and good, insofar as it goes.  The understandings of a properly formed conscience, and an intuitive respect for magisterial authority, can serve to temper and guide this strength toward productive ends.  

Finally, as a priest in the parishes, back twelve, fifteen years ago, I twice took, along with the entire parish staff, the Gallup Strength Finders assessment -- a specifically Catholic version of which had been developed, precisely to help priests and parish staff identify their greatest strengths.  Too much to detail here, but both times that I took the Strength Finders assessment, I came up not just "strategic" but doubly so -- that is, on two different measures both times that I took this assessment, I was revealed to be, above all, a strategic thinker.  

I remember being blown away by this, the first time it happened (at Our Lady of Guadalupe in Fremont, maybe 2010).  I saw the word "strategic" and just drew a blank.  I knew what some of the other strengths were -- empathic, encouraging, empowering, evangelizing -- and I had assumed that one of them would prove to be my deepest strength.  I was very surprised to see the word "strategic" uppermost in my assessment summary.

Then I read what this strength entails.  And well, shut my mouth, as the saying goes...I was nailed to the wall.  The description fit me like a glove.  I remember smiling, when I read the description of the person whose deepest strength is strategic thinking.  It described me to the "t" and going back to my late teens.   

All of which is just to say that all of us are, indeed, called and gifted.  And the order of the words there, called and gifted, is often the way the process works.  You experience the call (and respond) and THEN you are gifted.  Gifted with the capacity to fulfill the demands of that particular set of responsibilities, from being a director of a parish program to being a good parent.  Called -- into a certain place and position of responsibility -- and then, once we have accepted the call, gifted to succeed at it.

It can work the other way as well, of course.  We might well intuit a particular gift or ability and seek its development on our own -- that describes me and my writing.  But anything at all related to my work for the Church, from being Confirmation teacher, to becoming youth minister, to seminary to priesthood and now to the chaplaincy at Bishop O'Dowd -- all of that followed the called first, gifted as I went, pattern.  The point is that we may not guess what we are capable of -- but God knows what we can do, maybe it is better to say what the Spirit can do through us, when we cooperate with grace.  

Well it is going on midnight Thursday, the 23, as I am wrapping this and as of late this afternoon the Eaton and Palisades fires are still not fully contained; meanwhile a new blaze near Santa Clarita has burned ten thousand acres.  At the same time, New Orleans got ten inches of snow Tuesday, the most in 130 years.  (I was surprised, actually, to read that New Orleans had EVER before recorded so much snow.)  That is two and one half times as much snow in one day as has fallen in Anchorage so far this winter.  (I guess southern Alaska is also enduring drought conditions.)  Reading about children using pool floats (blow ups of swans and dolphins, for instance) to sled down snowy inclines in Pensacola lent a lighter touch to my perusal of the weather news out of the Deep South, but it underscored the plight of our neighbors in the south state, where, finally rain is in the forecast. 

I do not know where this rain is coming from since there is none in the Northern California forecasts, neither here in the Bay Area nor in the Sacramento Valley.  But rain is rain and I am sure that at this point Angelenos will take it anyway they can get it.  It does not look like a lot -- which is itself a mercy as drenching rain at this point would trigger mudslides in all the burn areas.  We are nearing the end, meanwhile, here in the north state, of one of the driest Januarys on record.  Thank God for our very wet start to the rainy season -- it is startling to think that without that good wet start, we could be dealing with wildfires here.

So my prayer for rain as January moves toward its end includes the whole state, at this point, and while I am at it, I will pray for snow in Anchorage and for a thaw and a return to normal winter weather across the eastern two thirds of the country.  What a wild start to 2025.  

We have been exceptionally blessed here in the Bay Area, to be spared any part of it.

Take care.  God bless.  

Love,

Fr. Brawn