Conformed and Called: God's Way of Lowliness
As we reflect on this Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, the Word of God helps us to reorient our understanding of vocation, strength, and holiness. Throughout each of the readings we see that God delights in working through what the world overlooks, and He asks of us not brilliance or power, but humility, trust, and faithful love.
St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians stand at the heart of this invitation. “Consider your own calling,” he writes (1 Cor. 1:26). Not many were wise, powerful, or of noble birth - yet God chose them. This is not accidental; it is revelatory. God chooses the weak to shame the strong, the lowly to confound the proud, so that no one might boast except in the Lord. St. Paul is not romanticizing weakness for its own sake; rather, he is unveiling the grace of divine love. God does not wait for us to be sufficient. He delights in our poverty because it makes room for His grace. Our inadequacies, when surrendered, become the very place where Christ’s power is revealed.
This truth can be both consoling and unsettling. Consoling, because it frees us from the exhausting illusion that we must prove our worth before God or others. Unsettling, because it calls us to let go of the identities we have built around competence, recognition, and control. Our calling, St. Paul insists, is not rooted in what we bring to the table, but in who God is for us: our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. To belong to Christ is to allow Him to define us from the inside out.
The first reading from the prophet Zephaniah echoes this same movement of the heart. “Seek the Lord, all you humble of the earth” (Zeph. 2:3). The remnant God preserves is described not by achievements, but by posture: humble, lowly, taking refuge in the name of the Lord. These people “shall do no wrong and speak no lies” - not because they are flawless, but because they live in radical dependence on God. Humility here is not self-contempt, but is rather truth lived before God. It is the freedom that comes from knowing we are held, guided, and sustained by Him.
This humility finds its fullest expression in the Gospel, as Jesus ascends the mountain and proclaims the Beatitudes. The blessed ones are not those who appear successful by worldly standards, but the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, the pure of heart. In the Beatitudes, Jesus gives us not a strategy for self-improvement, but a portrait of His own life. He Himself is poor, gentle, obedient unto death. To live the Beatitudes, then, is to allow our lives to be conformed to His - to trust that obedience to God’s commandments, lived in love, is the path to true freedom.
These readings summon us in a profound way to a deeper and more faithful witness. Preaching, in its deepest sense, is not first about eloquent words, but about lives transparent to the truth. When we accept our littleness and place it at the service of the Gospel, God does the rest. Our weaknesses, offered in humility, become vessels of mercy. Our obedience, lived joyfully, becomes a sign that the Kingdom of God is already at work among us.
Today, the Lord invites us to consider our calling anew. Not with fear, but with gratitude; not with boasting, but with trust. If we take refuge in Him, seek humility, and walk the path of the Beatitudes, our lives - however small they may seem - will proclaim His love more powerfully than we could ever imagine.
