Our First Reading is in the middle of Amos’s five visions to Northern Israel. The prophet sees a swarm of locusts ready to devour the crops. Next, a rain of fire arrives, and Amos intercedes before God. The sequence of visions is interrupted with today’s passage. The chief priest, Amaziah, tells Amos to leave the temple. Amos is straightforward in stating that he was not among the company of prophets looking to make a living wage. God sent Amos, a shepherd and dresser of sycamores, to preach to northern Israel. Amos had the trade of caring for sheep and patiently watching the fruit from the sycamore grow. The dresser had to puncture the sycamore fruits to ripen the fruits at a faster rate. His call to preach to Northern Israel is a supernatural calling, untrained in the art of being an eloquent prophet, totally dependent on the grace of God that sustains his call. We hear the sentiments of Amos in the psalm, “I will hear what God proclaims; the Lord – for he proclaims peace.”

Another prophet dependent on the call rooted in grace is Saint Paul. In the opening lines of the letter to the Ephesians, he calls us blessed, for God has chosen us for a particular mission before he set the foundations of the world. Our call to mission, our call to communion, is not bound by time or space. It is more ancient than the cosmos, the canyons, and the oceans. Before he created any of it, he chose us to be his coworkers, reassuring us of our eternal purpose.

Just as Amos and Paul were unqualified, we see this transposed in the summoning of the Twelve in today’s Gospel from Mark. Jesus tells them to go in pairs and take nothing with them, only a walking stick. They do not need anything but dependence on the Holy Spirit, who will give them the power to heal the sick and cast out demons. This imagery of going in pairs is essential. No one serves God alone. We serve him together, in communion with the Church.

Take a moment this week to recognize that no one is left out; God calls everyone to a particular task in life. His call sustains us in love!