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I often recall the words of Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel who said that “God made [us] because God loves stories.” Like God, we are addicted to stories. Theologian John Shea puts it beautifully We turn our pain into narrative so we can bear it; we turn our ecstasy into narrative so we can prolong it. ...We tell our stories to live.”As people of faith, we live out our stories in a special context, the context of the Sacred Story. When we come to worship together we come to hear that Sacred Story so that we can connect it to our own personal and communal stories. This frame of reference might serve us well this Sunday, as we reflect on two beautiful Biblical stories and try to connect them to our own. Isaiah’s story proclaimed today is as much our story as it is Israel’s. It’s all about the covenant God established with us: You and I were chosen from our mother’s womb to do God’s will, to be a light to the nations. I would never deny that this is a very scary idea. “Who am I” you would say, as I would, “to be the one through whom God’s glory would shine forth?” So we tend to back off.Like the Baptist of the Gospel, we search for the will of God. His story, too, is our story. We, too, are intrigued by Jesus. The more Jesus is “pointed out” to us--the more we learn about him--the more we want to know. Is he for real? Just what is he all about? This curiosity actually nourishes our faith, for it draws us ever more deeply into the mystery which is Jesus. John the Baptist’s introduction, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” is an invitation to follow him, to become committed and focused disciples.And still we are reluctant. We hold back. Is it fear? Are we afraid of the cost?For me, what often held me back was that phenomenon known as “Catholic guilt” – that cloud that follows us wherever we go and whatever we do. As screwed up as we are, we simply cannot believe God could love us so much as to want us to witness the light of Christ to the world. My best friend for the last 35 plus years is Jewish. For years Howard and I argued who had the edge on guilt: Jews or Catholics. In order to salvage the friendship, we came to an accommodation. We decided to agree that the Jews created it and the Catholics perfected it! We are very good at the guilt thing! The problem is that such an attitude tends to short-circuit our relationship with God. But not only that. If we can’t get a handle on God’s unconditional love for each one of us, we ultimately short-circuit the potential for imitating that love in all our relationships. We will never be able to let the light of Christ shine through us if we cannot accept God’s unconditional love.Once we begin to connect our stories to God’s covenant love for us, we can come to understand that God’s love is not dependent upon anything we might do or not do. God’s covenant love is a gift, and a gift cannot be earned. The only way to respond to that kind of love is to love the same way in return. Until I came to that realization, I struggled not only with my relationship with God, but most of my other relationships as well. Of course we will never love as perfectly as God loves. We are, after all, fairly weak creatures. But today’s psalm reassures us that if we are up to accepting the challenge, God will put a new song into my mouth. So the response of the psalmist is ours: to do your will, O my God, is my delight.If these biblical stories proclaimed today connect with our own stories, they become a model for our discipleship and for all our relationships. They also become an image of this Eucharistic celebration. What we do here each Sunday is a response to a call and an invitation to enter more deeply into our relationship with Jesus in the Word, in the Sacrament, and in the Assembly. It is through this celebration that we find the confidence to follow the Christ and accept the call yet again to be the light of his presence to the world.