Thrown!

A Homily for the Jubilee Mass at Benet Hill Monastery, 2026

When we get hit by something unexpected sometimes we might say: “I was really thrown by that!” For us, a life committed to God, whether that be by baptismal promises or religious profession of vows, means we consent to an unexpected life where being thrown is the rule and not the exception!

To make the vows of religious life, the vows of consecrated celibacy, poverty, and obedience, like taking the vows of marriage, like taking any vow or making any commitment to God is to do one and the same thing: It is to surrender and consent to undergo God!

And to undergo God is as thrilling, exhilarating and wonderful as it is terrifying. Because to undergo God is to consent to an unexpected life of being Thrown!

I think we all know what it feels like to be thrown. You can be thrown for a loop, thrown off course, thrown down, thrown around with no designated place to land. To be thrown is to be “propelled through the air; knocked down or unseated, confused or surprised, twisted like silk yarn, or shaped on a potter’s wheel.” To undergo God is to be thrown and to learn over time there is no better way to live!

Jeremiah gives us the beautiful image of God as the Divine Potter. The prophet tells us: “Whenever the vessel of clay God was making turned out badly [in the divine hands] God tried again, making of it another vessel of whatever he pleased.”

We are all clay in the Potter’s hands and Potter’s throw and clay is thrown or it cannot be shaped into what it was created to be. And I believe that is the heart of Jeremiah’s image. No matter how fierce the force of the throwing, what shape we take as vessels of God’s love and service; no matter how often we feel we’ve “turned out badly,” one thing and the same always remains true: We are in God’s hands. We can never not be in God’s hands. And in God’s hands being thrown becomes play, becomes adventure and it means we become unexpected ourselves.

At the moment of his calling to serve, Jeremiah hears God’s voice say to him: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, and I appointed you…” That is what it means to be Thrown by the Divine Potter! That massaging, recreating, pummeling, caressing, making and unmaking is the work of undergoing God. It is all because God knows us as no one else knows us, he has dedicated us to a life we only discover as we walk the path, he has appointed us to a task that is only revealed as we day by day surrender to be thrown anew.

Remember the call of Abraham: “He went out not knowing where he was to go, out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance…” Abraham needed to learn that receiving the power to generate… to give life, to be a source of life for others, meant a willingness to live a life unexpected, from an unexpected place, in an unexpected time, by an unexpected grace. To undergo God is to let oneself be thrown by the Divine Potter and discover oneself as always a source of life, even when we feel, like Abraham, that we haven’t gotten any life left in us!

The journey of a vowed life is always an unexpected journey to unexpected places, at unexpected times, through unexpected graces. And what is revealed over the years of vowed life and gospel service is the truth of who we are: WE are Unexpected and there is nothing God enjoys more than generating life out of the Unexpected!

Jeremiah was an unexpected prophet. Abraham, an unexpected father, not only of one son, but of a multitude. And Jesus was an unexpected savior.

Any commitment we make to God, in the vows of religious life, the vows of marriage, our baptismal promises mean we consent to undergo God, we consent to be thrown, we consent to the unexpected. We consent to a life where being thrown like clay in the Divine Potter’s hands is the rule and not the exception.

So, celebrating today with our Sisters, let us all renew our own commitment to being thrown – together!