BEYOND WHAT CALL?
I frequently hear a radio program which always has the narrator say “go beyond the call.” I think “What call? Call to what?” It’s obvious that it is something resident in Christianity, and that it means something like ‘going the extra mile,’ but I just wonder what, specifically it denotes or derives from. It’s another one of those cases where it seems everyone around is familiar with something that I somehow missed along the way. It reminds me of the time in the First Grade when the nun declared that all us kids were going to skip around the room. Truly, I didn’t know what it was to ’skip.’ I felt like some kind of little dummy or cultural orphan. But no problem, the nun told me I could ‘march.’
‘Beyond the Call’ has popped up for me in couple of times in other places, even on something I was watching on EWTN within the last few days. See, they know the phrase too! For a while I was telling myself it was one of those peculiar Protestantisms I hear from time to time, like ‘come along side’ of someone. So plainly, it is something I should know. They even completed the thought — ‘call to holiness’, I think it was, or something of the sort. but they didn’t give a chapter and verse. So I’m still in the wondering mode.
