JESUS IS CALLING – DO I ACCEPT OR REJECT?
“When Jesus heard that John had been arrested,
he left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum. . . .
“As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers,
Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew,
casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen.
He said to them,
‘Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.’
At once they left their nets and followed him.
He walked along from there and saw two other brothers,
James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John.
They were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets.
He called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father
and followed him.
He went around all of Galilee,
teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom,
and curing every disease and illness among the people.” Matthew 4:12-23 – 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
As Jesus is walking along the shore, he sees two sets of fishermen casting and mending their nets – doing what fishermen do. Then Jesus, with no warm greeting, no initial conversation, enters into their lives with just a call, “Come, follow me. I will make you fishers of people.”
It’s a call that Jesus used and uses, even today, to call you, me and everyone alive today. That is perhaps the primary reason, God became human – to call us to join God – to let God help us move beyond the limited horizons that we set for ourselves when we don’t join God in continually growing into the fullness of being God enabled us to achieve.
Stop reading this for a minute and think about this. Do you believe it? Could God do that? Would God do that? Why? If you do believe that, how well are you doing in following Jesus’ call to you?
We’re often too busy to hear Jesus calling us, let alone answer. But God keeps calling, at times via something welling up inside of us: an agony or a surprising joy; at other times, via something we see or hear. These are God’s calls – sadly, more often rejected by us than answered.
If you doubt that God is calling you, please take some time to ponder how you came to be here right now in your highly intricate, “wired” and functioning body, mind and spirit – capable of breathing, pumping blood, thinking, deciding, creating, loving – and even capable of shutting God out of His world that we think and act as if it is our world. God lets us ignore Him, lets us choose other than God, and, even when we do, God still calls us to come back to Him and let Him into our line of vision.
Yes, we don’t deserve it. But that’s the way God is: better than the best of us at forgiving us of whatever mess we may have made of ourselves, and never tiring of trying to help us climb out of that mess.
How do you think these first disciples felt about themselves as they started listening to Jesus and hanging around with him? Do you see that it was their experience with Jesus that changed their longing to be first in His “kingdom,” here on earth – to wanting to join Jesus in bringing the realization of the presence of God into the minds and hearts of everyone, and in bringing everyone into the life of God, as we live right here in God’s world? Do you see that His mission became their mission and their raison d’être?
Perhaps the question for us is this: In trying to modernize our lives, have we lost what these disciples found – listening to and watching Jesus, the one who knows what will make our lives truly joy-filled? Do I – do you – need to re-answer the call and, perhaps, re-examine who Jesus is, and what He and we mean to each other? Will this help me find or strengthen my sense of inner peace in the midst of my everyday encounters with joy and sorrow, success and failure, bondedness and alienation?
Agreed, a lot of the ways we were taught to think about life and God don’t seem to fit us now. We’ve changed. But, in a lot of respects, the Church’s ways of presenting our faith have changed, too.
Let’s consider this, for ourselves and for the welfares and futures of our families, friends and neighbors. Let’s answer Jesus’ calls to learn about Him and our Father. How are we going to do that?
Let’s look at what St. Michael’s has to offer us in opportunities to pray, read, talk about and explore our call, alone and together. Also consider:
Word on Fire Ministry of Bishop Robert Barron
Finding God (Adult Faith Resources)
When Jesus said, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of people.”. . . immediately they left their boat and their father, and followed him.
Sister Loretta