Gaudium
et Spes, section 22, tells us that we get our identity from Christ: The truth is that only in the
mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam,
the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come,(20) namely Christ the Lord.
Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His
love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.
When
Jesus looks at the Apostles today, he doesn't see what they are, He sees what
they can be, what they should be, and what they will be if they respond fully
to Him. But all He can say is “Repent and believe in the Gospel; the Kingdom of
Heaven is at hand; Come and Follow me.” The rest is up to them: CCC 2002 - God's free initiative
demands man's free response, for God has created man in his image by conferring
on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him. The soul only
enters freely into the communion of love. God immediately touches and directly
moves the heart of man. He has placed in man a longing for truth and goodness
that only he can satisfy. The promises of "eternal life" respond,
beyond all hope, to this desire...
Were Peter & Andrew, James and John, created to be fishermen?
Were they created for more? You have to even wonder how they felt about their
work (and how much they knew of Jesus) to just drop it all, leave it all behind
and follow. Maybe it's normal for us to sort of hate work when we don't have a
higher calling attached to it – Adam was told work would be hard, require
sweat. But after following Christ, the work becomes lighter, easier, elevated
to something higher.
We see in this Gospel that God calls us in our work. Priests of
our own diocese were successful in the world in their own small ways: Dentist.
Paintball factory. Businessman. Engineer from Purdue. Rocket Scientist. Notre
Dame architecture student. Teacher.
God calls
us them because of their heart: Chrys.:
It is no small sign of goodness, to bear poverty easily, to live by honest
labour, to be bound together by virtue of affection, to keep their poor father
with them, and to toil in his service.
An interesting fact of today's calling is that that they were two
sets of brothers. I wondered why this was so, particularly because it hits so
close to home for me: Jesus called me, and my brother, at about the same time,
to be fishers of men, priests. 2,000 years later, He still calls brothers!
Pseudo-Chrys.: He “called them” together, for by their abode they
were fellow-townsmen, in affection attached, in profession agreed, and united
by brotherly tenderness. He called them then at once, that united by so many
common blessings they might not be separated by a separate call.
Brothers, when they get along, are a great sign of unity.
And this is exactly what Saint Paul is trying to stress today in the beginning
of his First Letter to the Corinthians: they are breaking up into factions, and
are filling up with pride and jealousy, claiming Apollos, or Paul etc. as their
"leader." Paul responds by using the name Jesus Christ ten
times in the first ten verses. We are united, Paul stresses, in Jesus
Christ - no one else; nothing else. Let us pray for that true unity among
the entire Body of Christ, among all Christians.
And the way that Christ meets us to unite us is with today's call
to conversion, to "repent". CCC
1989 - The first work of the grace of the Holy Spirit is conversion, effecting
justification in accordance with Jesus' proclamation at the beginning of the
Gospel: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."38 Moved by
grace, man turns toward God and away from sin, thus accepting forgiveness and
righteousness from on high.
Only if we convert our hearts are we able to be united in Christ
Jesus, because only then do we allow ourselves to be transformed into Him, to
become what we were created for; what He truly sees we can be.
Every Ash Wednesday we hear these words: “Repent and believe in
the Gospel.” Every Sunday in the scriptures, indeed every day of our lives,
Jesus calls us again: “Follow me” a little closer, leave behind things a little
more completely.
In today’s Eucharist, as we meet Christ, let us abandon our old selves
and follow our True Self who unites us by giving His Body and Blood for us.
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