Tuesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time
In life today we are bombarded by so many different messages on a daily basis. We see advertisements in magazines, newspapers, television, and on the internet. We see product placements in movies. We listen to commentators and pundits give their opinions and theories about politics and the world in general on talk radio and cable television. In our interaction with other people we are confronted with the opinions of friends and family on how to spend our time and money, and how to make sense of our lives. It is sometimes easy for the message of the gospel to get lost in this cacophony of voices. Nevertheless, as seen in the gospel reading for today, Jesus has a message that is clear and pure. Jesus’ fundamental message is that we need to turn towards God and to acknowledge God’s revelation of Godself in Jesus. It seems to me that paying attention to Jesus’ gospel message can help us to focus on what is truly important in our lives.
By turning towards Jesus we learn to realize the meaning and purpose of our lives in him. We learn that our lives are not our own. As Jesus states elsewhere (Luke 9: 24), whoever loses their life for his sake will save it, meaning that our lives are fulfilled by learning to follow him. Having seen this, however, we must acknowledge that it is not simple or easy to live this out in our lives. In fact, it takes a whole life to do it (or maybe more, since our Christian journey is not really complete until we are resurrected at the last day). In other words, it requires a life of faithful discipleship.
In the gospel reading for today we are confronted with the story of the calling of the first disciples. Jesus is walking by the Sea of Galilee, and he sees Simon and Andrew at work with their fishing nets. Imagine how they would have reacted to Jesus’ call. Here was someone they did not know calling them to drop everything in order to follow him. They might have asked themselves why they should trust Jesus? Yet something in Jesus’ call to Simon and Andrew spoke to them so deeply that they were willing to leave everything they knew in order to follow him. I wonder whether I have sometimes failed to respond to Jesus by making this response more complicated than it has to be. For Simon and Andrew it was not so complicated. Jesus calls us, like them, to start through a simple act of faith, trusting him to lead us on the right path. Jesus starts with a simple message—to repent of our sins and follow him, get to know him, and learn to be like him.
I don’t want to say that following Jesus is not hard or that there are never differences of opinion between Christians about how to do that. But it does seem to me that we are called to start with a basic trust in him. I believe that we are presented with the challenge today to do this—that is, to deepen our faith and our trust in Jesus by prayerfully focusing on his call to us to follow him.
Joel Schickel