Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
In
terms of the social life, it seems to me that there is nothing bigger in the
mind of a kindergartner than being invited to a birthday party. It’s a sign that you’ve made it in the
innocent jungle of social interactions between 6-year-olds. And it doesn’t seem to leave us. Even as we progress through school, we
want to be invited to a friend’s house; we want to be chosen for the basketball
team; we want to be chosen as first chair in our instrument’s section of the
band; we want to be chosen as the lead in the play or musical. And let’s be honest: as adults we still
like being invited over: to a friend’s house; to a sports game; maybe for an
adult beverage at the local watering hole.
Jesus
invites Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John in our Gospel today. And maybe they, too, were just so happy
to be invited and chosen. But it
is amazing that they just left everything. This Jesus, whom they didn’t know well, called them to
follow Him, to be his disciples, and they did. There were no questions, no caveats, no conditions. They just followed Him. And, as we know the rest of the story,
their acceptance of the invitation took them many places they never imagined:
the Sermon on the Mount; the feeding of the 5,000; Mt. Tabor and the
Transfiguration for Peter, James, and John; the triumphant entry into Jerusalem
right before Passover; the Upper Room as both the priesthood and the Eucharist
were established; the Garden of Gethsemane, again for Peter, James, and John;
the foot of the cross for John; and the Upper Room again where they saw the
risen Christ. And then they
continued the work of Jesus after Pentecost, “teaching,…proclaiming the gospel
of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness among the people.”
We
were given the same invitation at our Baptism. We were called to put Jesus ahead of everything else. We were invited to be a follower of
Jesus and to teach, proclaim the gospel of the kingdom, and heal people. As we celebrate Catholic Schools Week
this week, we celebrate schools that can offer that invitation to our children
Monday through Friday, not just in religion class, but throughout the entire
day. But have we, no matter where
we went to school, accepted this invitation? Or do we stand at the fringes of our faith, like the Rich
Young Man who wanted to follow Jesus, but was not willing to give up anything
to follow Him? Is the extent of
our faith life, our relationship with Jesus, simply going through the motions
each week, or do we know Jesus personally? To put it another way, if I were a stranger and I came up to
you and said, “Why do you follow Jesus?
What’s so important about Him?
Why should I become Catholic?” what would you say? Think about that for a second. What would you say?
In
our preface, our prayer reminds us that even though we had abandoned God
through sin, through Jesus’ blood and the power of the Holy Spirit God
reconciled us to Himself, made us the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy
Spirit, the Church. That’s the
invitation we received: to claim as our own that reconciliation and the gift of
God’s friendship. Because without
God’s friendship, we are at enmity with God, as St. Paul says. Without God’s friendship, we deserve
God’s wrath. But God invites us to
His banquet, and to be a part of Jesus through the Church.
And
that Church is supposed to be one as the Trinity is one God. This past week we celebrated the Week
of Prayer for Christian Unity. Too
often, those who are invited, and who seek that invitation, work against that
unity by dividing into camps: “‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or
‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Is Christ divided?”
Pope Francis recently said that there is one word that describes
Christians not being united: scandal.
We have grown too accustomed to the disunity of Christians. We have grown too used to divided
Christians. Instead, there should
be one Church of Christ, united in true belief of what God teaches us through
the authority of Scripture and the Teaching of the Apostles and their
successors; united in governance under the one Vicar of Christ, the visible
sign of the unity of the many Christians spread throughout the world; united in
the sevenfold sacramental economy of salvation, where we receive God’s life of
grace in the way Jesus Himself established. If we have friends, and many of us probably do, who have
left the Church, how have we invited them to come back home to the Catholic
Church? If we have Christians friends,
and I’m sure all of us do, who are non-Catholic Christians, have we done our
best to explain our faith to them to promote understanding?
We have
received the greatest invitation, better than a birthday party, or a spot in
the band or the play, or a member of a sports team. We have been invited to be a part of the one Church of
Christ and to use our diverse gifts and personalities to spread the kingdom of
God and invite others to follow Jesus, not from far away, but in a close,
intimate relationship with Him.
Yes, we may have to leave some things behind that were dear to us, like
Peter, Andrew, James, and John did.
But we will receive a hundredfold in this life and in the life to come
if we accept the invitation from Jesus to follow after Him and become fishers
of men.
