We imagine that all the Gospels answer questions likely posed by a second generation of Christ’s followers, perhaps the children and grandchildren of the apostles and disciples. “What was Jesus like? What was it like to know Him? What was it like to be with Him? What was it like when He called you to follow Him?” The Gospel is then a living recollection recounted by those whose hearts burned within them as Jesus spoke to them.
How extraordinarily attractive Jesus must have been. Indeed, the truth, and goodness that He was and that He proclaimed were irresistible, for He is God enfleshed. And this morning we watch and listen as His simple invitation touches the hearts of four fishermen. Without hesitation, these first four apostles abandon father, nets, and boats to follow Jesus, immediately.
Like them, our work is to make ourselves more and more available to the irresistibility of Jesus and His call and to live our lives with an urgency and attentiveness, that will make us ever available to be drawn into the Beauty of God, drawn by Jesus into a life of self-forgetfulness and self-offering.
The bells are our constant summons to put all things aside and go to prayer. “The monks will always be ready to arise without delay when the signal is given and each will hasten,” says St. Benedict. “On hearing the signal the monk will immediately set aside what he has in hand and go with utmost speed.”
Truly, at the first stirrings of His call, were not our hearts burning within us? Let us remember and continually go to him without a second thought. Let us go to him again this morning,
the Living Water, our Life and our Hope, as he gives us Himself and teaches us how to
give ourselves away in love and service to one another.
Photograph by Brother Brian.
