208. Fifth Monday of Ordinary Time
Meditations no. 85 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
Christ has sought us out and called us by our name, just as he did with the Apostles.
As soon as he arrived in the neighbourhood of Genesareth, Jesus made it clear that he was looking for the kind of people who could commit themselves to helping him in his work. As the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, Jesus asked Peter for the use of his boat while he taught the multitudes. After he had finished teaching, he told Peter to head out for the open sea and lower the nets for a catch. And Peter, on seeing the miraculous haul of fish, threw himself in confusion at Christâs feet. Jesus reassured him with a promise: Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men. And to indicate that this commitment to our Lord was deeper and more complete than the previous ones, the Evangelist adds: When they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.
This Gospel scene has been repeated in our own lives. Jesus came to seek us out amid our work, as he did with Peter. Christâs call shook us; it came as an authoritative summons that gave meaning to all the longings and ambitions of our heart. We may have been young, with our whole life before us, like James and John; or we may already have had experience of life, like Simon and Matthew. But in either case, we realized that we had a long voyage ahead of us, a new life, a divine adventure: Put out into the deep.
In a typically vivid turn of phrase, Jesus reminds us of the need to receive his words with a youthful heart and a desire for renewal: Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; if it is, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins.
Just as the fermentation of new wine causes old vessels to burst, so too the Gospel spirit bursts through prejudices and cowardly conformity, routine and comfort. All the Apostles recalled the first days that they spent in Jesusâ company as marking the start of a new life for them - their real life. Even the youngest among them, St John, felt the same way. When he recounts his divine adventure many years later, those pages of the Gospel are as fresh and fragrant as an affectionate diary. Hora autem erat quasi decima. It was about four oâclock in the afternoon, he writes. He recalls the very moment when Jesus, seeing that they were following him - videns eos sequentes se - invited them to accompany him.
A vocation demands a continuing response.
The Apostles answered Christâs personal summons one by one. The circumstances that led to their meeting him were many and varied: sometimes it was through family relationships, sometimes through friendship, sometimes through their work. Jesus made use of all these opportunities to issue his invitation to them. However, their initial generous response was by no means the end of the story. In fact it was just the beginning of a far more important task: that of their progressive incorporation into Christ, culminating in complete union with him. This is the endeavour we are always engaged in. Our life is simple and ordinary, our Father says. Yet, if you live according to the demands of our spirit, it will also be heroic. Sanctity is never a mediocre thing; our Lord didnât call us with the idea of making the way to him any easier or less heroic.
The call that we heard one day is not a distant echo lost in the mists of memory. Each day we have to find the best way of serving God; we must be on the lookout to discover his will behind everything that happens to us. It is in the things of every day that he awaits us; it is there that he calls us; and it is there that we respond to our vocation. If doing the same thing day after day seems monotonous and unappealing, itâs because love is missing. When there is love, every new day has a different hue, a different tone; each day strikes a different chord.
Christâs call requires a continuing response on our part, an ever greater penetration into Godâs will for us, and a deeper understanding of the greatness and the responsibilities of our vocation. There is no room in our lives for routine. We canât let our eagerness to follow Christ lose its first freshness. We canât allow monotony to creep into our divine adventure. If that were to happen, it would be a sign that we had started dawdling along the way. Every day is a call to us to renew our love for our vocation, to refresh our desires to live it to the full. What each one of us gave was the gift of self, which was a truly generous and detached act on our part. And because we preserve that self-giving, our fidelity is a continuous offering: a continuous act of love and generosity and magnanimity, which is not just the result of inertia. St Thomas says: eiusdem est autem aliquid constituere, et constitutum conservare (establishing something and preserving it once it is established have the same cause). What gave rise to your self-giving in the first place, my son, also has to maintain it.
Answering Godâs call generously.
Dearly beloved daughters and sons, you are here in the Work because our Lord has placed in your hearts a pure and generous desire to serve, a true zeal that makes you willing to undertake any sacrifice, as you work away quietly for the Church without seeking any earthly compensation. Fill yourselves with these noble ambitions, and strengthen this holy disposition in your hearts, because there is an immense amount of work to be done.
If we were ever tempted to rest on our laurels, and to settle for what we had achieved so far, we should ask God our Lord to increase our hunger to serve. For messis quidem multa, operarii autem pauci. The labourers are few, and the harvest plentiful. Our apostolate is a sea without shores, and there are so few souls in the world who want to serve God! Imagine what would happen if those of us who are willing to serve were to be half-hearted about it.
We canât procrastinate in our apostolate. We must feel the urgency and the weight of the task which God has entrusted to us. My children, our Father writes, our lives are short, and we have very little time on earth, which is when we are able to render this service to God. As the poet says, a flash of lightning marks our birth, and its glow still lasts when we come to die - so short is our life. The Psalmist puts it still better: Homo sicut foenum dies eius, tamquam flos agri, sic efflorebit. As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field, born at the first kiss of the sun and at nightfall withering. For the same reason St Paul says: tempus breve est; time is short: we have hardly any time at all!
Let us turn to Mary, asking her to help us be generous. Here I am, determined on this occasion not to let time pass like water over the rocks, without leaving a trace. Iâll let myself be drenched and transformed; this time I wonât hesitate to give myself.