Third
Sunday of Ordinary Time – January 24, 2021
We can easily become
set in our ways. We get into certain ways of doing things, and it can be easy
to stay with those ways and rather difficult to change them. We develop
routines which keep us going. Sometimes it takes someone else to broaden our
horizon a little, to open us up to areas of life that we would never otherwise
have experienced. Some of us could point to a moment in our lives when a
meeting we had with someone opened up new understanding and appreciation. The
rest of life was different after that meeting. Married people might think of
the moment when they first met their spouse to be. Two people met and something
new and life-giving began. Any one of us, married or otherwise, might be able
to identify a similar experience. Perhaps it is only in hindsight we can see
just how significant that experience was. If someone were to have asked the
four men who appear in our gospel reading today, Peter, Andrew, James and John,
about an experience that shaped the rest of their lives, it is likely that they
would have pointed to that day by the sea of Galilee when Jesus called them.
Peter, Andrew, James
and John lived in a world that was very much defined by the Sea of Galilee.
They were fishermen. The tools of their trade were their boats and their nets; the
fruit of their trade was the fish that
they caught and the money they received for selling the fish. They had every
reason to believe that this would always be their way of life. Their lives had
a very certain tempo and they probably intended to go on living in that tempo
until they were too old or sick to work. Then, one day Jesus entered their
lives, and the impact he had on them was such that they left their boats, nets
and even their families to follow this man and to share in his mission. “Follow me and I will make you fishers of people,” he said to them. Instead of gathering fish into their nets, they
would now share in Jesus’ work of gathering people to God.
The call that Jesus
addressed to those two sets of brothers is addressed to each one of us. In our
case that call will not mean leaving our families or occupations. Yet, the call
of Jesus to follow him will always involve opening ourselves up to some new
horizon, the horizon of God, to God’s viewpoint on life. This will often mean
looking afresh at the way we do things, the routines that we have built up and
have become used to and have learnt to live by. The Lord’s call to follow him
is addressed to us every day of our lives. It will mean something different
every day to set out on a new journey, God’s journey, which is the journey
towards other people in selfless love. Those everyday callings can be a summons
to be patient with a person who is difficult to love. It can be the call to
comfort someone who is struggling or the call to reach out to someone who is
lonely. It could be the call to forgive someone who hurt or disappointed us.
Peter, Andrew, James
and John were called to leave their natural family to embrace a much larger
family, the future family of Jesus’ disciples. The Lord’s call to us to follow
him today will always involve some element of that call to open ourselves up to
a wider family, the family of the church or of humanity. The first reading is
about the prophet Jonah. He was a Jew and he had all the prejudices of many Jews
at the time against non-Jews. Yet, God called him to head out and preach the
message of God’s merciful love to the pagans, to the people of Nineveh, the
arch enemies of the people of Israel. Here was a call that was stretching
Jonah’s horizon to the breaking point; he ran away from it. Yet, God pursued
him and did not give up on him until Jonah answered the call. We find Jonah
doing just that and his message met with tremendous openness from the people of
Nineveh.
God’s horizon is
always so much wider than ours. The call of Jesus to follow him always involves
a call to allow our own horizons to be stretched to embrace God’s vision of
life, of our lives, of all humanity and creation.