Our Lady of Lourdes Church and School

In today’s scriptures, we are brought to reflect on different narratives that also involve stories of different lives sharing something of their pilgrimage story. In the revealing narratives, we also notice some critical moments that set the course for future trajectories in the life stories as they unfold.

In our first reading, we are parachuted into the third chapter of the story of Jonah. We’ve skipped the initial chapters that tell of his resistance to God’s call and of his fear driving him to run from his own calling. That running away from himself brought Jonah into some strange and dark places. But this narrative now picks up where Jonah finally (grudgingly) gives in to God and takes up his mission. He’s not all that enthusiastic about it, but he gets into it nonetheless. The contrast between Jonah ignoring God and the Ninevites responding positively to God is striking. As this narrative continues to unfold, we learn a lot about those who respond positively and negatively to God’s word in their lives.

In our gospel, Mark’s narrative brings us to reflect on the call of the first disciples by Jesus. It’s a striking narrative in which the mission of Jesus doesn’t unfold in a vacuum. There’s a context to the work that Jesus is about to undertake as he begins his public ministry. “After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee…”

Part of the context we might miss, is that Jesus’ own life and the way he put it in service of so many others, was his personal response to the call he discerned in his own life. The call comes from God the Father. This conviction that Jesus has of his being part of something so much bigger than himself, and his engaging that fully in the living of his own life, is what propels him to share his very self with others. As his life unfolds, we see that his response to the Father is so perfect, is so overwhelmingly positive, that we begin to recognize something incredibly wonderful about who this Jesus is… but we’re getting ahead of ourselves…

Back to our narrative for today, and we see Jesus coming to Galilee. There is a sense of urgency communicated by Mark in this narrative, and Jesus seems to be pretty certain about what he’s doing. He approaches Simon and Andrew and quite startlingly asks them to join him in his work. He must have communicated something of his confidence to them, because they left their nets to join him as “fishers of men”. A little further along, the gospel tells us, he approached James and John and invited them to follow him as well. And they did! They left their father in the boat with the hired men and just walked off with Jesus, Simon and Andrew. They must have been so moved by the energy and enthusiasm of Jesus that they immediately abandoned what it was they were doing with their lives and they completely changed the trajectory of their life’s direction. As Jesus was convicted about the Father’s call to him, so the first disciples seem to have been convicted about Jesus’ call to them.

Discerning God’s desires for us in the living of our lives, truly reflecting on what God’s hopes and dreams for us in the world might look like for us, takes no small investment of our time and energy. It’s quite possible that we have ideas for our own lives ourselves, and we’re quite happy to ignore the suggestions of others, or the movements of God’s spirit within ourselves (I know my own struggles with what some have described as being headstrong, or stubborn have been ongoing). Being attentive to the invitations and guidance of people who know us, who mentor us, who care for our good are all ways of listening to the call of God in our lives. Praying, and asking God’s guidance through his word revealed in scripture as well as his word revealed in the narrative of our life’s experience is also important in discerning God’s hopes and dreams for us. Learning to trust God is not always easy, but the narratives of Jonah and of Jesus both offer us some insight for ourselves and our own living of the life of faith and goodness. Where do the pilgrim paths lead us in our own life’s journey?