Monday of the First Week in Ordinary Time
“Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
The initiative is God’s!
Our lives don’t often feel this. Our energies, rather, are directed in ways that look very much like we’ve got to plan out our lives or they won’t get lived! There is nothing new in the struggling involved. Since the Fall related in Genesis, life has been a struggle. “To the woman, he said: I will intensify your toil in childbearing; …. To the man he said: … Cursed is the ground because of you! In toil, you shall eat its yield all the days of your life.” And Hannah’s sadness recounted in our first reading today gets at the same sense of futility. But just as God took the initiative with Abraham and Sarah, so did he take it in sending his Son to show us the way: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
But the Word of Jesus for us today is not limited to turning the initiative over to the Lord. He goes on to say that he will “make you fishers of men.”
Jesus is not addressing adversaries but men who will become his friends. His challenge to them is imbedded in the mission he will give them – to gain people for heaven. It’s a challenge to grow beyond making a living, to the focus of engaging people for eternal life. Hidden in this challenging calling lies a wonderful gift: learning one’s dignity, one’s worth, the reverent acceptance of oneself by cooperating in one’s mission to assist in redeeming the world.
Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB
Posted in Articles for Ordinary Time, Daily Reflections