A reading of the holy gospel according to Mark. After John was arrested, that is John the baptizer, of course, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of god and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of god is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. And passing along by the Sea Of Galilee, Jesus saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the lake for they were fishermen. Jesus said to them, follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.
Immediately, Simon and Andrew left their nets and followed Jesus. Going a little farther, Jesus saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, who were in their boat mending their nets. Immediately, Jesus called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed Jesus. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit.
Amen. The opening prayer of this mass where we pray to know the will of God and to do it can summarize completely our lives. We have to know before we can act. Well, I I mean, that's the way we should do it if we're rational, intelligent, sensible beings. Of course, it's questionable whether we act that way often.
It's a possibility that we can, however. You know, it was it was Cardinal Newman he said it's almost almost the definition of man to say that he is an irrational animal. However, as Christians, as as as human beings with an intelligence and a will, in other words, with capacities to know and to love, and nobody denies this, they may deny the will, but they won't deny your capacity to love, We should have a guiding light in our lives, and you can't possibly find a a briefer summary than that, that we pray to God almighty to know his will and to do it, to be enlightened and to have strength. Now you take that thought, tack it on to this incident from our lord's life. This this incident that we have this morning, it always just floors me.
It is so incomprehensible to me that what happened happened. Now I hasten to add, we don't know the whole story. Far from it. All we know is what we've read here from Saint Mark. And what we have read here is absolutely astounding.
You take that last sentence. Here, remember, this is up in Galilee. This which isn't too far from Nazareth. Nazareth is to the West. These these four men are all fishermen, which means they were their fathers were fishermen, very likely.
Anyway, it's a very sure assumption that these four men grew up by the lake, they were competent fishermen, they were capitalists, they owned their own boats, They were Jews. They had a father right there working with them, was the with justice, the way it is. Sons followed in the footsteps of their fathers. And when their fathers died, the sons took over because they have their fathers were already grandfathers and the grandchildren came right along and succeeded in their father's footsteps. That was the cycle of existence.
Now here comes a nobody, an unknown person as far as we can see here. I don't believe it was, but that's what the the text doesn't tell us. He's a he's a he's from inland. He's not a lake person at all. He's from Nazareth.
And he comes down and and invites these men to follow him. And they leave everything including their father. Listen to this line. He Christ saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who were in their boat mending their nets. Jesus called them at once immediately.
Notice this sentence. They left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed Jesus. Absolutely astounding. Absolutely astounding. You talk about miracles.
I don't have any trouble understanding miracles. I believe in God. But this how do you how do you explain this kind of a of a a fact of if it is a fact? And it it there is certainly no reason for for doubting it at all. How did it work?
What happened? What influenced these four fishermen, two of them working with their father with hired hands in the boat to leave even their father with the hired hands and follow Jesus? What prompted them to do it? To me, it it you talk about lead kindly, light, and all of the all all that kind of thing of facing the unknown and entrusting our lives to God and all of that. How do you this simply goes way beyond anything like that.
Here we pray that we may know the will of God and do it. What what influenced these four fishermen to abandon everything, two of them including their father, to follow a carpenter, an unknown person, a nobody from Nazareth? What prompted them to do it? We're not told that there were that Christ did any miracles. We're not we're not told that he argued with him with him.
We're not given the slightest suggestion that he tried to persuade them. How account for it? Well, there's one fact, fact that comes out clearly. They saw and heard Jesus Christ. That you cannot deny.
They saw and heard him. That was the those two points were their only contact, their eyes and their ears. What they heard and what they saw, I don't know. I feel very confident that they saw and heard a lot more than we're told here by Saint Mark. But no matter what they saw and what they heard, the second fact is, at once they abandoned everything they owned and renounced even their obligation as sons to their father because they saw and heard Jesus Christ.
That I you cannot wiggle out of that fact. You cannot escape it Because they heard and saw Jesus Christ, they not only gave surrendered and fled, but told they left them right then and there. All their well worldly possessions, and not only that, but abandoned their father to hirelings or abandoned one of their fathers to hirelings. Now we pray here that we may know the truth that we know when we may know and have the courage to live the truth of Jesus Christ. There is no escaping that we must see and hear Jesus Christ.
Christ. And this is not always easy, but it is not impossible. God doesn't ask us to do the impossible. And the fact is that we know so little about this tremendous instant incident. At the same time, we have to, I think, postulate, project, suppose that there is a lot here that we don't know.
But when these men, these four men notice the father of Zebedee didn't follow Christ, none of the hirelings followed Christ, just these just these two men in that one boat and two of the other men. Why was why was it just these four? Why didn't the father of Zebedee hop out of the boat and said, son, I'm going along with you. You can't abandon your old man like this. What kind of sons are you to leave me alone and run off with this guy from Galilee, this this who knows what he is?
He's he's an inlander, and you know what the feeling between an inlander and a and a waterman is. This is a frightfully important thing to me, but come back to this thought that you've got to see and hear Jesus Christ. And for most part, for our part, it's hearing, not seeing. We depend upon faith. We must pray indeed to see and to hear and pray fervently to see and to hear, but we ought not to have false expectations of what the answer to our prayer may be.
The only thing I'm sure of is it that it it will be adequate, that it will be enough. It may it may not be all that I like. It may not be all that I think I need. It will be enough, enough. As Newman said, I do not ask to see the distant shore.
One step enough for me. And so when we did when this here we're opening the liturgical year, ordinary time as they called, I hate that word, ordinary. There is no such thing as ordinary time folks. But anyway, we begin this year and what what more realistic, I mean, honest to God realistic prayer can we ask of God than that we see, that we know what his will is, and that we have the courage given to us by him to do it. May it be so.
Name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.