3rd Sunday OT
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
To
whom do you belong? Who owns you? The answer most Americans would
give is: “I belong to myself. I own me.” Our disastrously
individualistic and narcissistic culture has trained us to think “Me
First; Me Always.” If I belong to me then my needs and wants come
first. I cannot serve two masters, so I serve myself. To reinforce my
preferences, lest anyone threaten my comfortable delusion of
self-centered independence, I surround myself with those who make the
same choices I do. Who I am becomes the sum total of my race, social
class, political views, religious beliefs, and whatever prejudices my
fellow-choosers will tolerate. What now? Now I'm an over-educated,
professional Catholic white boy from a working-class southern family
who leans to the right politically. Do I live for those labels? Is
that who I really am? Is that all I am? If so, then the Cross I claim
to follow is emptied of its meaning. Paul points to the rivalries
among the Corinthians and asks them, “Is Christ divided? Was Paul
crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” No.
No. And no. I belong to Christ. And if you belong to Christ too, then
your first choice is Christ and so is every choice you make after
that. We serve CHRIST.
Some
800 yrs before Christ, the prophet Isaiah prophesied Israel's
punishment for her disobedience: war, defeat, exile, and slavery. The
Assyrian Empire invaded the Northern Kingdom and Israel all but
disappeared. God's people had chosen to serve themselves rather than
their Maker, and b/c they no longer served God, He allowed them to
suffer the consequences of their sin. But like any good preacher,
Isaiah preaches the wages of sin, but he doesn't stop there. He also
preaches the inevitably victory of hope: “Anguish has taken wing,
dispelled is darkness: for there is no gloom where but now there was
distress. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone.”
Why—after their disobedience—does God return to the land and
share His great light? B/c even though we often forget our covenant
with Him, He never forgets. Though we might fail to remember His
promises; He never forgets. He never forgets b/c He created us so
that His love could be given flesh and blood and freely given to one
another as a sign of our salvation. However, that sign—His freely
given love—cannot be a sign of anything if I belong to myself
alone, if I only serve myself. We serve Christ. WE serve Christ.
Jesus
couldn't be any clearer. He says to the fishermen, Peter and Andrew,
“Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Our Lord
doesn't invite these men to begin a journey of spiritual
self-discovery, or to take up austere religious practices. He invites
them to go out and fish for souls, to trawl for those who long to
love God but cannot see or hear the mercy He offers them. Peter and
Andrew drop their nets and follow Christ b/c his Word is a word of
hope. “Anguish has taken wing, dispelled is darkness. . .The people
who walked in darkness have seen a great light. . .” Peter and
Andrew see in Christ the same great light that the people of Israel
see at the end of their exile in Assyria. Not the light of their
ascended consciousness. Not a specially designed, customized light
shining just for me to see b/c I am especially holy or in-the-know.
The light that shines to push back the darkness of sin and the
anxiety of disobedience is the glory of God. The same light that
shone Israel. That shone on Mary. That shone on Jesus at his baptism.
The same light shines on all of us. “Upon those who dwelt in the
land of gloom a light has shone.”
God's
great light shines on us all. Now what? Jesus says, “Repent, for
the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Why do we need to repent of our
sins if God's light is shining on us? It is precisely b/c God's light
is shining on us that we need to repent. Sin is like a fireman's
asbestos suit. It keeps the heat of God's mercy from touching us; it
prevents us from seeing and hearing His Word; it blocks the cleansing
fire of the Holy Spirit. We are given the freedom and power to remove
that suit and rejoice in the conflagration that is God's love for us.
And not only can each one of us remove the suit, we are also given
the authority by Christ himself to proclaim the same freedom and
power to any and everyone who will listen. “Come follow me, and I
will make you fishers of men.” The first net we must throw is the
net of repentance. Repentance, confession, and absolution remove the
spirit-blocking power of sin. When you proclaim the Good News of
God's mercy to sinners you serve more than just yourself; you belong
to more than just you alone: you belong to Christ, you serve Christ,
and b/c you belong to him and serve him, you will be like Israel
returning from exile and slavery, brimming with “abundant joy and
great rejoicing.”
It
is no easy task to believe that we belong to another, that we serve
another. We are trained to see the world as a series of loosely
connected choices made from a nearly infinite numbers of options. We
buy personalized cell phones. We select quirky fashions to accentuate
our individuality. We have it “our way” in restaurants and
grocery stores. We even exercise a degree of entitled choosiness when
it comes to where we attend Mass, jumping from parish to parish
depending on the priest, the kind of liturgy we want, the music, the
liturgical language. No matter how many choices I'm offered by my
culture and my Church, it seems that I always want just one more
option. Why? Because I've been trained to believe that I belong to
me, that I own me. And my wants, my needs must always come first. But
this is the path to death, spiritual death. The Cross stands before
us as a tool of execution and redemption. We are redeemed by Christ's
death on the Cross b/c he chose to die for us. Not me. Not you. But
us. All of us. He bought us from the Cross and owns us b/c—like
Peter and Andrew—we heard his Word and saw his Light, repented of
our sins, and chose to follow him. And in choosing to follow him, we
chose to be fishers of men.
If
you will to follow Christ, your life is no longer your own.
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