Dear Friends in christ
We enter this weekend some weeks of Ordinary Time before the season of Lent. The Gospel presents us with the calling of the first two disciples of Jesus: Through these words of the Baptist, these two disciples are moved by grace to approach the Lord. John’s testimony is an example of the special graces God distributes to attract people to himself. Sometimes he addresses a person directly by stirring his soul and inviting him to follow him; at other times, as in the present case, he chooses to use someone close to us who knows us, to bring us to meet Christ.
The two disciples already had a keen desire to see the Messiah; John’s words move them to try to become friends of our Lord: it is not merely natural curiosity but Christ’s personality which attracts them. They want to get to know him, to be taught by him and to enjoy his company. “Come and see” a tender invitation to begin that intimate friendship they were seeking. Time and personal contact with Christ will be needed to make them more secure in their vocation. The apostle St John, one of the protagonists in this scene, notes the exact time it took place: “it was about the tenth hour”, roughly four in the afternoon. Christian faith can never be just a matter of intellectual curiosity; it affects one’s whole life: a person cannot understand it unless he really lives it; therefore, our Lord does not at this point tell them in detail about his way of life; he invites them to spend the day with him. St Thomas Aquinas comments on this passage saying that our Lord speaks in a lofty, mystical way because what God is (in himself or in grace) can only be understood through experience: words cannot describe it. We grow in this understanding by doing good works (they immediately accepted Christ’s invitation and as a reward “they saw”), by recollection and by applying our mind to the contemplation of divine things, by desiring to taste the sweetness of God, by assiduous prayer. Our Lord invited everyone to do all this when he said, “Come and see”, and the disciples discovered it all when, in obedience to our Lord, “they went” and were able to learn by personal experience, whereas they could not understand the words alone. Jesus has called each of us in the same way. St Peter reminds us that we should ‘make this call and choice of ours, a daily reality.” God bless us as we move to live the vocation God has given each of us more faithfully.
Msgr Kevin Hale
Priest@LourdesLeigh.org ✚ 01702 478078
Homily available at LourdesLeigh.org