Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Anthony of Padua Church, New Bedford, MA
Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
January 23, 2011
Is 8:23–9:3, Ps 27:1 4 13-14, 1Cor 1:10-13 17, Mt 4:12-23
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click at the bottom of the page. The following text guided this homily:
THE PERSONAL CALL OF CHRIST
- Today’s Gospel is profoundly rich with interconnected pieces. Let’s look at the pieces, their connections, and their application to us right now.
- St. Matthew tells us that Jesus left his native Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Napthali. The reason he did so was not just that his fellow Nazarenes had tried to kill him by tossing him off the cliff on which Nazareth had been built, but to fulfill a prophecy, the prophecy that Isaiah announced 700 years before in our first reading: “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles: the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”
- Jesus, the light of the world, came to bring those in darkness, those who were disparaged, those who were suffering, those who were in sin, on a pilgrimage out of darkness and into the light. It wasn’t enough for them to see the light. He was going to help them walk in the light, to live in the light.
- That’s why, as St. Matthew recounts for us, his first words were “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is another way of saying, “Leave the Darkness. Come believe in, and live in, the Light!”
- Then Jesus made that pilgrimage from darkness into light even more specific. He saw two brothers, Simon and Andrew, fishing. He said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Even though St. Peter’s first words to the Lord, recounted in St. Luke’s version of this encounter, were “Depart from me, O Lord, because I am a sinful man,” even though he was a man who was living in darkness, Christ called him. And he left the darkness behind, he left his boats, he left his catch, he left everything immediately and followed Christ. As did his brother Andrew. As did James and John moments after. Such was the power of Christ, of his personality, of the way he radiated the presence of God, that ordinary, hard-working men would leave everything on an instant to follow him.
- One of the most famous paintings ever made is the great Italian Caravaggio’s “Call of St. Matthew.” He portrays this interplay between light and darkness in the call of the Lord. The Lord enters the room where he’s counting all the money he had gained for the Romans and himself through shaking down his fellow Jews. But Jesus enters and points at him. From behind Christ, you see a light coming that becomes almost like a laser beam coming from the Lord’s finger pointing at Matthew, who at the time was seated in darkness. He points to him, almost stupefied that the Lord would be calling him. But there’s a little light coming from Christ that begins to radiate Matthew’s face and eyes. He feels the pull. And he responds, leaving everything behind to follow the Lord and to live in that light.
- Then we see that they accompany the Lord as he went throughout Galilee, passing on the light of his teaching and curing every disease and sickness, showing others that just as he took them from the darkness of suffering and pain into the light of health so he wanted to take their souls from the darkness of sin, doubt, ignorance, the gloom of depression, the pall of grief, into the light of a relationship of love with him.
- The call that was so personal for Peter, Andrew, James and John is meant to be as personal for us. The Lord calls each of us by name, he points to you and to me, and he summons us to follow him into the light so that we, in turn, can become his light, the Light of the World, illumining the paths of others to him, and through, with and in Him, to the house of the eternal Father.
- It is crucial for each of us to recognize this personal call — and the personal response, the deep and total response, that Christ makes to us.
- Many of us were born into Catholic families and baptized almost immediately after our birth. This is one of the great graces of our life, that we were restored to the state of grace through the love and faith of our parents from our earliest days. We were taught how to pray at home as if it were as natural as learning how to change into pajamas. We were instructed in the faith at Catholic schools or CCD programs. We grew up with regular contact with Jesus in the Mass, even if at the time the significance of it was lost on us. We were trained in how to receive his forgiveness in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and his very life in Holy Communion. All of these were blessings.
- For many cradle Catholics, however, something essential in their Christian formation was missing, something that converts get and something that many Protestants have received. That’s a deep adult sense of a personal call. Protestant revivals focus on an altar call. Billy Graham. Converts begin to feel that call of Christ within to a much deeper union with him in the Catholic faith. As an adult, they make a choice, a choice to leave another way behind, and a choice to follow Christ on the path of light in Catholicism.
- There are many cradle Catholics, including those who have come to Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of their life, who have never really made this type of explicit choice in response to a sense of an explicit call by the Lord. They look at their own Catholicism fundamentally as something that they were born into. Just like they were born, for example, as Americans or Portuguese or French Canadians, so they were born Catholic. They received their Christian values the way they receive an inherent sense of patriotism, but they sometimes wonder that if they were born in China, India, Iraq, or Israel, then they would probably be a Buddhist, or a Hindu, a Muslim or a Jew. They live by their values and, in a sense, they believe them, but these values are more “received” than “chosen,” more “inherited” than “personal.”
- A good Confirmation program is meant to help to help cradle Catholics discover a sense of a personal call and to respond with all their behind, to make them to say a concrete yes to Christ, to life according to the Holy Spirit, to live in the light, but many of us, when we’re teens, basically go through the motions to please our parents or grandparents.
- As a result of all of these phenomena, in which they feel that their Catholicism is just part of who they are, just like they’re a native of a particular place, a member of a particular ethnic group, a fan of the sports teams where they were born, they often let their faith wane as they grow up, not even choosing to abandon their faith, but just to drift away, or they live their faith as customs the way we take off our hats and hold our hands on our hearts during the National Anthem or the pledge of allegiance.
- The Lord wants to change this. He wants us to recognize that we’re not just another number, that we’re not just another random person in a 1.1 billion member institution. Just as much as Peter, James, Andrew and John were called, just as much as he pointed to St. Matthew, just as much as Mary was selected to be his mother and ours, so each of us is called, by name, to be his follower, to live in the light not just individually but together with others, and with them, in the Church he founded, to spread that light as fishers of men.
- A couple of applications
- Christian unity. We all belong to Christ. The more we recognize that the less division. We can’t be followers of Paul, or Cephas or Apollo, or Luther, or Calvin or Zwingli, or Fr. Landry, Fr. Nick, and Fr. Reis, or fans of Archbishop Chaput or Bishop Gumbleton. It’s Christ who has called us. The deeper the sense of our personal vocation the less we’ll have “favorites” in this way.
- Others are called too. We need to recognize that. That the person next to you has been called by Jesus. There ought to be a tremendous bond. There’s a bond in the priesthood. We share something great. It’s the same thing that’s supposed to exist among all Christians. But it should exist especially in a parish, where the proximity is closer. He didn’t call the apostles individually and send them out. He formed them into a team and sent them to work together, two-by-two.
- Abortion. Greatest darkness. He formed the children in the womb, as he did Jeremiah, and calls them to live in the light, not just in this world but forever with him. Spanish expression to give birth “dar la luz.” To give birth is to bring a child into the light, literally to give the child light. Yet so many are choosing never to let their children see this beautiful light, extinguishing them in the world’s worst deed of darkness. NYC statistics. 41% of all pregnancies. Blacks have 59.8%. We all need to work to stop this triumph of darkness. 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
- Mass
- Candles at Mass. Mexican tradition of the candle when they come. Baptismal candle. But also that they are receiving the light of what Benedict XVI calls a nuclear explosion, when Christ is meant to grow in our lives like a mushroom cloud expands.
- It’s here that Christ calls us all personally. He tells us to repent and believe in the good news. And he calls us forward when we have, when we’ve made the commitment to leave the darkness behind in the sacrament of baptism and confession and live in the light, to come personally to receive him. This is a calling that the apostles received only late in Jesus’ ministry, during the Last Supper. It’s something we’ve had the privilege to receive for years. When we come up, our Amen is meant to be, not a ritual gesture, but a personal response to Jesus, a personal yes!, a personal and total commitment to leave everything else behind to obtain this treasure. It is here, in this burst of light, that we are made one with others, that our bond is strengthened, and that we’re fortified, individually and together, to go out into a world so marked by darkness with the light and the love not just of our own hearts, but of God himself, to confront the evil of abortion and all other evils.
- The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. The Lord is our Light and our Salvation. And he is here. Come, live in the light!
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 IS 8:23—9:3
First the Lord degraded the land of Zebulun
and the land of Naphtali;
but in the end he has glorified the seaward road,
the land west of the Jordan,
the District of the Gentiles.
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.
You have brought them abundant joy
and great rejoicing,
as they rejoice before you as at the harvest,
as people make merry when dividing spoils.
For the yoke that burdened them,
the pole on their shoulder,
and the rod of their taskmaster
you have smashed, as on the day of Midian.
Responsorial Psalm PS 27:1, 4, 13-14
R. (1a) The Lord is my light and my salvation.
The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom should I fear?
The LORD is my life’s refuge;
of whom should I be afraid?
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
One thing I ask of the LORD;
this I seek:
To dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
That I may gaze on the loveliness of the LORD
and contemplate his temple.
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
I believe that I shall see the bounty of the LORD
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD with courage;
be stouthearted, and wait for the LORD.
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
Reading 2 1 COR 1:10-13, 17
I urge you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that all of you agree in what you say,
and that there be no divisions among you,
but that you be united in the same mind and in the same purpose.
For it has been reported to me about you, my brothers and sisters,
by Chloe’s people, that there are rivalries among you.
I mean that each of you is saying,
“I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,”
or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.”
Is Christ divided?
Was Paul crucified for you?
Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel,
and not with the wisdom of human eloquence,
so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its meaning.
Alleluia MT 4:23
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Jesus proclaimed the Gospel of the kingdom
and cured every disease among the people.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MT 4:12-23
When Jesus heard that John had been arrested,
he withdrew to Galilee.
He left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum by the sea,
in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali,
that what had been said through Isaiah the prophet
might be fulfilled:
Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the way to the sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles,
the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light,
on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death
light has arisen.
From that time on, Jesus began to preach and say,
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers,
Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew,
casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen.
He said to them,
“Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
At once they left their nets and followed him.
He walked along from there and saw two other brothers,
James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John.
They were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets.
He called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father
and followed him.
He went around all of Galilee,
teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom,
and curing every disease and illness among the people.
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