Father Christopher Zugger

When I went to Catholic school, we studied the Baltimore Catechism. This was the standard catechism from 1885 until the 1970s, and was based on one written back in 1614 by Saint Robert Bellarmine, and done in a question and answer format so that one could memorize the basics easily. One of the first questions we learned was Number 6: Why did God make you? God made me to know Him, to love Him, and serve Him in this life, and to be happy with Him in the next.

Last Sunday we commemorated All Saints, that is all the people who responded to the grace of the Holy Spirit in their lives and have achieved our eternal goal of living in glory with God.

Today we see the first men who answered the direct call of Jesus. To whom did He go? He went out into His own country of Galilee, not to Jerusalem the holy city, not into the hill country of Judea, not out into the desert, the land of prophets. He did  not go into the wild country where the Zealot rebels had their soldiers. Jesus did not go looking for those who felt that they were oppressed and exploited or bitter over their situation.

He did not collect rebels, or spiritual fanatics, or the clergy, or the angry. His revolution was going to be a spiritual one, a proclamation of God’s love for the Jewish people first, and then for all nations. He recruited Jews from the region called “heathen Galilee” who lived alongside Greeks, Canaanites, Romans, and Syrians, who knew the pagan world while followi

Jesus goes to men who are successful in their trade, who knew hard work, probably a mix of blue-collar and middle-class men of today, men who were independent, who had their own businesses. These are the first ones he calls.

Notice He doesn’t go after them in their houses, or sitting on the beach at the end of the day. They are throwing their nets into the water – Andrew who we know was a disciple of John the Baptist, and his brother Peter. Jesus uses His sense of humor, telling the fishermen that if they follow Him, he will turn them from fishermen into fishers of men.  Two thousand years later, we still use the speech of the fishermen of the lake, and the instruments of their craft, as part of the vocabulary of Christianity.

Then he goes from two mature men, to two teenagers, James and John, who are also at work, fixing the nets of their father. Not only do these two immediately get up and follow the Lord, but soon their mother Salome will do the same thing. I have always wondered what their father Zebedee thought about his family following after this wandering teacher, how did Peter’s wife and children react to him disappearing to walk in the footsteps of an unknown rabbi from Nazareth.

            These are all regular people, people who worked hard, prayed in the local synagogue, had relatives and friends. They were people who were happy, who got sick, who had their own personal happiness and sorrows. They were a mix of ages, and would form a mixed company of men and women. Each time that Jesus calls the apostles, the Gospels say that they got up and followed Him. There was no debating, no agonizing, no scenes of going to say goodbye to relatives. Rather they get up and follow – Matthew says that all four men got up immediately and left everything.

            Christ calls us. He does not call us to do something spectacular, He is not here saying get up now, abandon your spouse, your children, your parents, your friends, your income. But He is saying Follow Me. He says it with love, with humor, with compassion, but He says it, and He directs it to each and every one of us.

Saint Paul writes in his epistle to the first generation of Christians in Rome about pagans who responded to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, what we call in theology the natural law. When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. ¹⁵ They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness.

These are the people who know intrinsically what is right, and what is wrong. These are the elements of basic humanity that are enshrined in cultures around the world – you don’t murder, you protect pregnant women and their babies, you help poor people and sick people and frail people and you don’t go around encouraging suicide. Natural law commands that the rich and the powerful exercise charity on behalf of others, and respond to the needs of others.

            Christ asked those four fishermen, and the other men and women who would follow Him for three years, to give of themselves. He demanded more than the natural law did, because He came with the command to love one another, to see each other as worthy and demanding of love, to love as God the Father loves. He commanded those men and women to proclaim the good news to the entire world, so that every person on the face of the earth, in every generation, will have the opportunity to respond to the Holy Spirit and become a saint. We are invited by Jesus to follow Him, to proclaim Him, to love Him above everything else. If we do this, we are offered one thing – eternal life with Him, His Father, His Spirit, and with all the saints.

Why did God make you? God made me to know Him, to love Him, and serve Him in this life, and to be happy with Him in the next.

Let us fervently ask Him in this Liturgy for the grace to do precisely that.