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Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – January 26, 2014
Church of Saint Ignatius Loyola, Chestnut Hill MA
Joseph M. O’Keefe, S.J.
Why are you still here, especially on a cold winter morning when the sun has
just barely risen? Why do you come to church? Why do you still believe in God?
Why are you still a Christian? Why are you still a Catholic? Why are you among the
two-thirds, and not among the one-thirds? Let me explain. Five years ago, the Pew
Forum on Religion and Public Life produced a study claiming that one-third of
American adults who were raised Catholic are no longer Catholic, nearly 10 percent
of the US population. Why are you not like the one-third who have moved away
from the Church? Why do you not number yourself among the 33% who constitute
what would be the second largest “denomination” in American religion, number one
being Roman Catholic, number two being “former Roman Catholic,” number three
being evangelical Protestants, and so forth? Or why haven’t you entered the ranks
of the fastest growing demographic group in American religion, those who have
become “nones,” not “nuns” N-U-N-S, but “nones” N-O-N-E-S, those who have no
religious affiliation at all? Why is it that you and I echo the words of Stephen
Sondheim in the musical Follies, “Good times and bad times, I’ve seen them all and,
my dear, I’m still here?” What was it, what is it, that makes us follow Jesus?
What was it that made the first disciples follow Jesus? In the passage we just
heard, Jesus said to Peter and Andrew, “Come after me and I will make you fishers of
men. At once, they left their nets and followed him.” He then called James and John,
the sons of Zebedee, and immediately they left their boat and their father and
followed him. In this passage, the adverb is key. In the Greek text, Peter, Andrew,
James and John follow Jesus “εὐθέως,” translated in our text as “at once,” and
“immediately.” Notice that the text does not read, “After doing due diligence, the
decided to try following Jesus” or “After carefully weighing all the options, they
responded affirmatively to Jesus’s invitation.” No, the adverb is “εὐθέως,”
immediately, right away, without hesitation. Clearly, the carpenter from Nazareth
captured the imagination and, more importantly, captured the hearts of the
fishermen from Capernaum.
And so the question: What made Jesus so attractive to them? But the more
important question: What makes Jesus so attractive to you? Most of you are adult
Catholics, probably most of you were raised in the faith. Most of you have been
Catholic because of the circumstances of your upbringing. But now, as an adult in an
increasing secular society, where there is no pressure to belong to any religious
group, you are not just Catholic by heritage, you are Catholic by choice. Why?
This liturgical year, we find ourselves in the A cycle of readings, which means
that we will be hearing a lot from Matthew’s gospel throughout 2014. We will
accompany Peter, Andrew, James, John, and the others as they journey with Jesus.
We will hear Jesus speak, we will witness acts that reveal God’s Kingdom, the
Kingdom of the Matthew’s Beatitudes, which turns the wisdom of the world upside
down, which is marked by healing and reconciliation, self-sacrifice and tender love.
As in the Second Week of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, let’s ask for the
grace expressed by Richard of Chichester in the 13th century and picked up in the
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early 70’s by Stephen Schwartz in the very “groovy” musical Godspell. This year,
2014, as we accompany Peter, Andrew, James, John, let’s ask for the grace to know
Jesus more clearly, to love Jesus more dearly, and so to follow Jesus more nearly.
Let us learn anew the way of life that Jesus invites us follow. But let us also
remember the graces of the past, the experiences of faith, the ways that we have felt
the closeness of God, the moments of spiritual consolation and clarity, that have
brought us here to mass this morning.
A number of years ago, the Lilly Foundation sponsored a seminar for a dozen
Jewish and Catholic educators, led by Sister Mary Boys who was a professor here at
the time, and I was fortunate to be chosen to participate. At one of our meetings, a
rabbi was talking about the rationale for Jewish day schools: It is such a tragedy if a
young Jew grows up without knowing the joy of a Jewish way of life. I often speak to
groups of educators in Catholic schools and I often ask them, “Is the reason for
having Catholic schools is the tragedy of a young Catholic growing up without
knowing the joy of a Catholic way of life?” Often people give me the very candid
response, “Joy, Catholicism, for me, those words don’t go together.”
You and I are here together this morning. There must have been something
joyful that has attracted us to Jesus and to the Church at some point in our lives.
Let’s take time these coming days to remember those sources of joy, the experiences
that have made Jesus Christ and His way of life so appealing. And let’s be open to
new experiences that will carry the seeds of even greater faith. Otherwise, we all
may as well become “nones N-O-N-E-S.”