The calling of the first disciples is a story
we know well, so well that we may have tuned it out when we heard it.
But what if we try to hear the story as if for the first time? We might
be surprised at what we hear. God’s Word has that kind of power.
But I admit that there doesn’t seem to be much
room for surprise here. The story is quite straightforward. It’s a story
about four fishermen who answer a call, and who, in doing so, leave
everything behind. But a closer look reveals that, in those few verses
from Matthew’s gospel, it is five people, not four, who leave everything
behind. Peter and Andrew leave their nets to follow Jesus, and James and
John leave their boats and their father to follow Jesus. But did you
catch the fifth person to leave everything behind? You had to be
listening carefully. So, just in case you missed it, listen again. The
passage began with these words: “Jesus left Nazareth and went to live in
Capernaum by the sea.”
“Jesus left Nazareth.” Jesus is the other one –
the first one, really – in that brief gospel passage to leave everything
behind. Jesus left Nazareth, and for him, leaving Nazareth was not just
a physical move - a move of a few miles from Nazareth, which is up in
the hills, to Capernaum which is down on the lake shore. No, for Jesus,
leaving Nazareth meant leaving home and family. It meant leaving behind
all that was safe and comfortable. It meant breaking out of the cocoon,
if you will: flying free, moving into the great unknown, setting out on
the mission for which he had come.
So, that’s the first thing. Jesus left
Nazareth. If we understand the meaning of that, we will better
understand why Jesus was able to call others to leave their homes. Jesus
first left behind all that was comfortable, safe and secure for him
before he ever presumed to ask Peter and Andrew, James and John to leave
behind all that was comfortable, safe and secure for them. They did what
he did. Jesus left Nazareth behind, they left behind their boats, their
nets, their homes, their families, their way of life.
I find it reassuring that Jesus didn’t demand
anything of his followers that he didn’t first demand of himself. He
still doesn’t. And that can be a comforting thought at this time in our
archdiocese when we are engaging in some very important long-range
planning that is going to take us to some new places and seriously
affect the lives of our parish communities. The initiative is called
Partners in the Gospel and the planning is in response to some harsh and
unavoidable realities: fewer engaged parishioners in many of our
parishes, fewer priests to serve as pastors, fewer seminarians preparing
for ordination, insufficient numbers of lay leaders capable of leading
parishes, dwindling financial resources, and deferred maintenance on
many aging buildings. These realities have made it clear to the
leadership of the archdiocese that doing things the way we always have
will no longer work - that most of our parishes will no longer be able
to go on by themselves but will, instead, need to become part of
families of parishes - two, three, or four parishes being served by one
pastor and an assisting priest.
None of this is going to happen overnight, but
the planning is underway and all our parishes will be affected.
Will we be affected? Well, we are the Cathedral
and will always enjoy a certain special status for that reason, but we
can’t exempt ourselves or isolate ourselves from the larger picture.
Just how we will be affected is not at all clear at this point, but this
much is clear: as the Cathedral, we will always play a leadership role
in the archdiocese and we will always need to model what an alive and
vibrant parish looks like.
And it also needs to be said that the hope for
this whole planning effort is that we will discover new ways to come
closer to Jesus, walking with each other on the journey of faith, living
the joy of the Gospel in ways that will speak to people and attract
them. What could be more important than that!
And I know: change of whatever sort can be
scary. I don’t find it easy. None of us do. But change, if handled well,
will breathe new life into our mission as church.
It’s been that way down through the ages. Think
of some of the great saints who responded to Christ’s call. They had to
change, to leave their comfort zones, to embrace the unknown. I think of
St. Francis of Assisi who, while praying before a crucifix in a rundown
church heard Christ telling him to leave his comfortable lifestyle
behind and rebuild the church. I think of St. Teresa of Avila in the
sixteenth century who left her comfort zone and put her personal comfort
on the line in order to bring about change and reform to the Carmelite
monasteries of Spain. Nothing was ever the same as a result. I think of
Pope St. John XXIII who in the middle of the last century could easily
have sat back and let the Church keep on the course it had long been on
but who, instead, listened to the voice of the Holy Spirit, called for a
new Church Council, and opened the way for massive change: a New
Pentecost.
Those stories could easily be multiplied.
Our Church’s history is rich with stories of people who went out on a
limb, took the path less traveled, and brought about a new and
grace-filled moment in the life of the Church. It is just such a moment
that our Church – and our archdiocese – finds itself in now, my friends,
and we get to be part of it, get to listen to how God’s Spirit is
speaking at this moment in our history, challenging and inspiring us not
to just keep doing things the way we have always done them. This is a
new moment and a moment of rare opportunity. We can walk away from it or
we can embrace it. I do believe that God is calling us to embrace it.
Each one of us will have an opportunity
to reflect and provide feedback on this effort in the coming months.
That means we will all have a say in the future of our local church. And
if we do this right, our parishes – all our parishes – will be far more
alive than they are now: vibrant communities of faith, prayer, and
service, filled with the Spirit, on fire for the mission. All because we
were willing, as Jesus was when he left Nazareth, to leave behind the
cocoon and the comfortable knowing that God will be with us each step of
the way. And indeed God will!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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