Pick
a patron. There are more than enough to go around in today's readings. A
patron saint for each one of us, I should think. There is Jonah, the
reluctant prophet; there are all those people of Nineveh, sinful but
repentant; there are the Galilean fishermen who became followers of
Jesus: Simon Peter and his brother Andrew; James and John, the sons of
Zebedee. Pick your patron. Chances are that one of these would
make a good one. Chances are that there are hints of your story and mine
in each one of their stories.
This is now the second
Sunday in a row that the Church is asking us to reflect on the subject
of God's call in our lives. Last Sunday we had young Samuel, a
mere boy, hearing God's mysterious and insistent call in the night. And
we had the first apostles, irresistibly attracted to Jesus, the young
Rabbi from Nazareth, who invited them simply to "Come and see."
And now we have Sunday number two devoted to the call. We should heed
what we hear, for we, too, have been and are now being called by God.
And we receive our call
in good company for it is a call that has been received before,
countless times down through the ages: received, struggled with, run
away from, rejected, accepted (however haltingly), accepted, affirmed,
embraced -- and sometimes, amazingly, all this by the same person!
Take Jonah. Was there
ever a more reluctant recipient of God's call than this cowardly,
temperamental fellow (let’s be honest, if irreverent: Jonah was
‘flaky!’). Why on earth did God ever call Jonah? Couldn't God have found
a better voice than his?
Today's telling of the
story of Jonah is highly abridged. The opening words of the first
reading let us know that we're in the middle of the story, not at the
beginning ("The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time", we
heard). Let me remind you of the first time the Lord's word came to
Jonah. It was like the second: God said to Jonah, "Arise and go to
Nineveh and proclaim that I am about to destroy it for its wickedness."
The only real difference
between Jonah’s two calls from God was that the first time God told him
to go to Nineveh, Jonah boarded the first ship he could find – that was
headed in the opposite direction from Nineveh! But God had his way. God
always does. God doesn't tend to change plans merely because of human
willfulness or hard-heartedness. And so (you remember how it goes), a
fierce storm blew up on the sea, Jonah was thrown overboard by his
shipmates because they suspected he was the cause of the storm, and a
very cooperative whale happened by, swallowed Jonah alive and eventually
ferried him to dry land.
As fate would have it
(or rather, as God would have it), Jonah had a conversion experience
while camping out inside the belly of the whale. He came to his senses
(who wouldn't!) and once he had been coughed out onto dry land, he
headed for Nineveh to do the very doomsday preaching he so wanted to
avoid. The rest of the story is what we heard in today's first
reading. To Jonah's utter amazement, the inhabitants of Nineveh,
one of the great "sin cities" of the ancient world, listened to his
preaching and repented.
The book of Jonah is a
great story of God’s call, of human resistance, and of the triumph of
grace. And it would be a totally edifying story if it ended right there.
It didn’t. Jonah, true to form, got quite angry and upset with
God. Why? Well, for being so compassionate with these sinful
people! Jonah had been hoping for fireworks. He had looked forward
to seeing Nineveh buried beneath fire and brimstone! (Do you ever wonder
why God puts up with such human silliness? But we should probably be
grateful God does because we contribute enough silliness of our own from
time to time...).
So much for the Jonah
story. Did you pick a patron there? Did you hear any of your
story? In Jonah's resistance to God's call, perhaps, or in his
conversion, or maybe in his anger at God’s mercy, letting people off the
hook so easily when they really should have paid through the nose? Or
maybe you identified with the people of Nineveh: people too sinful to be
worth anything, but infinitely worthwhile to God who refuses to let even
the most grievous human sin outweigh the divine mercy.
Then there's today's
Gospel. It presents us with four more potential patrons to pick from:
Peter and Andrew, James and John. Each of them received a personal call
from Jesus. But maybe you find these four apostles a little unreal,
leaving their nets as they did, and their fathers and mothers, their
homes, their very livelihood - leaving all at hearing one word or two
from an itinerant preacher from Galilee, "Follow me."
How are we ever to find
our stories in theirs? Weren't they just a little too heroic and
selfless and quick in the way they left everything behind and followed
Jesus? Yes, but remember that they were human, too. At one point, Peter
would forget his call and deny his Master - not once but three times.
And James and John would show how human they were when they wanted to
rain down fire and brimstone on the unwelcoming Samaritans, and again
when they boldly and selfishly requested princely places at Jesus’ right
and left in the kingdom.
So, my friends, pick
your patron. Who will it be? Jonah? Peter? Andrew? James? John?
Pick your patron. Each was called by God, called by name. Called to
change. Called to repentance. Called to follow. Called to glory. And the
same is true for you and me. We should thank God to be in such good
company...!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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