Reflection
After nearly fifty years of priesthood (some of which I ministered as our Province vocations director), I’ve told my personal “vocation story” many times — to college students, senior citizen groups, faith formation conferences. I usually begin by saying I grew up in a wonderful Chicago parish staffed by holy and happy Passionists, and I will allude to how my parents were active participants in Church life.
Lately, however, I am keenly aware of how my vocation story continued to unfold. I had an insightful and kind formation director, inspiring mentors in ministry, and retreatants, parishioners, students and prison inmates who revealed God’s love to me in new and glorious ways.
The reading from Isaiah today reminds us that gladness and light have replaced distress and gloom. And the reading is for us today.
For the people who walk in darkness have seen a great light. And Matthew breaks this open in his Gospel about the disciples’ vocation story.
When Herod Antipas became tetrarch (under his rule), things began to change. Preservative techniques were developed where hauls of sardines and carp could be salted or pickled. Herod was anxious to make backward regions more productive for Rome — through exports and taxation. Pressures of a wider market quickly began to alter the whole Galilean financial system. FISHING was the dominating economy.
So, Jesus will be brushing up against that. But there is a great deal of difference between fishing for fish and fishing for people. Fish are caught against their will and violently pulled from the sea. People are caught by uncovering the deep desires of their hearts. And in today’s Gospel: two sets of brothers already know this “heart” level. Somehow, encountering Jesus, they were immediately drawn to this deeper level of consciousness, like the woman at the well, the blind Bartimaeus, and countless others.
Our vocation story might simply be, “Love changes everything,” or, as St. Paul of the Cross wrote, “I seek nothing else, I long for nothing else, save in all things, to be transformed by love with the Divine Will.”
