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Friends,
in today’s Gospel Jesus invites his first disciples to come and stay
with him. I think that this command of Jesus is a bit like an initiation
ritual. In order to prepare themselves for a lifetime of discipleship,
his followers must first pass through an intensive period of spiritual
formation, much like a novitiate in a monastery or training camp in
football or boot camp in the army. During this concentrated time, they
were to learn, in their bones, the essentials of this new way of life.
So the disciples learn a new way of radical dependency upon God.
Now
what does all of this have to do with us? You say, “I’m a
fifty-year-old man with a wife and kids and job and responsibility; I
can’t very well go drifting off in a boat, trusting in the providence of
God.”
True
enough, but you can, for instance, go on a retreat every year. Spend a
week once a year at a monastery or a retreat center, living the
spiritual life intensely; live Lent more severely and more radically
next year, perhaps undertaking a difficult fast or giving alms until it
hurts.
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