Pope Francis reflects on the gospel of the day during his Sunday Angelus, inviting the faithful to accept God’s call, responding only with love.
By the Vatican News staff writer
On the occasion of the second Sunday of ordinary time, Pope Francis reflected on the gospel of the day, which presents the meeting between Jesus and his first disciples.
In statements to the Vatican Apostolic Library during the Sunday Angelus, Pope Francis recounted the scene that unfolds along the Jordan River the day after Jesus’ baptism. It is the same John the Baptist, he explains, “who points the Messiah to both, with these words: ‘Behold the Lamb of God! “” The two, trusting in the witness of the Baptist, follow Jesus. He notices this and asks the disciples what they are looking for. When asked where Jesus was staying, he responds by telling them, “Come and see.”
Pope Francis went on to describe this response not as a business card, “but an invitation to a meeting.” The two follow Him and stayed that afternoon with Him. “It’s not hard to imagine them sitting around asking him questions and especially listening to him, feeling his heart swell more and more as the Master speaks,” the Pope said. He explained that even though it is dusk, “suddenly they discover that that light which only God can give exploded within them.” When they leave and return to their brothers, that joy, that light overflows their hearts like a raging river. One of the two, Andrew, says to his brother Simon, whom Jesus will call Peter, “We have found the Messiah.”
“We pause in this experience of knowing Christ, who calls us to abide with Him,” the Pope said. He explained that “each of God’s calls is an initiative of His love.”
“God calls to life, Call a faith, and He calls to particular state in life. God’s first call is to do so life, through which it makes us people; it is an individual call because God does not do things in series. Then God calls us to faith and to be part of his family as children of God. Finally, God calls us to particular state to life: to give of ourselves by the way of marriage, or of the priesthood, or of consecrated life. “
These, the Pope continued, are “different ways of realizing the design that God has for each of us, which is always a design of love.” He stressed that the “great joy for all believers” is to respond to this call “to offer all being in the service of God and of the brethren.”
At the end of his reflection, Pope Francis noted that before the Lord’s call, “which comes to us in a thousand ways,” our attitude could sometimes be “rejection” and at other times “fear.” “But God’s call is love and it should only be answered with love,” the Pope said. “At the beginning there is an encounter, or rather, there is the encounter with Jesus who tells us about his Father, makes us know his love. And then the spontaneous desire to communicate it to the people we love will appear even in us: “I met love,” “I found the meaning of my life.” In a word, “I have found God.”
Finally, before reciting the Angelus prayer, Pope Francis prayed that Our Lady “help us to make our lives a hymn of praise to God in response to his call and humble fulfillment and glad of his will ”.