Daily Reflection Thursday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

When it came time to begin the second week of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises – The Call of the Kingdom – I struggled to rein in my spiritual imagination (praying with fantasy) to the scene at hand. In the Gospel of Mark and Matthew, and now in today’s passage from Luke, Jesus is calling his first disciples at the seashore. Instead of imagining the smells of the salty air, the sunlight sparkling on the water, the silhouette of the charismatic new teacher (who, in Luke’s Gospel, has already performed miracle cures in Capernaum), my mind continually strayed from the scene at hand. When did Jesus decide that his own vocational call could only be fulfilled if he shared it with others? Were others asked to “Follow me” and refused? What was Jesus’ vetting process that could possibly make an invitation to this motley crew of siblings and business partners more than a sheer flight of fancy of his own?

Perhaps pondering all these questions was, at its heart, my reluctance to engage in the final sentence of the passage: “They left everything and followed him.” Jesus – who valued community, commitment, family, friendship, tradition, hospitality – did such a big ask and the big sacrifice it demanded happen in just this way? Of course it is my own puny faith that even dared seek an alternative explanation.

Thus how touched I was watching the final episode of Season One of the popular docudrama The Chosen. Here Jesus visits Peter’s home while Peter is out wrapping up some of the shady business exploits that have caused him to declare, “I am a sinful man.” Jesus shares a deep conversation with Peter’s wife, seeing in her an equal partner in faith, commissioning her, ennobling her vocational call to stay behind, to care for her frail mother, to support Peter in this startling new venture in his life and in their marriage. It was a reminder to me that calls to become our best selves can come from our own ‘miraculous catch of fish,’ yes, but more often embedded in what we have already said yes to – not leaving but going deeper. 

Fr. James Martin in a documentary “Discerning the Call: Changes in the American Priesthood,” newly released by Fordham University, described vocation as the ‘happy inability to think about anything else.’ Let me not think of anything else today but how I might bring all I have said yes to in my own life into the Kingdom of God. That may be a miracle sufficient for the day.

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The grace we pray for in the Second Week: I want to hear Jesus’ call. I want to feel how great his project is, and how tremendous his desire for it. And I want to be right there, working with him.