Category Archives: Podcasts

In our second reading, St. Paul lays out for us one of the great mysteries of the faith. How can Our Lord’s death on the Cross be both a sign of faith in God and part of His wisdom? When we understand this mystery, we can see how our suffering on Earth can share in Our Lord’s suffering on the Cross.

When we read through the Gospels, we see many who come to Our Lord looking for signs and miracles. In fact, today’s passage tells us that “many began to believe in his name when they saw the signs he was doing.” They believed that if He could perform these great signs of healing, He had to be a prophet from God.

Even those Jews who were in the Temple agreed with this view. When Our Lord chased out the moneychangers and those who were selling the animals for the Temple sacrifices, the Temple authorities demanded a sign from Jesus to show that He was doing this on God’s authority and not His own. Our Lord gave them a sign, but not one they expected: his death and resurrection. If Jesus was the Messiah – the anointed one of God – as some claimed, he would become a great earthly king who chased out the oppressing Romans and was ruling over a renewed Kingdom of Israel, instead of suffering and dying on a Cross.

For the Greeks, Our Lord’s death on the Cross presented a difficulty as well. Greek culture at the time treasured logic and philosophy. It would not have been uncommon to hear the latest philosophic thought being discussed in the marketplace, much as we might discuss the results of the basketball game or stock market.

For those who loved philosophy, to preach a great king who performed miracles, but was not recognized by His people and killed in the most brutal manner possible would have been ridiculous. Dying for your beliefs was considered an act of heroism, as Socrates was held up as a hero for boldly defending his philosophy to his death. In contrast, Our Lord did not die boldly proclaiming His teachings, but suffered and died humbly without even defending Himself to Pontius Pilate when the opportunity arose. As St. Paul mentions, following this philosophy would have been foolishness.

Just as the Greeks viewed Our Lord’s suffering and death on the Cross as foolishness, we live in a culture that views any kind of suffering as foolish. There are many around us who want to live life without any pain and suffering. Obviously, developing tools and inventions that make our lives simpler is not a bad thing. Likewise, developing medications that control pain is a good and worthy goal.

The problem arises when we want to eliminate all pain and suffering. A phrase that is becoming more and more common in medical circles is “quality of life”. Exactly what it looks like to have a high quality of life is up for debate, but there are many who think we need to measure our lives by this standard. For those whose quality of life is impaired, some want to offer “death with dignity”, also known as euthanasia, but more commonly known as physician assisted suicide. If you have too much pain, or if you have a terminal illness that will cause extreme amounts of pain, you can ask for a physician to provide a prescription that will end your life on your schedule. There is concern that euthanasia will become legal here in Montana due to a judicial decision a few months ago. This decision is currently on appeal, but is something that could be upheld.

The willingness to promote euthanasia is a sign that our culture denies any redemptive aspect to suffering. When we suffer from pain or illness, or for any other reason, we can offer that pain to be joined with the suffering that Our Lord experienced on the Cross. This suffering, even as small as the pain from stubbing your toe on a table leg, can be used to atone for our sins and the sins of others. If you’ve ever heard or used the very Catholic phrase “Offer it up”, it comes from our belief in redemptive suffering. Our culture doesn’t recognize any value to suffering, and can only see suffering as an impediment to our quality of life.

As Christians, we do believe that there is a redemptive aspect to our suffering, and that we are to offer up our suffering to be united with Our Lord’s suffering on the Cross. We are also called to defend life, even if that life may not be viewed as “quality”.

Those who follow along with the readings may have noticed that we didn’t hear the normal readings for Year B, which we might have expected, but rather went to the readings for Year A. We’re doing this as part of the Rite of Christian Initiation, as today we begin the Scrutinies. This year, we have the great privilege of welcoming 8(?) new members into the Church.

As part of this RCIA process, the elect are asked to undergo the Scrutinies. While the term “scrutiny” is frequently used as something done to a person, like being watched by a supervisor, we understand that the Scrutinies are rites of self-searching and repentance on a spiritual level. Through these Scrutinies, the elect are to learn a process that we’re all challenged to undergo on a daily basis. First, the elect are challenged to find and uncover all that is week, defective, and sinful within their souls. Secondly, they are tasked to discover and strengthen all that is upright, strong and good within themselves. These tasks are not something that should be done once, but are something all of us should do on a daily basis throughout our entire lives. We’re all called to find the bad and strengthen the good that is within us.

This week, we are beginning the process of the three Scrutinies, which will continue for two more Saturday evenings. We do these Scrutinies so that the elect and those of us who are already members of the Church may realize the power sin has on us and increase our desire for salvation. These Scrutinies are not only for the elect, but to remind us as well.

Tonight, with the first Scrutiny, we are given the Gospel passage about the Samaritan woman at the well. This woman came to look for physical water, but found the spiritual water that she was thirsting for. This woman, who was living in a sinful relationship, found the cure for her thirst through Our Lord.

All of us have a thirst, a desire for something greater than us. We know that there is something more than what we can experience with our senses, and we desire it. Sin promises us that it will fulfill that thirst, and often will quench it initially, but later makes us all the more thirsty. Much like a sugary drink that seems to fill our earthly thirst but actually drys us out, sin worsens our thirst instead of reducing it.

When speaking to the Samaritan woman, Our Lord promises her that He is the living water that will quench her thirst. This thirst is not the physical thirst that water fulfills, but is the desire to be united with God. When we turn away from sin and place our trust in Jesus, we will receive this living water which will quench our spiritual thirst.

When we try to fulfill our spiritual thirst through sin, we find that it fails to satisfy that thirst, but following Our Lord satisfies it more than we can imagine.

Within Christianity, there are a great many mysteries about God that we cannot explain, but have to accept through our faith. Our Gospel today contains one of those mysteries, how Our Lord can be both fully human and fully divine.

We see a scene in the Gospel which should be very familiar to each of us. After explaining to His Apostles that He is to suffer and die on the Cross, Jesus takes three of them, Peter, James, and John, up Mount Tabor in the region of Galilee. There, he is changed, and becomes as bright as the sun. At the same time, two of the greatest figures in Jewish history appear and begin to converse with him. Elijah, considered one of the greatest of the prophets, and Moses, who gave the law which dictated Jewish practices both in their daily lives and in their religious observances.

Through this transfiguration, this change in Our Lord’s appearance, Jesus showed His Apostles that He was more than just a wise human teacher. His man, whom the Apostles spent most of their time following, was also the Son of God! He was not only a Son by adoption, but fully the Son of God by nature. Jesus, this rabbi from Galilee is both fully human and fully divine.

As far as mysteries go with in Christianity, this is one of the most difficult to understand. How can one person, Jesus, be both fully human and fully divine? Many heresies have surrounded what has been revealed to us by God about the relationship of the divinity and humanity of Jesus. Was he two persons, one human and one divine? How about half-human, half-divine? The short answer is no to both questions. No, he wasn’t two persons and he wasn’t half-human, half-divine.

In a way of explaining how this works, there is a ritual which priests perform at every Mass, without exception. After pouring the wine into the chalice, the priest takes water and pours just a little drop into one of the chalices saying, “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” From that point, the water can no longer be removed from the chalice, as it has completely mixed in with the wine. Even boiling will not separate just that drop from the rest of the wine, as it would boil off with the water that is naturally within the wine. You still will not be able to remove just that drop of water.

In the same way, the human nature of Jesus is completely inseparable from His divine nature. Within the Creed that we profess at Mass, we say that He is “one in being with the Father”, and that He “came down from Heaven and became man”. He was not an apparition that appeared to be human but was fully divine, as one classic heresy put it. He also was not a created being that was adopted by God from the beginning. The Council of Chalcedon declared in 451 that Jesus was fully human and fully divine “without confusion and without change, without division and without separation”. To put this in simpler language, Jesus wasn’t schizophrenic. He wasn’t a human who was adopted and made fully divine by God. He wasn’t made up of two persons, one human, the other divine. He also wasn’t a half-human, half-divine hybrid.

This might seem like making extremely fine distinctions, but it has grave consequences when considering Our Lord’s Sacrifice on the Cross. Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac in obedience to God’s promise, but this sacrifice would only affect Abraham and no one else. By Jesus being fully divine and fully human, He was able to take on the sins and nature of all humanity. A classic formulation in theology is, “That which is not assumed is not redeemed.” If Our Lord would not have taken on the fullness of humanity, He would not be able to redeem all of humanity and its sins.

This was just the tip of the iceberg of what theologians have come up with surrounding Jesus being fully human and fully divine. Even with all that these theologians have learned about Our Lord, we still are no closer to understanding what this truly means than the Apostles were when standing on Mount Tabor watching the transfigured Jesus speaking to Elijah and Moses. We just have to take this mystery which has been revealed to us as a matter of faith.

Just as Jesus spent forty days in the desert fasting in preparation for the beginning of His earthly ministry, we prepare for the celebration of His passion, death, and resurrection through these forty days of Lent. It seems ironic that the readings given to us during this “desert time” of Lent talk about water and floods, two things you usually won’t find in a desert, but these readings bring home the importance of baptism in our lives, making us sharers in Christ’s Paschal Mystery which we celebrate at Easter.

The first reading today is one that I think is very familiar for most of us. God has just cleansed the face of the Earth with a massive flood, wiping out every living thing except those which were saved through the Ark of Noah. God sets up a covenant with Noah, promising that he will never again devastate the Earth through a great flood.

For the Israelite people, water was something that was both respected and feared. Water was a necessary element, as it has been throughout all of human history, and was used much as we use it today. It was also greatly feared, especially large bodies of water, like the Mediterranean Sea. They knew the destructive force that water could contain, especially in the flash floods that occurs in many desert climates, and had a healthy fear of large amounts of water.

While they feared the water, they also realized the cleansing power that water contains. They knew how quickly water could remove the dust and grime that came with travel or work in the fields. Ritual baths and washings were important aspects of their worship, nearly as important as the sacrifices themselves. Just as it would clean the dirt off the skin, water was also thought to spiritually cleanse, thus the development of baptism.

St. Peter keys on this cleansing aspect of water in our second reading today. He says that the Great Flood “prefigured baptism, which saves you now.” Through our baptism, we share in saving effects of the Paschal Mystery, the passion, death, and resurrection of Our Lord. No longer is water a force used by God towards destruction of humanity, but is used by Him to save us and renew us. God uses the waters of baptism to destroy the effects of Original Sin, which is passed down from Adam and Eve, and bring us the Sanctifying Grace which we need to enter into the Kingdom of God.

Before Our Lord suffered on the Cross, humanity was closed off from the Kingdom of God. We were suffering from the effects of Original Sin and could not enter into that Kingdom. Those who came before were not automatically condemned, however, as St. Peter tells us that they were waiting “in prison”, also commonly known as the Abode of the Fathers, for the coming of Christ. We say as such when we profess during the Apostles’ Creed, “He descended to the dead”. This Abode of the Fathers is not the fiery pit where condemned souls go, but rather a place where those righteous souls resided until Our Lord opened the gates of Heaven through His death and resurrection. These souls have been judged and are now enjoying the rewards of God’s presence.

Unlike the time of the Patriarchs and Prophets of Israel, we believe that the Kingdom of God is at hand now, as Our Lord preached. We can enter into that Kingdom now, and do so through our baptism. By the waters of baptism, we die to our sinful nature, and rise again as an adopted child of God. The water cleanses us of our sins, and brings us the Holy Spirit. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we can repent from those sins which we commit and believe in the teachings of Jesus, as we are commanded in the Gospel reading today.

St. Peter reminds us that Jesus “suffered for [our] sins once […] that He might lead you to God.” Through our baptism, we have become followers of Christ. By repenting of our sins and believing in the Gospel, we prepare ourselves for that day when we will see Our Lord face to face in our Heavenly home.

Recently, I’ve been writing up my vocation story, the story of how I discerned my calling to the priesthood. As I’m writing it down, I hit a point in my life that I really felt was my moment of conversion, that moment when I took the Catholic faith that I had been raised in and made it a part of my life. All of us need to go through this conversion process at some point in our lives.

For many Catholics, the idea of conversion is someone converting from another Christian denomination or non-Christian religion to Catholicism, such as those we’ll see in a few moments who are going through the RCIA process here in the parish. While that’s true as far as it goes, there is another sense of conversion, that of converting our lives away from ourselves and turning it towards Christ.

Unfortunately, many Catholics haven’t consciously made that step, but continue to follow the practices of their parents because “that’s what we’ve always done.” I think if we’re honest, we would realize that there are some in this church today who feel this way. We come to Mass on Saturday night or Sunday morning “because we’ve always done that on the weekends.” We might have a Rosary or crucifix in our houses “because we’ve always had one.”

While “that’s what we’ve always done” is a good start on the way to conversion, it’s not the final goal of a Christian. The purpose of Christianity and being a follower of Christ is to convert our lives away from the things of the world and towards the things of God, and to live with Him in the next life. Jesus came to preach the Gospel of salvation and lead us away from the temptations and condemnation of the world. We are called to follow Him, even to the Cross if necessary.

As followers, we must be open to His word. In the Gospel today, we see that a large crowd had surrounded Him when he arrived at home. Why were they there? The quick answer might be the miracles that He performed, and there is some truth to that. However, the Gospel passage makes it clear that they gathered to hear Him “preach the word”. They had gathered together to hear the Good News, the Gospel, of salvation. Their hearts were open to hear what He had to say and to accept the Truth that He preached.

To determine our openness to the Truth of Christ, there are some questions we have to ask ourselves. How open are our hearts when we come to Our Lord here at Mass? Do we consciously ask the Holy Spirit to open our hearts to the Truths contained in the Scriptures? How many are listening to me now, trying to find the Truth scattered amongst my homiletic ramblings? Do we receive Our Lord with gratitude and joy when we come forward to receive the Eucharist? We can’t have a conversion of heart without an openness to Christ.

Being open to Christ’s Truth isn’t the only thing we need to have a true conversion. We also need to act on that Truth which we believe. In the case of the paralytic in today’s Gospel, it wasn’t enough for the four men and the paralytic to just have faith that Jesus would heal him, but they had to act on that faith. They had to climb up to the roof, remove the tile or thatch which made up the roof, and lower the paralytic into the room where Jesus was preaching. Through the act of faith displayed by the actions of the four men, the paralytic was able to be healed.

In our lives as well, it is not enough to have faith in Our Lord, but we also need to act on it. In a true conversion, we will be drawn to spread our faith through living it out in our daily lives. Too often Christians are called hypocrites because they say one thing, but live a life totally separated from it. We must truly be willing to both show our faith in Jesus through both our actions and our words. If anything, it is better to live a Christian life and allow our lives to be examples without saying a word than to talk long and hard about Christian virtue without living it.

When we are open to hearing the Truth that Our Lord proclaimed and live out that Truth in our lives, then we will have a conversion of heart. Isaiah promised the Israelites that God would do something new for them in their exile. We can also take that promise as something new will happen in our lives when we enter into the conversion that we’re all called to undertake.

For the Jews, the Mosaic Law was that law which was given to Moses by God, and was the ultimate arbitrator of how they were to live their lives, both civilly and religiously. By healing the leper, Jesus shows us that he goes beyond the law.

As we see in the first reading, leprosy was one of the reasons by which one could be declared ritually unclean. Being declared unclean not only prevented you from entering into the temple to worship God, but also had consequences that reached into your daily life. Those publicly declared unclean were shunned by family and friends, and in some cases were required to leave the camp or town until you were able to be cleansed of what ever made you unclean.

If you think about it, this makes sense from a medical standpoint. Diseases, such as leprosy, were completely untreatable through normal means at that time. They didn’t have the medical knowledge or technology that we have today which enable us to cure many diseases that were nearly always fatal. To prevent the spread of the diseases, the infected person was cast out of the community until death or recovery from the disease, which ever came first. Once the person was healed from the disease, they could undergo a ritual purification which included a sacrifice. They could then be readmitted to their community and family. While they might not have understood everything about how diseases spread, they obviously understood the basic concept of isolation preventing the spread of disease.

Another way to become ritually unclean was either to touch or be touched by someone who was considered unclean. By Our Lord touching the leper, he also would have been considered ritually unclean, and may have suffered the same fate of being cast out of the community. Instead of Jesus receiving the disease from the leper, Our Lord was able to heal the leper, removing the disease and all effects that come from it. Rather than being made ritually unclean by the leper, Our Lord went beyond the Mosaic law by washing the leper clean, both from his disease and from his ritual impurity.

The leper provides for us the example of how to approach Our Lord with humility. All of us have our uncleanliness, our sins that we need to ask for the cleansing of Christ to come upon us and heal us. The leper was willing to come to Our Lord and say to Him, “If you wish, you can make me clean,” and Jesus responded, “I do will it. Be made clean.” We also need to come before the Lord and ask Him to make us clean.

We do this through regular reception of the Sacrament of Confession. How often is regular? At a minimum, we are required every time we know that we have a mortal sin on our soul. These serious sins cut us off from God, a separation that can only be healed through Confession. We are also required by the Church to receive this Sacrament at least once a year, even if we haven’t committed a mortal sin in that time.

Of course, once a year is the bare minimum. We are encouraged to receive this Sacrament more frequently. Ideally, we should confess our sins and receive the cleansing of Christ’s forgiveness and absolution at least once a month to provide us with the grace to overcome those sins which we seem to repeat over and over again. I frequently call these our “favorite” sins, because we seem to enjoy committing them repeatedly. Even if we only have venial sins on our souls, the graces which come through the Sacrament of Reconciliation will help to cleanse us from our sinfulness.

When we approach the Sacrament and hear the words of absolution, our sins are forgiven and our souls have been cleansed, much as the serious disease of the leper was healed. Like the author of the psalm we heard, God will take away the guilt of our sins, making us truly blessed in His eyes. As the leper did following his healing by Our Lord, we should rejoice in the forgiveness of our sins through the mercy of God and the cleansing of our souls.

Some days, we just feel like Job in the first reading. We look at the world around us and feel that life is a drudgery to be endured. Our Lord has come to free us from that drudgery and introduce us to a life of joy.

Every once in a while, I just want to sit down and enjoy a good TV show, and it never fails that I’m unable to find anything worth watching. We have over 60 channels covering everything from home improvement to science to music to movies, and there never seems to be anything I want to watch. Anyone else ever feel like that?

This boredom with things doesn’t limit itself to the selection of TV shows. Most Americans have lots of things that they could do with their time. They could work on projects around the house, engage in a hobby they enjoy, do some reading, and so on. With all this available for us, why do we fall into the “there’s nothing to do” trap?

Even at work, it becomes a temptation to become bored with our jobs. All of us, whether directly or indirectly, have jobs that impact others around us, whether other employees or directly with those the company serves. Yet, the temptation is to become self-absorbed with the job, and find it dull, monotonous, and boring. Why does that occur?

The answer to all these questions is that we become focused on the things of the world. Life on Earth is not an easy thing. Yes, modern technology and engineering have definitely made things better, but there are still parts of our lives which are difficult to handle. In response, our reaction is often to turn to earthly things to provide the escape from those difficulties. Are you dealing with stress? Engage in sports or a hobby. Have family issues? Spend more time at work to forget about it. When we focus on the things of the world, we often discover that the promise these things hold for us is merely an illusion, and can even make the problem worse.

Jesus came to free us from the things of the world. Focusing our lives on the things of the world will only lead to more sorrow in the long run, but when we focus our lives on Christ, our lives become a joy. It can be subtle, and may take some time, but when we spend our lives in service of Our Lord, even the most monotonous of tasks can become a joy-filled experience.

In the Gospel this morning, Our Lord healed Simon’s mother-in-law, who was sick with a fever. At the time when Jesus was performing his earthly ministry, medicine wasn’t as advanced as it is today. Someone suffering from a fever was likely to die within a few days, as they had no medication which could take care of the underlying illness. When Our Lord healed Simon’s mother-in-law, I can imagine that she reacted with great joy to this miraculous healing. She likely asked Jesus and the Apostles to sit down and allow her to serve them out of joy and gratitude for His gift of healing.

The Gospel also tells us that Jesus healed many who were sick or possessed by demons. Once again, I can’t imagine that people would leave the house solemnly and silently, but with great joy. Those who were healed were probably dancing in the streets, shouting and praising God. In fact, St. Mark tells us that the whole town was present, so you could imagine the celebration that was occurring as everyone rejoiced for their neighbors who received the marvelous gift of healing.

This is the joy that we will receive when we serve Our Lord. It won’t be as sudden as the miraculous healings we see in the Gospel, but we will still experience it. We will have this joy when we do something small for another person, like holding a door when their hands are full. We will experience great joy when we visit someone who is homebound and doesn’t receive many visitors. The joy will come when we listen and pray for those who are at difficult points in their lives, allowing them to express their frustrations and receive consolation and prayer.

It is easy to fall into the temptation of focusing on worldly things and viewing life as a drudgery to endure. If we focus on serving Our Lord, we will rise above that temptation and drudgery, and experience the joys that come with the simple things we do every day.

Our Lord walked a different path than all other religious leaders of His time. His teachings and actions amazed all who encountered Him, as He lived a life that was unlike anything that they had seen before. He lived a life that was contrary to the expectations of the world, and He calls us to do the same.

For the religious teachers in Jesus’ time, much of their teaching came from the traditions that had been handed down from generation to generation. Instead of presenting his understanding of what a particular passage in the Scriptures means, a religious teacher would invoke those teachers who had taught before, much like we might quote the Saints or Church Fathers. These teachers would not teach of their own authority, as they felt that they had none other than to pass on the teachings that were entrusted to them.

When Our Lord would stand up in the synagogues to teach, he wouldn’t begin by quoting other rabbis, but would invoke his own authority to explain the Scriptures. This would have caused a great shock to all those who were listening, and He did create no small amount of controversy from His teachings. His teachings appeared to be so completely different, even contradictory, to the teachings of those who came before, and this fed the controversy even more.

For many in Judaism, the last teacher who was able to teach with his own authority was Moses, and even that came through the authority of God the Father. As we heard in the first reading, Moses was given the promise that there would be a prophet who would like him, and would have the words of God in his mouth. While it was probably not the way Moses expected, Jesus was the fulfillment of this promise. Because Jesus was able to teach with the Word of God instead of the words of men, He was able to teach on his own authority. This was completely radical to the people of Jesus’ time, causing great amazement and controversy.

The controversy didn’t end with Jesus’ teachings, however. Jesus also had the power to rebuke demons, forcing them to be silent and even leave the person they had possessed. Again, this would have been completely different from the authority provided to any of the other religious teachers of His time. It caused great amazement to those who followed Him, and enraged those who were opposed to Him.

By looking at the radicality of Jesus’ teachings and actions, we see that the unclean spirit in today’s Gospel was right about two things. First, it was right that Jesus is the Holy One of God, code language for the Messiah and Son of God. Second, it was right that Jesus came to destroy them and their effects on this world. Since the Fall of Adam and Eve, Satan and his demons have had run of the world, but now Our Lord has come to cut off their free reign. Instead of allowing us to wander blindly through this world of sin, Jesus has shown us a new path out of sin and into the joy of eternal life. In short, all the teachings and actions of Christ, so different from what had come before, served to show us a different path through the world: the Gospel.

Although Our Lord has come to overcome the effects of sin in our lives, it’s still very easy for us to fall of the path that He has shown us. This is why St. Paul says that he “should like [us] to be free of anxieties.” When we are anxious for the things of the world, we lose our focus on the Gospel and instead concentrate on those things that make us anxious. At that point, it becomes easy to slide off the path of the Gospel and instead return to the ways of the world. St. Paul tells us that we need to have “adherence to the Lord without distraction,” and it becomes very difficult to worry about worldly affairs and remain undistractedly focused on Our Lord. This doesn’t mean that we totally remove ourselves from the world, but must not allow the things of the world to make us anxious.

Jesus has shown us another way of living our lives. May be willing to follow that path without anxiety for the world.

In the spiritual life, there are very common patterns that run throughout our lives. Sometimes it takes years of study and discernment to find those patterns, but today’s Gospel gives us one very common pattern, a pattern for becoming a devoted follower of Jesus. This pattern of living is not only for us to follow Him, but also for inviting others to follow Our Lord as well.

The first step in this pattern is hearing the Gospel proclaimed to us. All of us, at one time or another, have had the teachings of the Lord explained to us, showing us why it is necessary to follow Him for salvation. Many of us may have heard it many times, through homilies, spiritual reading, religion classes and so on. At some point, there was someone willing to proclaim the Gospel of Christ to us.

The second step is to hear Our Lord’s call to follow Him. We know that Jesus is always pulling on our hearts to become more deeply devoted to Him and follow Him, but we often don’t hear that call because of events in our lives or ignore that call because it might cause us to move out of where we’re comfortable. Even with our reluctance to answer that call, Our Lord is calling to us much as He called to Simon, Andrew, James, and John on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.
The four fishermen show us an example of the third step: responding to Our Lord’s call by following Him. These fishermen left behind everything they had, especially their livelihoods, to follow Jesus. To give up everything and follow Our Lord is the ultimate sacrifice, one that we may not be called to make, but we still need to follow Him with the willingness to sacrifice anything to serve Him.

As followers of Our Lord, we are not only challenged to follow His will, but also to evangelize those around us, to bring the whole world to follow Christ. It’s a difficult challenge to be sure, and may not always be welcome by those we interact with on a daily basis, but these three steps also give us the guidelines to evangelization.

First, we must be willing to proclaim the Gospel, both in words and in deeds. If we truly wish to follow Our Lord, we must act as He would have us act, and be willing to give up those thoughts and behaviors which are contrary to living the Gospel. Likewise, we must be willing to talk to others about the Gospel, which will be difficult at best and will mean saying somethings which will not be popular, especially in the area of morality. Our culture here in the United States, as well as throughout much of the developed world, has rapidly slid away from the promotion of Christian values. We are challenged to stand up to that culture in defense of life and morality, both on a national level through political action, but also on a personal level through our conversations with those we meet every day. It is extremely difficult to speak up to promote the Gospel, but Our Lord asks each of us to do just that.

Along with proclaiming the Gospel, we can call others to follow Jesus, much as He called the fishermen on the shore. Many of us know someone or several people who may have left the practice of the Catholic faith for various reasons. Sometimes they may have just stopped going to church, not going on Sunday any more, or they may have started attending another church. For whatever reason they may have for not attending, we need to reach out to them and invite them to come back. It may not always be met with approval, but we still need to make the effort to invite them.

Finally, following Our Lord may bring with it some difficulties. St. Paul, whose conversion we also celebrate today, frequently had to suffer through persecution because of his willingness to follow Christ and spread His Gospel. Even through the persecutions, St. Paul dedicated his life to Christ’s Gospel, and we must be willing to do the same. Persecution may come for those who follow Christ, but we need to remember that the Kingdom of God is at hand, as he tells us in today’s Gospel passage. We follow Our Lord so that we may have a share in that Kingdom. The persecutions of this life will pass away, to be replaced with the joy of the life to come.

By following Our Lord, we may come to feel like Jonah in the first reading who was reluctant to go through Nineveh announcing the Lord’s message. Jonah did what God commanded of him, and the people of Nineveh repented. We must also be willing to proclaim what Our Lord has commanded of us so that our world may repent and turn to Him.