Different responses to the call from God, as described in the Gospel.

By Fr. Pascal Foresi

When I receive an invitation to speak to young people about the vocation to follow Jesus, I experience a special joy. And each time it is a new experience because each time it is like re-examining the call I received to follow God as a Focolare priest over fifty years ago. He calls me again and again. Actually his call is something that penetrates my whole life in every moment.
I believe that in order to speak adequately about what a vocation is, one must refer to the New Testament where the pure, genuine, original call is found. Let us begin with the call of the apostles.

Simon, James and John
Jesus was beside the Lake of Gennesaret. He saw two boats anchored close to shore. One of them was Simon’s. After he had climbed into Simon’s boat and had taught the crowd, he said to Simon: “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.” Upon doing this, they caught such a great number of fish that their nets were at the breaking point. They signaled to their mates in the other boat to come and help them. Since Simon, as well as his partners James and John, sons of Zebedee, showed utter amazement at the catch they had made, Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” And they “brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him” (Lk 5:1-11).
Involved as they were in a business—as small entrepreneurs by today’s standards—we can presume that Simon, like James and John, were middle class family men. All of a sudden there comes an encounter with a man whom they did not yet know as the Messiah, the Son of God; then the miraculous catch of fish, and their subsequent amazement mixed with fear, and the few words of Jesus. The result: they sensed deeply the personal call that the Gospel expresses with such masterful simplicity. “They left everything and followed him.”
They left everything. They left their families—Simon probably even left his wife, at least for a time—they left everything they owned and even their customary way of life in order to follow this prophet, this preacher who travelled the roads of Galilee and Judea announcing something new.

I remember the call I received. I did not sense the invitation of Jesus to leave everything. I did hear, however—just as I think all do who follow him—a very subtle voice that helped me see the beauty of a life different from the one that up until then I had envisioned and planned—a life lived completely for God and for humanity, a life that would hold for me uncertainties and sorrows but which irresistibly attracted me.

Levi
There was another call, that of Levi. Luke’s Gospel narrates: “After this Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the customs post.” A tax collector was considered a public sinner who profited from the collection of taxes by oppressing his people on behalf of the Romans, a foreign power. Jesus, passing in front of his customs post, said to him: “Follow me!” And leaving everything behind, Levi stood up and followed him (see Lk 5:27-28). In this account the call seems to be something striking and extraordinary that grasps us in a particular moment of life regardless of the spiritual condition in which we find ourselves. It is what also emerges in another astounding Gospel passage.

The Women
With the twelve there were also some women who followed Jesus including Mary of Magdala “from whom,” Luke points out, “seven demons had gone out” (Lk 8:2). She, too, had been called by the Master irrespective of her previous life. This brought on criticism from the scribes who murmured against him and his disciples saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus replied, “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners” (Lk 3:30-32). God also needs sinners among his immediate collaborators, that is, persons who, despite having a negative experience, are not held back by it but have learned how to overcome it, by giving themselves to God for the good of humanity. Theirs are marvelous stories of holiness in life—think of St. Augustine for example—which have embellished the Church and acquired for it fruits beyond measure.

The rich young man
But the Gospel does not fail to report another vocation, different from those already recalled and which invites our reflection in a particular way. It is the calling of the rich young man.
“A man ran up to Jesus, knelt down before him, and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus answered: ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments!’ He replied, ‘Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth.’”
How different from Levi is this young man in his perfect observance! Then Jesus looked at him with love—this is the call: the gaze of Jesus’ love on him—and he said to him, “You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me.” This is a stupendous synthesis of the vocation in its totality and wholeness. At these words, the Gospel concludes, “the man’s face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions” (Mk 10:17-22).
The kingdom of God is truly mysterious. Here a good young man refuses Jesus’ invitation. And he does so because he is rich, rich in that sense of security and power that money gives him, though he does not use his possessions badly. The possession of those goods, however, keeps him from understanding the special look of love that Jesus bestows on him. Jesus was about to fill him to overflowing with the greatest wealth: “You will have treasure in heaven...,” a spiritual treasure, of infinite beauty, that would have returned to him overflowing even on earth, since heaven and earth are profoundly joined—though our eyes are sometimes incapable of seeing it. That young man renounced it “and went away sad.”

Faithfulness
I have had some opportunities to speak with people who, after years of faithful response, decide to give up the call of God to follow him. Whatever their age I have always found in them a sadness and uneasiness, spiritual discomfort mixed sometimes with resignation. I am sure that God does not abandon them since his call, the fruit of his freely given love, implies the person’s free response. Nevertheless, one understands the sadness that persists in them, a sadness, so to speak, that is ontological, since the calling is not something accidental; it is rather something substantial that touches the person in the essence of his or her very being, a sort of new creation. For this reason when one answers God’s call of love with a response of love, it is like a spiritual wedding that takes place between the two. It is a total gift of self.
Without a doubt it can happen that sometimes, on the part of us humans, our fidelity is tested and it fails. Peter himself, the apostle par excellence, denied his Master and likewise the disciples, every one of them, abandoned him in the moment of the Passion. The call, therefore, does not imply a perfection already reached. It requires instead that we answer to it every day and, when necessary, that we acknowledge our faults and start all over again. This is the deeper significance of the call.
(to be continued)

 

Fr. Pascal Foresi, co-founder of the Focolare Movement, has a Masters in Theology from the Pontifical Lateran University and a Masters in Philosophy and Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University. Author of several books, he is a contributing editor of Citta Nuova (Living City’s parent magazine) since 1967. More articles by Foresi can be found in New Humanity Review n. 6-7-10 and in Living City, Nov. and Dec. 2004, and Jan. 2005.