“Speak Lord, your servant is listening.” Jesus answers:
“Come and see.” Priests usually
start their homilies with a scripture passage like this.
A
few days ago, Pope Francis in his Mass to the Philippine bishops, priests, and
religious wanted to start his homily by quoting the gospel of John 21:15 where
Jesus asks Peter: “Do you love me… tend my sheep.” So the Pope begins with: “Do you love me?” And the priests and nuns shout: “Yes!” The
Pope was shocked, he laughs and answers: “Uh Ok, thank you very much. But I was referring to the words of Jesus” –
They did not get it initially that he was referring to the passage.
Those
words: “Do you love me?” spoken by Jesus is an invitation he extends to all of
us in the liturgy of today and because he asks it in a different way, sometimes
we just do not get it.
In
the first reading, the Lord calls the boy by name: "Samuel, Samuel." And Samuel
mistakes the voice for the priest Eli. Samuel just did not get it thrice. He
only gets it the fourth time when Eli tells him when you hear the voice again
say: Speak Lord, your servant is
listening.
It is only when Samuel listened well, that he was able to follow
God’s personal invitation. The same is true with us. Listen to his invitation and
you can hear your name if you are silently waiting. Otherwise you just won’t
get it.
In
the gospels, the disciples of John the Baptist, among them Andrew and John,
were preparing for the coming of the Messiah. And then Jesus walked by and they
didn’t even recognize him, until John the Baptist pointed out: “Behold, here is the Lamb of God.” So the
two disciples follow Jesus curiously but they still did not get it. And so
Jesus asks them: What are you looking
for? Let me ask you this same
question today in this Mass. Why are you here? Do you have an answer?
Back
to the gospel, Jesus was inviting them, and yet they did not get it. Instead they
ask: Teacher, where are you staying? What a question! You do not answer a
question with another question, right? And so Jesus continues his invitation: “Come and see.”
Many times Jesus asks this of us. And we
answer him with: “No thanks, I’m fine this
way. Let me just continue praying my rosary, going to my mass and don’t bother
me with getting involved in the parish.” Pope Francis tells us in his Joy
of the Gospel: “Some people want a
purely spiritual Christ, without flesh and without a cross. The Gospel tells us constantly - run the
risk of a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical appearance
which challenges us, with their pain, and their pleas, with their joy which
infects us in our close interactions."(EN.88) “Come
and see” is a call for us to do things differently from what we are used to. It
is an invitation for us to get out of our comfort zones.
So
what happens next in our gospel story: “They
came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him.” And as they
stayed with him, they became closer to him, and they began to love him. The “invitation principle” is simple: the
more you listen, the more you will come; the more you come, the more you will see;
the more you see, the more you will stay; the more you stay, the more you will love
Him.
Our
Christian calling is as a personal
invitation to come to Christ, to see the truth as revealed in Jesus, and
to stay forever faithful to him
throughout life. And this is possible, this we can do only if we can answer
“Yes” to the invitation of Jesus today: “Do
you love me?”
(Then mass goers shouted “Yes” so I
replied: Thank you very much!)
References:
Pope
Francis. (2013). Evangelii Gaudium. No. 88.
GMA
News. (January 16, 2015). ‘Do you love me?’ Pope Francis takes on a lighter
note during his first Mass in PHL.
Sanchez,
P. (2000 ). “Here I am.” Sanchez Archives.
Celebration Publications. Kansas, USA. http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/sanchez/locked/cycleb/ordinarytimeb/sunday0297b.htm