Pope Francis reflects on the Gospel of the day during his Sunday Angelus, inviting the faithful to accept God’s call, responding to it only with love.
By Vatican News staff writer
Marking the second Sunday in ordinary time, Pope Francis reflected on the Gospel of the day, which presents the encounter between Jesus and his first disciples.
Speaking of the Vatican’s Apostolic library during the Sunday Angelus, Pope Francis recounted the scene, which unfolds along the Jordan River the day after Jesus’ baptism. It is John the Baptist himself, he explains, “who shows the Messiah to both, with these words: ‘Here is the Lamb of God!'” Both, trusting in the witness of the Baptist, follow Jesus. He realizes this and asks the disciples what they are looking for. When asked where Jesus was staying, He responds by saying, “Come and you will see”.
Pope Francis went on to describe this response not as a business card, “but as an invitation to a meeting”. The two follow him and remain that afternoon with him. “It is not difficult to imagine them sitting and questioning him and, above all, listening to him, feeling that their hearts are burning more and more as the Master spoke”, said the Pope. He explained that although it is night, “they suddenly discovered that that light that only God can give was exploding within them”. When they leave and return to their brothers, that joy, that light overflows from their hearts like a rushing river. One of the two, Andrew, tells his brother Simon – whom Jesus will call Peter – “We found the Messiah”.
“Let us dwell a little on this experience of encounter with Christ, who calls us to stay with him”, said the Pope. He explained that “each one of God’s calls is an initiative of His love”.
“God calls for life, He calls for faith, and he calls for a particular state In life. God’s first call is to life, by means of which He makes us people; it is an individual call because God does not do things in series. So God calls us to faith and become part of His family as children of God. Finally, God calls us to a particular state in life: taking the path of marriage, the priesthood or the consecrated life ”.
These, the Pope continued, are “different ways of carrying out the plan that God has for each of us, which is always a plan of love”. The “great joy for every believer”, he stressed, is to respond to that call “to offer your whole being to the service of God and of your brothers”.
Concluding his reflection, Pope Francis noted that before the Lord’s call, “which affects us in a thousand ways”, our attitude can sometimes be “rejection”, sometimes “fear”. “But the call of God is love and must only be answered with love,” said the Pope. “At the beginning there is an encounter, or rather, there is an encounter with Jesus who speaks to us about his Father, makes us know his love. And then the spontaneous desire will arise even in us to communicate it to the people we love: ‘I found love’, ‘I found the meaning of my life’. In a word: ‘I found God’ ”.
Finally, before reciting the Angelus prayer, Pope Francis prayed that the Virgin Mary “help us to make our life a hymn of praise to God in response to his call and in the humble and joyful fulfillment of his will”.