We have entered into,
journeyed through the Holy Season of Advent, marvelled at, loved and adored the
newborn Holy Child, the Prince of Peace come to redeem the world and hear the
cries of the poor and suffering, namely, of every human being.
How we truly need to hear and heed His knocking at the doors
of our hearts [Rv.3:20], open to Him, bid Him enter, and listen to Him,
following the example of our ancestors from those first tentative steps taken
by the future Apostles [v.40] and the millennia of Martyrs, Saints, of every
Christian to this very day who has preceded us.
v. 40 – One of those
who heard John speak and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.
Here the Evangelist reveals once more how the Gospel is
filled with movement, listening, spoken word, choice, and action.
Such is what will happen if we respond when Jesus knocks at
the door of our heart.
Jesus is patient for love is patient.
He will always remain there, always waiting, always ready.
He will never barge in uninvited.
Love is too tender and selfless ever to impose.
A crucial aspect of our response is baptism, gateway of the
sacraments, and baptism confers discipleship which is intimate communion of
love with, actively living out in and through Him our prime vocation which is
to be beloved.
We are, for so we have been created, endowed with free will
and so are free to ignore His pleading knock, to ignore the invitation to be
one with.
Satan, first renouncer of freedom, choosing pointless
hell-bondage forever, is the great and prime enemy of love and love’s freedom.
His modern agents who have given themselves over to the
eternal cold darkness of hateful bondage are the terrorists of today.
Yet such is the immensity of Divine Mercy Jesus continues to
knock at their hearts too with the same inviting love until their souls leave
their bodies.
In verse 40 the Evangelist names the two brothers Andrew and
Simon Peter [the latter as such even though as yet St. John has not shown us
Jesus giving Simon his new name] and while the Evangelist will mention Philip
[1:43] and Thomas [11:16] and later still Judas [14:22] unlike the Synoptic
Gospel accounts nowhere in St. John’s account does he give us a complete list
of the Apostles.
I have never found an explanation in any referenced
commentaries on why this is, it just is, even though St. John records more of
the words of Jesus than the Synoptics do.
To be noted here through the example of Andrew come to Jesus
through the Baptist and now Simon Peter through his brother Andrew pointing to
Jesus this is a crucial aspect of discipleship lived for all Christians, namely
not to fall into the trap of thinking evangelization is about talking, rather
it is primarily about witnessing, that is simply pointing to Jesus and telling
everyone: There He is!
v.42 – and he brought
him to Jesus.
Indeed the understandable struggle in evangelization,
sometimes a real tension, is between teaching, which sometimes lends itself to
a torrent of dogmatic words that can overwhelm and confuse the recipient or an
implied, if not declarative, demeaning of the other’s particular current faith
or choice to be a non-believer – and – of simple witnessing the Gospel, of the
reality of Jesus, with our lives without compromise.
To paraphrase from Ven. Paul VI: if people do indeed listen
to teachers teaching about Jesus and the Gospel it is precisely because first
and foremost said teachers are witnesses.
In our day a powerful example of witnessing, which is never
opposed to teaching but should always
precede teaching, and then the teaching flowing from the witnessing becomes
powerful, is that of Pope Francis, embracing the sick, the elderly, the young,
children, leading a simplified style of pontifical life, washing the feet of
prisoners, Catholic and non.
Parents and grandparents, for example, are delighted when
small children bring a gift of a dandelion or a little pebble for the gesture is
the child witnessing love even though the child if challenged could not
verbally teach the concept, their living action speaks volumes.
If we adults would be humble and ask Jesus for a childlike
heart and the courage to live it out there would be less dissonance within
human communication.
There is such an unspoken childlikeness and love for his
brother, and indeed a burgeoning love for and trust in Jesus, which moves
Andrew to bring his brother to Jesus.
v. 42 – Now when
Jesus looked at him….
The essential first step in contemplation is to be still
enough to gaze upon!
We use various expressions descriptive of what humans can do
with our eyes: look, gaze, stare, glance, glare.
We speak of eyes wide open or shut.
Eyes can express delight, fear, yes even negatives such as
disdain.
Our eyes can water as a result of some irritation and we can
shed tears both of joy and sorrows.
Eyes are known as windows of the soul.
We can choose with these windows to take in images of
beauty, which enlighten the soul, or prurient and ugly images which darken the
soul and smudge the eyes with the soot of sin.
Sometimes we say someone, or we ourselves, penetrate another
with our eyes.
We can choose to look away as gesture of rejection or
because we have chanced upon some horror or ugliness we choose not to have
seared into our memories through looking.
Love and acceptance, affirmation of the ‘thou’ of other
flows from the loving look of parents upon the newborn child, fruit of the
original look of love exchanged between the parents.
Undoubtedly it was the eyes of Mary and Joseph who first
gave that look of love to God incarnate when Jesus was born.
God as a human being returns the look of love upon each of
us and here, as elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus is spoken of as looking upon,
in this case upon Simon.
We should strive when reading and meditating upon the Holy
Gospel not to rush past such words as these at the beginning of verse 42 to
find out what happens next!
I remember in this moment a story told me by a beloved
bishop friend that happened to him when he was a seminarian.
The seminary was part of a monastery and one day walking the
cloister he noticed an elderly monk sitting with the open Gospels in his lap,
the monk’s finger stopped at a particular line.
About an hour later my friend came by again and the monk was
still sitting there, finger not moved, eyes fixated on the same passage and so
my friend, then a seminarian, asked of the old monk:” What it is Father, you
have not moved in an hour.” “Ah,” came the reply, “ it is such a beautiful
word!”
The story is told in the life of St. John Vianney that the
villagers were rushing to bring in the harvest and passing the village church
looked in to see if there was anyone there who might be added to their number
to get the work done and they spied a man sitting before the tabernacle, asked
him to join them and he assured he would momentarily.
At dusk as the others were returning from the fields they
noticed the man was still there and they asked what he was doing, that kept him
from coming to the fields: “Ah, I am gazing upon Him and He is gazing upon me.”
v. 42 - ….He said:
“You are Simon, Son of Jonah. You shall be called Cephas.” [which is
translated, a stone].
Cephas is most frequently rendered in Latin and English as:
rock, hence the interchange of “Petrus/Peter” so commonly known.
Jesus sees clearly the depths of every human heart, soul,
and all therein.
Thus when Jesus looks at Simon Peter He sees, reads, and
understands, the entire reality of Peter as a person: Peter’s past, present and
future.
So it is with us.
God is more intimate to and with us than we are to and with
ourselves.
From the moment of our birth to the present moment we take
accumulated experiences, ideas, and mostly rather than become increasingly and
objectively self-aware, in the light of objective truth, bit by bit construct a
subjective self image, one that is frequently encumbered by self-doubt and
anxiety about both self and the way we are perceived by others, including those
who love us and God Himself.
This process is aided and abetted by the evil one, father of
lies.
Jesus alone, God Himself, looks upon us with unconditional
love, speaks only truth to us, most of all the truth that we are beloved, just
as we are.
In the light of His truth-speaking to our hearts we hear His
voice: most clearly and are enlightened and warmed by His look of love, when we
open the door of our being to Him.
Then in truth when asking of ourselves, or asked by others,
whom we are, we can, as Pope Francis does, give the accurate response: “I am a
sinner.”
Which is a good thing: Jesus came to embrace, to love, to
save, to sanctify sinners.
To reject self in anyway is to reject God and His primary
gift to us, namely breath of life in His image and likeness.
The critical depth of all the encounters Jesus has in the
Gospels with Andrew, Peter, the woman at the well, Zaccaheus in the tree, with
everyone, is this offer from Jesus for us to step into the light and truth He
radiates, and thus to accept ourselves, to be who we are truly.
