Follow Jesus
scenes call (Exodus 3, Isaiah 6, Jeremiah 1 ...) are among the most exciting pages of the Bible. Reveal God in His majesty and mystery, and man in all its truth in its generosity and fear, in his attitude of resistance and acceptance ...
God's plan
Every man, by the very fact of being alive, is in a state of "vocation". Through the mysterious ways of human events, ordinary and dark, God called him into existence by a his particular project of love. The vocation in fact, as there is always a personal call. God does not build men in series does not use the mold: he speaks to each person.
Discover your vocation is to discover the plan of life that God has for each of us, because the initiative is always God, "Speak, for your servant is listening" (first reading). "Here I am, Lord, to do your will" (Responsorial Psalm). Deepening the initiative of prevenient God brings a whole process of internalization and gradual discovery of spiritual and moral needs of their vocation (second reading).
The combination of "call" and "sequela Christi" is, moreover, one of the basic categories of Christian life, the structure is clearly a dialogue, that is made of question and answer, calls that go through the events of Living and answers that are expressed not only in the professions of faith or prayer, but in life choices and continued availability of the heart. The category of dialogue expresses another key feature of the Christian life: the dynamics. The Christian is not someone who has pocketed the solution to all problems, as possessing a kind of life insurance in the face of questions of the present and future. He feels, on the contrary, as a man in search, whose certainties are continuously called into question by events. Yet his relationship with Christ makes him an original research, because its path is somehow already mapped out and run, and the goal is reachable.
Walking together
Although the call of Christ is experienced as a personal invitation and it is clarified in the heart of intimacy is always new and unique, it always opens the way for a community experience.
personal encounter with Jesus raises the personal and community meeting with all those who have had the experience of this meeting, and initiates the establishment of a community in which to live together and "follow" Jesus becomes an essential feature set. Next to the personal vocation is, therefore, the vocation to be part of a people called the Church: ekklesia, which means precisely, "called," the "elected", the "call."
"Come, follow me"
This call resonates today as two thousand years ago. But what modern humans do not encounter resistance? The word "follow" is not immediately brings an attitude of mediocrity, conformism, lack of imagination, creativity, personality? You follow the fashion, the party winning, the opinion of those who shout loudest or speaks the last ... Those who "follows" waiver to see with their own eyes, the brain sells storage, consider a luxury to have opinions. We might call these things to Jesus' invitation? To give the creative freedom, to every initiative, to walk behind him as silent and obedient servants, even if they look up and sing with enthusiasm?
look at what he did. He faithfully followed the will of his Father, so that on his deathbed he cried out: "It is finished." But this desire made him a free man. He proclaimed to the world a new word, a designer, the fact that had heard from his Father. If he calls disciples to follow him only to tell them: "As the Father has sent me so I send you." The mandate is to follow Jesus and being a single movement. Just because the apostles who followed Jesus were sent around the world. Related to him, free from any connection with the traditions and with any power of this world, they have created new communities, made up of free men and brothers. Follow you mean, then, go ahead, create it. Not alone, but together with him, and being in communion with all those who follow him and are tied to him by this single and multiple bond that was created by his call. Who sits or lies down in their habits, who fits in a perfect system where everything is planned and predetermined ... this does not follow, because it no longer listens to the voice of Jesus on the path that precedes him and asked him to leave the false security for a search constantly renewed. The Lord calls us every day and our response must be constantly renewed.
The perfect harmony of fruit concord
From "Letter to the Ephesians," St. Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr
(chapters 2, 2 - 5, 2, Funk 1, 175-177)
E 'Your duty to give glory to Jesus Christ in everything, who has glorified so united in one obedience, subject to the bishop and the College of Priests, to achieve perfect holiness.
not give you orders as if I were somebody important. They are chained to his name, but not yet perfect in Jesus Christ. Only now begin to be a disciple and I speak to you as to my fellow students. I really needed to be prepared to fight with you, by your faith, by your exhortations, by your patience and meekness. But because the charity does not allow me to be quiet with you, I have prevented urging you to walk together according to the will of God Jesus Christ, our inseparable life, work according to the will of the Father, the bishops established in all places, to the ends of the earth, act in accordance the will of Jesus Christ. So
procured to work in perfect harmony with the will of your bishop, as you already do. In fact, your college of venerable priests, worthy of God, is as exactly to the bishop as the strings of a harp. In this way into your feelings and in the perfect harmony of your brotherly love, will rise a chorus of praise to Jesus Christ. Each of you is to study the choir. Harmony harmony and in unison with the tone of God through Jesus Christ, with one voice sing praises to the Father, and he will hear you and recognize you from your good works, members of his Son. Stay in blameless unity, to keep If I share with God in a short time I have a contract with your bishop so intimately familiar, which is not human, but spiritual, as I will estimate that you're happy with him closely together as the Church of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ to the Father in the harmony of a total unity! No one deceive himself: who is not inside the shrine, there is no bread of God, and if the prayer was done by two people together so effectively, how much more it will be that of the bishop and the whole Church?
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