A man in today’s Gospel said to Philip that he wanted to see Jesus. What would you say to a person who made this request of you?
Today we conclude our five weeks of homilies on Discipleship. You could say we have been on a five-week cruise on the “Disciple Ship.” To refresh your minds of the points of this journey, we started off by discovering that we the baptized and are called to a mission, set aside for a special purpose and that purpose is to be disciple of Christ. In week two of the cruise, we learned about the amazing, better than the fairy tales love that God has for us. Followed by accepting that love is what gives us the grace to love God and each other, which is the first part of our mission. Last week on the cruise aboard the Disciple Ship, we learned what happens when we are not disciples and that, though things may look pretty grim like the Disciple Ship has lost its engine and is on a crash course with the iceberg extinction, we can put the engine back in and totally change course back to the mission of Christ which is to make other disciples.
So now you might ask what are we going to do this week on the Discipleship Cruise? That is a good question. What are we going to do, where do we go from here? I tell you honestly that I planned to have a well thought out homily which would tell you how to become a disciple and hoped that by simply listening to my homily you would be inspired to become a disciple. After two attempts of trying to write something, I released I don’t know how to make disciples. I was frustrated with God and annoyed that I couldn’t do this, this trust me. I really felt like I was Martha and Mary with a dead brother in the tomb and no idea how to raise him back to life. But the good news is there is someone that does know how. Something St Andrew did that Fr Andrew didn’t know to do. St Andrew and Philip brought him to Jesus. It dawned on me early this morning that it is Jesus that resurrects us back to life, not me.
But how does this happen? Well, we need to start coming ready to meet Him so when we come to Mass we need to ask Jesus to speak to us. A disciple is a student and you and I need to be students of the Word before all else. This means we have to listen first of all. A good way to see this happen is to have a Mass journal and each time you come here to ask Jesus to speak to you and then write down what He tells you. Whenever we read the Bible we should ask Jesus, “What does this mean for me?”
A second way we can hear how God is calling us is using St Ignatius’ method of examining our lives each day. It is said that the unexamined life is not worth living. The unexamined person is not growing in God. Like the person who buys a membership to a gym is not in better shape, but only if they work out. St Ignatius recommends that we examine our life in three ways each day. We first look at the good and beautiful things that have happened and thank God for them, especially where we cooperated with His grace. Secondly, we need to see the ways we have sorrowed God. This is a way God is often talking to us. When you examine yourself each day you should notice a pattern in the way that you were tested today, like holding your tongue, greed, anger, lust, focus on money, etc. When you see that, you can start to pray for the corresponding virtue to fight that vice. This is a way that God is purifying you and I by the ways He allows us to be challenged each day. The final thing St Ignatius said was we should ask God what He wants us to do.
You see, this discipleship is a great thing. In the First Reading, God said, “I will create a new covenant with you.” For us that means being renewed in the covenant we already have. God can completely resurrect us back into the faith we have entered into.
In the Second Reading, God told us that Jesus being made perfect through obedience would become the salvation of others. We, too, as we allow Jesus to instruct us, will grow in perfection and become the salvation for others. Won’t that be amazing when we get to heaven and there is a line with us because we allowed Jesus to perfect our own lives and we became the salvation for others? God is waiting to talk to us and help us to become great disciples and to resurrect our Church. Are we going to say yes?