SECOND SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME
Well after the anticipation of Advent and all the fuss of Christmas and the the new year here we are back at ordinary time. As we look forward to the year ahead it will be no time until the beginning of Lent with Ash Wednesday which is on 14th February and believe it or not April the 1st is Easter Sunday. Here we are thinking about Lent and Easter just after we have finished Advent and Christmas such is the pace of life as we go forward. Here in Ireland we have a particular reason to look forward as we will be hosting the 2018 World Meeting of Families in Dublin in August hopefully with the participation of Pope Francis.
In this Sunday’s Gospel the apostles asked Jesus “Where do you live”? his reply was “Come and see”. Invitations as we know come in all shapes and sizes. Some come in the mail or in e-mail. Others come on the street corner. Others come in unexpected ways. Some are personal, almost intimate. Others are general and impersonal. No matter what the invitation means, an invitation tells us that you are invited please come. We see Jesus inviting the apostles to come and see and by association through faith all of us are invited and welcome to come and see what’s going on in our Faith Communities. When we accept the invitation of Jesus we have to ask ourselves why do we come and what do we seek? The early disciples of Jesus must have asked themselves those same questions. Living in a culture that distrusted novelty, they would go and see something new and that was the public appearance of the Messiah. We in our turn live in a culture that distrusts faith and people of faith and I often wonder what Jesus would think if he was here today in our often times faithless world. The people in this gospel story like you and me are people looking and searching for God. Like the disciples we are seekers who want to stay or at least try and stay with Jesus. John’s disciples were seekers and it is late in the day for them as the gospel tells us. All of us remember special moments by recalling the date and the time they happen. John tells us, “It was about four in the afternoon,” when the disciples received their invitation from Jesus. They need rest from their search and Jesus is offering it to them. The “four in the afternoon” possibly refers to the beginning of the Sabbath the next day.
The invitation to come and see is an invitation to deepen our friendship with God and find rest in his presence. It is an invitation to enrich our belief in the faith that we profess each time we celebrate the sacraments of the Church wherever we are in the world. We, are being invited to follow Jesus at this time in our lives, to spend time with him and to discover who he is for us here and now, not dwelling on the past or looking to the future the past is gone and the future may never be ours. The big question for us is will we accept the invitation that Jesus gives us in our time to come and see the one who has the message of eternal life?
Fullerton T 