Mt 4:12-23
Is 8:2 –9:3 1
Cor 1:10-13.17
Focus: Jesus called his first disciples; and they followed him immediately.
Function: We, too, were called by Jesus and are called ever anew to hear his word, to follow his example and to become ‘real.’
Dear sisters and brothers in the Lord,
Some of you may the following wonderful story
I would like to ask you to hear with the ear of your heart: The wooden horse lived longer in the children’s playroom than anyone else. It was so old that his brown cloth cover was scraped off very much and had quite a number of holes. Children had pulled out most of its tail hair in order to lining up beads on it. It had become honorably old and wise …
“What is real?”, the velveteen rabbit asked one day, as they we laying side by side near the playpen, before the girl had gotten around to make order. “Does it mean to have things in oneself that hum and to be equipped with a wind up key?” ”Real,” the wooden horse replied, “does not depend on the way somebody is fabricated. It is something that happens to us. If a child loves you for a long, long time, not only in order to play with you, but loves you really, then you become real.”
“Is it painful,” the rabbit asked. “Sometimes,” the wooden hose replied, for it always told the truth. “If you are real, then you don’t mind it that it hurts.”
“Does it happen once in a sudden, just as if one is being wound up,” the velveteen rabbit asked again, “or gradually?” “It does not happen once in a sudden,” the wooden horse said. “You become. It takes a long time. This is the reason why it doesn’t happen often with those who break easily or who have sharp corners or who have to be kept nice. Generally speaking, at the time when you will be real most of the hair has disappeared, your eyes have fallen out; you are shaky in your joints and very ugly. But these things are not important at all; because when you are real you can’t be ugly, except in the eyes of people who don’t know what’s it all about.”
“I think you are real,” the velveteen rabbit remarked. And then he wished he had not said this— may be the wooden horse was sensitive. But the wooden horse only smiled.
In today’s gospel we hear about the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Jesus is the Light. He appears in Zebulon and Naphtali, in Northern Galilee, where half of the population weren’t even Jews but gentiles at this time. These were not the people who stood in the limelight of public attention and acclaim! To them Jesus brings light and hope first!
What he says and does, the evangelist Matthew points out, is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. In Isaiah’s lifetime, the prophet’s words hadn’t come true. Isaiah had announced liberation from the Assyrian occupiers of the land. Matthew now tells us: Here is one, Jesus, who brings true liberation.
How does he do that? First, through his word. According to Matthew, Jesus is the new Moses. Like Moses, Jesus, with whom Joseph and Mary had to flee, was called out of Egypt. His teaching, especially the Sermon of the Mount, is the New Law of God, God’s promise and God’s direction. Blessed are the sorrowing, the poor, and the meek: They are the first ones who need to hear that they are loved by God, not for what they do but for who they are. Furthermore, Jesus heals people in body and soul, and sets them free from their infirmities.
Jesus calls upon people to repent and to believe in the reality of God’s reign of love. Many, like Simon Peter and Andrew, James and John, he calls to follow him by sharing his life as an itinerant preacher. Others, like his friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus, stay at their place, but also live according to his teaching.
In all of them grew, through Jesus, a sense that life is more than simply living the way other people live, and doing things the way all people do them; they started to realize their own, special vocation; they began to become more and more themselves.
Dear sisters and brothers in the Lord, Like Jesus’ first disciples we, too, are called to follow him without resistance. We, are meant to hear his word, to imitate his example and to become ‘real.’
As it was for the wooden horse, so it is also for us a gradual process; and it can hurt. But “becoming real” is possible, because we have been loved by God for a long, long time: even before we were born. God loved us into existence.
We can ask ourselves this morning: What does it take for us to know and to accept Christ more fully, who is also the light for our darkness? What is it that keeps us from the light? What is it that we need to give up? What is it that we need to do?
Let me conclude with a prayer: Almighty Father, the love you offer always exceeds the furthest expression of human longing, for you are greater than the human heart. Direct each thought, each effort of our human life, so that the limits of our faults and weaknesses may not obscure the vision of your glory or keep us for the peace you promised. AMEN.
~Fr. Thomas Leitner, OSB