When Christ invited the first disciples to follow Him, He called them to a job. He called them to become fishers of men, to bring people into the Church. Today we are called by Christ to bring people to Christ. We are not just supposed to bring them into our community, but into Christ. The disciples dropped everything and followed Christ. Together they went, and Jesus healed many. Together with us, Christ can heal those we bring back to Him.
Transcript:
My brothers and sisters, we just heard in this morning’s gospel associated with the calling of the disciples, the very beginning of Christ’s ministry on earth. He found a few fishermen and he said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” The gospel says they immediately left their nets and followed Him. They didn’t wait one moment. They didn’t say, “Wait a minute, let’s take care of some things first. Wait a minute, we have this. Wait a minute, we have that.” They immediately dropped everything and followed Christ.
Now, it’s important to understand because we having now the experience of all of these centuries, we do know they didn’t throw away their nets. We do know they continued to be fishermen. I don’t want you to think that they left their boat in the middle of the sea and they let it sink. That’s not the point of the gospel. But it says, “Immediately they left everything and followed Christ.” The question is, why? He says, “I will make you fishers of men.” He is calling and He is gathering His first apostles, His first disciples, and they have a job to do. It says at the end of this morning’s gospel, it said that they went and they were healing all the sicknesses and all kinds of diseases from the people.
Our job, my brothers and sisters, is to go and gather people for Christ, to go and become fishers of men. We have to go and we have to gather them. We have to bring them into the nets. As St. Paul says, not just Jews and Greeks, but all people. We have to bring them not just to become members of our community. I think sometimes we get confused between the language that we have our community and we have our church, and I don’t mean the church building. It’s beautiful that we live as a community. We are friends. We are coworkers. We come together for each other’s celebrations. But we are also the people of God. Our job being called by Christ today is to go bring people into that church, not just for fellowship, but to come and be healed by God, to come and experience God’s touch, to come and experience His grace.
Why should we hold it all for ourselves? He says, “Come,” and immediately they left everything and followed Him. And so He’s calling us today, my brothers and sisters. Come and He’s going to make us fishers of men. We have a lot of work to do. We have not just our own relatives who have fallen away from the church, and many have fallen away from the church. Some are just home asleep. Some have gone into other religions and other forms of Christianity. Others, even our own family members, are so lost they don’t know where they are. And so God is calling us to go bring them to the church, to Christ so Christ can heal them. Doesn’t matter where they’ve been. What matters is where they’re going. Christ wants all of us to go with Him into heaven.
So that’s our challenge. We have been recruited today. Today we are the disciples. Today we are the ones who have to leave everything to go follow Christ and gather all people into His church. It’s funny, in the other version of this story in the other gospel, it talks about just how much they caught when they listened to Christ. Their nets were overflowing and the boats had so many fish. My brothers and sisters, when we listen to the invitation of God, great things happen, amazing things happen. People are not just healed of their diseases, but they’re healed in their soul so they can open their eyes and look up to God and experience His grace. Now it’s our turn to get moving and to get gathering and to get fishing. Glory to God for all things.
