Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
John 1, 35-42
This might sound very parochial, but I was walking around the CBD here in Sydney, together with two good friends from my seminary days, and we decided to have dinner in one of the restaurants. My friend suggested we check out this nice Filipino restaurant called “La Mesa”. I said, “Yeah, why not!” And I was there and was expecting that the restaurant would serve real authentic Filipino flavour. And true enough, I wasn’t disappointed and we had a nice time at the restaurant. And since then, I’m trying to tell my Filipino and non-Filipino friends about the restaurant.
My story may be a poor example of what the gospel for this week is presenting to us. In the gospel for today, we see the early days of the ministry of Jesus. After Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan, we see two of John the Baptist’s disciples one of them is Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, follow Jesus after the prompting of John the Baptist and ask Jesus, “Teacher, where do you live?” And Jesus replied, “Come and see”.
This episode is unique from the other gospels. In the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), Jesus started to form his band of disciples by calling them. However, in John’s account, these two disciples were actually interested in Jesus and he said, “Come and see”.
Whatever Jesus said or did definitely attracted these two disciples and they followed Jesus to learn something more. And after being with Jesus, these two concluded that, “They have found the Messiah.” For all of us, we would like to ask ourselves, what attracted me to Jesus? What is it with Jesus that we want to follow him? What is it with him that we pray to him and to go to mass every week? Maybe, if haven’t asked those questions for ourselves, I think now is a good time to ask and discover.
In the second part of the gospel, we see that after being with Jesus for the whole day, Andrew met his brother Simon Peter and told him that “We have found the Messiah”. And he took Simon to Jesus. Like in my story above, it is just almost natural for all of us that if we have experienced something beautiful or delightful in our lives, we just can’t help to spread the word around to our friends and relatives.
What Andrew has done is also our task to every one. I believe that our relationship with Jesus has changed our lives for the better, so why should we keep Jesus for ourselves? Isn’t it our task to be a missionary to one another? To share the love that we have experienced, with everybody that we meet.
I have realised that in my role as Vocation Director of the SVD province here in Australia, this gospel is what I should do. Like Jesus, he said when people started to come to him, his response was “Come and see.” This should also be my attitude if there are young people who want to join us, I should be welcoming to all of them and say “Come and see”. To show to the young people what we have and how we follow Jesus as Divine Word Missionaries.
And the second message of the gospel is for all of us. True Christians should never be selfish. I believe that blessings that are shared with other people are blessings that get multiplied. A true Christian who has realised the blessings that they have received should invite more people to come to Jesus so that their lives will also be blessed. Just imagine if Andrew kept Jesus for himself, then the blessings that Jesus gives would never have reached to other people. Jesus wouldn’t have met Simon Peter and we all know the role that Simon Peter played not only during the ministry of Jesus but even far beyond after that.
Let this gospel be the model of our lives. We try to find and discover the Messiah if we haven’t found him yet and after this wonderful discovery, let us share Jesus with other people who are still looking for him. Hopefully we may be able to be effective witnesses for Jesus and spread his message to everyone who is still looking for a Messiah in their lives.