Calls from the mountain

 A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today’s gospel (Mark 3: 13-19) narrates on one simple level the calling of the disciples and their appointment as apostles, i.e., as messengers sent out on what was a kind of interim mission to preach and to cast our demons. St Mark names them all too with their aliases: Simon who is Peter and James and John, known as the sons of thunder – surely as an insiders’ joke. St Mark ends the list with the obligatory but difficult reminder of Judas Iscariot, adding soberly who betrayed him. Apart from the last name, this is a roll of honour, even if St Mark’s gospel is replete not only with Peter’s glories but also his humiliations. These were the men that Jesus appointed out of all the sons of Israel: this ragtag band of fishermen, zealots, wealthy tax collectors and poor labourers, extroverts, and introverts, heroes and sometimes cowards, all martyrs in the end, save for Judas the traitor and John who survived his martyrdom to live on into old age. These were the ones that the Father had given to Jesus. These were His beloved disciples in whom He was well pleased.

Behind this roll of honour, however, stands further mysteries for our contemplation. In the first case, this gospel recalls the gospel of Monday this week when, in order to reach Jesus, the friends of the paralysed man needed to ascend to the heavens or at least to the level of the roof tops, thereafter, to descend of course into the house. If you want to see far, go high but, as French writer Georges Bernanos says, note carefully: Quelle paix dans les hauteurs, what peace in the heights! No greater administrative task lay ahead of Jesus than the naming of the twelve, the recruitment of his stewards, the communicating of responsibility for His mission into the hands of mere human beings, be they ever later helped by the sending of the Holy Spirit. And like all great tasks, this task begins with an ascent of the mountain.

 There are some odd, supposedly practical forms of Christianity that claim one can be a practical Christian without such ascents. But can this be true? Christ consistently retreats into prayer throughout the gospel, time and time again, especially in critical moments or junctures. And what this means for us, His disciples now, is clear enough: If a man serves me, he must follow me, wherever I am, my servant must be there too. We must be there then in prayers, on the gentle path and on the windswept mountain, in the harvest fields and in the fallow, in the fervour of devotion and in the bleak breezes of spiritual winter where not even a lowly Rosary seems to quicken our spiritual pulse. If we serve Him, we must follow Him, wherever He is, His servants must be there too.   

From this following of Jesus, moreover, we are in a better place to understand something of the depths behind those simple words:

He called to Him those whom He desired.

There is in such a word at least two further mysteries: the mystery of His desire for us and the mystery of His predilection among us or the selectiveness of His love. Some are called into His inner sanctum; some are relied on to carry His word afar. All live in His intimacy but in such different ways. The mystery of His deep love for every soul does not cancel out the mystery of the variety of ways in which that love is lived at very different levels of participation. From this comes the galactic spectrum of vocations for we are not all called to be the same role, and our various calls reflect His infinite beauties differently, like those many-paned stained-glass windows that admit at once the one source of solar energy but thus illuminate by ten thousand shafts of brilliant light.

And so, He desires us: each and every one in our individuality but also in His likeness, for it is through our resemblance with Him that we show forth our adoption in grace. Twelve individuals at first, then more, and then spreading through Israel and out into the nations. His call goes out: to ascend the mountain first and then to carry the message forth as best we can, before returning at the harvest. In COLW, this pattern is shown to us through the charism where we become like Him (incarnational), draw close to Him (contemplative), carry His word forth (apostolic), and live the good news together (living in community). Our ‘yes’ to this vocation is an echo of Mary’s ‘yes’, all the more so for she was the desire of the King before us all. In this light, we can see why God’s predilection – an idea which runs counter to our contemporary assumptions about equality – actually serves the good of all for the more we belong to God, the more we are available to all: their sister, their brother, in everything following Jesus’ example.

Jesus went up on the mountain. Let us follow Him there.