Follow me

Mark 1: 14 - 20

Follow me and I will make you fishers of men

I am seeking to know Christ more intimately, to love him more deeply and to follow him more closely.This is the grace desired in the second phase of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. As I meditate on the gospel passages, I look out for what Jesus says and does, how he seems to react to people, and underneath all that, what his core values are. In this passage he comes up to Simon and Andrew and immediately 'enlisted' them in his kingdom mission! I wonder how they responded so quickly, with not even a backward glance at their old lives. They left their nets immediately.

Perhaps they had known of Jesus before. Perhaps they had heard him teach or heard about him from other fishermen. Even then, their wholehearted following is truly amazing. I wonder how many of us can say that at a certain point in our lives, we actually left everything behind to follow Jesus. Very often, our following was delayed and hampered by the number of things we still clung on to. Following, yes, but also holding on to many things! Though Jesus accepts us that way too, he desires that as we go along, the load is lightened and there is less to slow us down. I hope too, that as I journey on, I will be shedding baggage, instead of accumulating more. "All to Jesus I surrender" is not an easy hymn to sing with full integrity. But it is a good reminder to continue to shed progressively more of the baggage.