Our Call to be Disciples

(Apologies: I had forgotten to publish this and the next post after writing them.  Only discovered my negligence when I started to prepare the post for the Second Sunday of Lent)

Our call to be Christ’s followers is meant to elevate us to be truly children of God.  Many people remark that they did not choose their parents.  I believe that it is the same way when it comes to God: we did not choose to be made by Him nor called by Him.  However, it is our response that we choose.  Just as we can choose to treat our parents as parents, we can choose to respond to God’s call with a Yes or a No.  If we say Yes, it is not because we were good enough to choose to be God’s child but that God makes us good enough when we respond with a Yes.  Here lies the mystery of the grace of God and His gift of free will.  In history, there have been many who have struggled to understand this mystery.  In our limited human capacity to reason, we cannot seem to understand how the human will is dependent on the grace of God and yet remain really free.  (If you are interested in this, you can refer to New Advent's article on Pelagianism and the summary of St. Augustine’s treatise on Grace and Free Will.)

The earliest portrait of Saint Augustine in a 6th century fresco, Lateran, Rome.
From WikiMedia Commons

Let us get back to our call to be disciples.  Observing the First Reading of this Sunday’s Liturgy (5th Sunday in Ordinary Time), we discover the truth that God makes us worthy to be His Son’s disciples. It was and will never be because we were worthy in our own right.  So, if we feel we deserve to be Christian, perhaps we need to revisit our understanding regarding the virtue of humility.  If we feel unworthy, we should need to continue to humbly pray to the Lord to help us, with a prayer not  unlike the father of a boy who was possessed by a dumb spirit (Mark 9:14-27) who exclaimed, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (v. 24).  The paradox of the disciple is that it is that it is when we are aware of our unworthiness that we are able to totally depend on the grace of God.  As St. Paul wrote, “for when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor 12:10)  The temptation is for us to think that because we are made worthy, we become worthy in ourselves.  We should then take note of next week’s Gospel reading on the Temptations of Christ.

Let us continue to bask in the grace of God and ask God to keep us humble so that we can do great things for God, just like St. Peter, who became a true fisher of men.