SECOND SUNDAY
(Ordinary Time – Cycle B)
1 S 3, 3b-10.19
1 Co
6,13c-15a.17-20
Jn 1,35-42
Every believer has been called by God to know and to
follow Jesus Christ. The Christian life
is an authentic “vocation” that supposes the divine, gratuitous and loving
initiative and a human, joyful and obliging response. The biblical texts of this Sunday refer to this fundamental
dimension of the life of faith and offer a rich reflection about the theme so
that we may assume and live radically our own vocation in the Christian
community.
The first reading (1 S 3,3b-10.19) is the
recounting of the vocation of the young Samuel that lived in the sanctuary of
Shiloh in the service of the priest Eli.
It is important to underline the importance that the call of Samuel has
in biblical history. He is a person
that serves as a link between to historical periods of the people of God: the
time of the judges and the beginning of the monarchy. The book of Sirach, when it presents a eulogy of forefathers,
presents him as a prophet, judge and priest:
“Samuel was the beloved of his Lord; prophet of the Lord, he
instituted the kingdom […], by the Law of the Lord he judged the
assembly […], he called on the Lord […] offering a suckling lamb” (Si
46,13-15). The recounting of his
vocations presents the call of God in a progressive form. The young Samuel learns to listen and to
respond to the Lord with the help and the experience of the old priest
Eli. The initiative of the call is from
God, root and foundation of all vocation (v. 4: “Here I am”), but still a
little confused (v. 5: “Then he ran to
Eli and said, ‘Here I am, since you called me’”). The priest Eli makes him realize his mistake: “I did not call you, my son; go back and lie
down” (v. 5). The same experience
happens a second time with the same result.
The narrator hastens to comment:
“Samuel had as yet no knowledge of the Lord and the word of the Lord had
not yet been revealed to him"”(V. 7).
If someone has not lived a person experience of the word of God, he is
not capable of tuning into to a particular call of the Lord in his life. The priest Eli, accustomed to treating God
on personal terms, realizes that God is calling Samuel and prepares him to
respond adequately. The priest does not
pretend to occupy the place of the word of God, only prepares the way for it so
that it can be heard and welcomed: “Go
and lie down, and if someone calls say ‘Speak Lord, your servant is listening’”
(v. 9). Samuel does just this. The Lord calls him for a third time and
responds to him as Eli indicated for him to do (v. 10). He listens attentively to the word of the Lord
and opens himself up with availability to the Lord’s ways. Now he knows the Lord and begins to
familiarize himself with the divine word, to such a point that Samuel almost
immediately can proclaim an oracle on the part of God (vv. 11-18). This is the beginning of the prophetic
history of Samuel: “Samuel grew up and
the Lord was with him and let no word of his fall to the ground”. In the word of Samuel resounds the word of
God. He was a true prophet: “the Lord was with him” (v. 19). The last verses of this section, which
unfortunately have been cut from the liturgical reading, end in delineating the
physiognomy of the new prophet. Samuel
begins to live in serving the people, and the people recognize him as a
prophet, as someone that on the part of God helped to interpret the facts of
history in the light of God: “All
Israel knew, from Dan to Beersheba, that Samuel was attested as a prophet of
Yahweh. Yahweh continued to manifest
himself at Shiloh, revealing himself to Samuel there” (vv. 20-21).
The second reading (1 Co 6, 13c-15a.17-20) is
a teaching of Paul of an anthropological and moral character. In the first place, the Apostle is opposed,
in harmony with biblical teaching, to all anthropology that divides man in
separated parts (body/soul) and to any spiritualism that lowers or spites the
body. Paul speaks of the “body” with
great respect. The body is, in biblical
mentality, like the support and foundation of the relational aspect of man, in
front of others, the world and God. All
of man, including his body, is destined for salvation. With force Paul affirms: “the body is for the Lord and the Lord for
the body” (v. 13). The body will
participate one day in the glory of the resurrected Christ (v. 14: “God who raised the Lord from the dead, will
by his power raise us up to”), while already now it is “the temple of the Holy
Spirit” (v. 19). In synthesis, the
Christian – with his corporeal dimension – is a member of Christ. Therefore, Paul concludes, on the moral
plane, that the believer that hands over his body to impurity and lust is
unfaithful to his Christian vocation.
From the perspective of the religious practice of sacred prostitution,
which was practiced in Corinth, fornication is presented not only as a sexual
disorder, but also as a true sin of idolatry (vv. 17-18). The body belongs to the Lord and is the
visible temple of the Spirit that we receive from God. Each one, as in a temple, will have to give
God glory with his own body, that is to say, to live in fullness the mystery of
the Christian vocation: “That is why
you should use your body for the glory of God” (v. 20).
The Gospel (Jn 1,35-42) presents the vocation
of the first disciples in the Gospel of John.
The text is not just a simple telling of a story. In is a scene full of theological reflection
that wants to be a model of every call and following of Jesus. Two disciples of the Baptist hear him speak
of Jesus that passed and followed him (v. 26-27). However, this is not sufficient.
In the Christian vocation, Jesus always takes the initiative: “Jesus turned round, and said, ‘What do you
want?’” It is an incise and stimulating
question, besides being the first phrase that Jesus pronounces in the Gospel of
John. Those two me, one of which was
Andrew (v. 40), represent all men and women that go in search of the meaning
and the fullness of life. They do not
look for something, rather “someone”:
“Rabbi, where do you live?” (v. 38).
Jesus invites the to have an experience of friendship and communion with
him, personal relationship that is the true beginning and foundation of
Christian existence: “Come and see” (v.
39). They go with him, “saw where he
lived and stayed with him the rest of that day”. The very “to stay” or “to remain” are translated from the Greek
verb, menô, that in the Gospel of John indicates the life of the
Christian disciple that remains constantly united to Jesus in communion of love
and mission (cf. Jn 15). The Evangelist
notes: “it was about the tenth hour”, a
mysterious chronological indication.
This can indicate that the day was already about to end (ended at 6
o’clock in the afternoon) and that the meeting with Jesus represents the
fullness of the day; or as well that it was simply a way of saying that this
meeting had really changed the rhythm of life of those men, and therefore, was
worth remembering well the exact hour.
The encounter of each man or woman with Jesus represents the fullness of
the human journey and the most decisive moment of existence.
Much later Andrew encounters his brother Simon Peter
and speaks to him of Jesus: “We have
found the Messiah – and he took him to Jesus” (v. 41). He that was before called turns now to
indicate the way and to help others to find the Lord, as John the Baptist had
done with him and as Eli had done with Samuel (first reading). In the dynamism of faith and of the
vocational journey of each one, human mediation is fundamental: a helping hand,
a teacher, a spiritual director. God
calls serving himself by way of human mediations, of which Eli, the Baptist and
Andrew are some examples: men of spiritual experience, accustomed to
relationship with God, respectful of the journey and destiny of others, docile
to the voice of God, discreet and without any toil or anxiety of wanting to
possess other persons. When Simon Peter
finds himself with Jesus, Jesus changes his name: “You are Simon son of John; you are to be called Cephas – meaning
Rock” (v. 42). The change of name in
biblical mentality indicates the change of the same person and of his destiny. God does not direct himself to an anonymous
mass, but to each one in a personal way and expects a personal and total
response for a mission that is also personal.
The readings of this Sunday offer us the possibility to renew our faith as vocation and to live our own vocation within the Church with joy and gratitude. The Christian vocation is the dialogue of two wills that unite to realize a common plan. It is not a call to accept a idea or plan, rather the invitation to enter a personal relationship with “someone”. The response expects not a generic adhesion to a movement, but a program of action or high philanthropic ideals, but a total compromise of the person to “remain” in communion of life and mission with the person of Jesus. An experience that transforms all existence according to the values of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.