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Salesian Spirituality Days

22-25 January 2009

Fr Adrian Bregolin, homily – 23 January 2009

Gospel: Mk 3:13-19

 

My dear brothers and sisters,

The Gospel we have just listened to presents us with the episode of the calling of the Twelve. This call takes place on the mountain top where Jesus has withdrawn to pray.

“The Mount”! It is the first time we find this term in Mark's Gospel. Usually he frames his accounts in the context of sea or desert. So there must be a theological reason which explains the geographical reference.

The mount: the most immediate reference is Sinai (Ex l9ff) where God reveals himself as the God of the Israelites, where he offers the Covenant. Mount Sinai is the moment of the great call, the moment when the Jews were constituted as the people of God, the moment of sending to the Promised Land, a sending which is mission since it must be to proclaim the wonders of Yahweh to the whole world. God, sovereignly free, calls to an encounter of love; God bases Israel's unity and identity on bonds of love, sends them to be standard-bearers of love.

But the Mount theme also alludes to Calvary, place of offering, and to the Transfiguration, proclamation of glory, passion and glorification.
Calvary is the new Sinai, place of the new Exodus, the true Pasch.
This will also be the full revelation of God, there the new people will see the light, this is from where the universal mission of the Church starts out.

Jesus' going up the mountain to call and send the Twelve is therefore a fulfilment and a prophecy. Jesus is Yahweh who in full liberty calls, convokes, establishes and sends.

"He summoned those he wanted. So they came to him".
Jesus calls them in full freedom, in obedience to the Father. It is not the Twelve who offer themselves or get themselves chosen; but it is Jesus who takes a sudden almost unexpected initiative.
The only preparation was the ascent of the mountain, where Jesus often goes to pray.
Going up the mountain with him is joining him in prayer. This is the only presupposition for the call.

Being Church

Putting together the group of Apostles, Jesus shows us that the basic call of every Christian vocation is that of being Church. And it is within this common vocation that specific vocations of following him draw their sense and origin.
It can happen that a person feels a certain specific call as something which puts him above others or in a position distinct from the Church,
That happens when a specific call is seen as a privilege, a way to follow one's own ideas, breaking solidarity with others, with the life of the people of God. This is a clerical mentality in the worst sense of the term: seeing oneself as a category apart, different from others, owner of rights that are not everyone's.
It is the mentality of someone living their call according to their own logic of ownership, instead of a logic of service.
Clerical mentality, similar to a Pharisaic mentality. People who instead of building unity work for division, splinter the Church-community into roles and castes, opposing groups.
This is no longer the work of the true God, Love and force for unity, but the diabolical work of the evil one who tends ot divide and oppose.

Living in free giving, gratuitousness

The vocation to be Church comes from God's sovereign freedom.
And within the Church, every other vocation! As a whole it is mystery.
But the mystery of free giving. No one can make claims .
Vocation dies every time it leaves aside this atmosphere of free giving to make claims on God. Think of how many times we are tempted to say: "Lord, I have done this for you, and You...?"
Vocation is a gift, always undeserved, always free.
For which the attitude of response can only be that the action of grace and basic unity that we have been the object of undeserved gift, humility that opens the door so that we continue to receive the gift.
How could we not feel on this occasion the greatness of our common Salesian vocation. The free gift of God which places in our hearts the very same love of the Good Shepherd so we may be good shepherds of the young.

Prayer

The only gesture which prepares us for the free gift of God is prayer. Jesus calls on the mountain, Jesus calls and sends those who have shared the effort of climbing the mountain of prayer.
Prayer is at the origins of our vocation: our specific and common vocation.
Prayer nurtures our vocations. Prayer is at the basis of our vocational renewal.
And this is why we could cease to be called and sent, not because God's sovereign freedom is diminished, but because our capacity to understand and accept it is diminished. Without prayer our capacity to listen to God and the young dies.
We enter a danger zone when we cease to pray, when we act out of habit, by sheer inertia.
Or maybe we do pray, but without love, without the desire that our live be transformed in charity. In this case prayer is no longer an encounter with love, no longer a dialogue of friendship, no longer intimacy, transport, fidelity.
On the contrary whoever walks as Christ, knows the constant experience of the mountain, the place of prayer, room for intimacy and confident conversation with the Father. A prayer that draws strength from the Father and urges us to gift in mission. A prayer that in the fervour of mission rediscovers the desire to hand everything over to the Father.
A Church that does not pray is a Church which loses its identity,  since it loses hearing the call, loses openness of heart to respond, loses vigour for the mission.
Our Salesian Family is a model for good, but we have to humbly implore that prayer, especially the Eucharist, always remains the vital centre of who we are and  what we do. In the opposite case we are destined to spiritual exhaustion, to being insignificant in witness, formal and unfruitful in proclaiming Jesus.

 

Being his companions

In today's passage it also says that that he called the Twelve to be his companions. We seek especially to understand the meaning that “companion" has in the Gospel texts.
Equivalent expressions are: "followers"(Lk 22, 49.56.58.59); "those who had accompanied him" (Lk 23:49);  and “friends" (Jn 15:13.14).
So "companions" indicates belonging and intimacy, marking out an almost familiar lifestyle.
But let's go back to Mark.
Those with him are those who live with him at his house in Capharnaum, who eat with him (Mk 2:1), who are present at home with him when he teaches (Mk 3:31-35); who stay overnight with him at his home (Mk, 1:35).
Note the theme of home which brings with it the idea of family. The apostles become Jesus' family. They take part in Jesus' hidden life.
We would say those who share his private life, enter into intimacy because they are his companions.

Hidden life

Does this dimension of the hidden life of Christ mean something for us?
Living a hidden life means living a life of intimacy with Christ. Tying ourselves to him to grow in our identity, tying ourselves to him to be alive in him and effective in mission.
“Knowledge-communion of Christ is not limited to intellectual acquisition, nor to the ability to use tools for biblical, patristic and spiritual reading of the Christian mystery; our vocation demands experience, communication of life, involvement in what Christ does, the belonging to him of our entire person since he always goes before us (E. Bianchi)”.

In this sense we can ask if what counts most for us is really this intimacy with the Lord developing within us, and which is the secret of our apostolic strength, or if instead what we ourselves achieve is what counts.
We run the risk of projecting ourselves outwards so much that the experience of love between ourselves and Christ takes second place, becomes remote or marginal, when we sense that it is superfluous or a hindrance.

Sending

Being with him If this is  the basic experience, the consequence is we are sent.
"He picked out twelve to stay with him and also to preach and have the power to cast out demons”
Word and signs derive naturally from this "companionship".
When a Church ceases to be with him, when it does not make of this “companionship” the soul of this same experience, then word and signs of salvation diminish.
This is the origin of mission, this "companionship".

Dear brothers and sisters of the Salesian Family, we are in the 150th anniversary of the beginnings of this Family, according to the heart of Don Bosco, the Family should be always a great movement for the salvation of the young. We accept this Word of God as a sign of a new sending. Let us return to acceptance of this call. Let us intensify our inner life and hand ourselves over totally to be "together” as the presence of his love and as bearers of his signs of salvation.

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