Reflection on Tuesday, Week 8 of Ordinary Time
“Peter began to say to Jesus, ‘We have left everything and followed you'” (Mark 10:28).
In order to leave everything and follow Jesus, to leave home and land and father and mother and children, the disciples first had to be spiritually free.
To be spiritually free, to be “indifferent,” to embrace the Christian version of what Buddhists call “non-attachment” (we are attached only to Christ), is to St. Ignatius’ approach to the Christian life. It is the heart of the approach. It arises from the first principles and foundations of spiritual practice. All things being equal, says Ignatius, we should prefer neither health nor disease, wealth nor poverty, good or bad reputation, but only that which is most useful to God.
We do not predetermine what conditions of life will best glorify God. You can’t put a timeline on glorifying “when I finally beat this chronic disease.” “It’s time to get out of this stifling relationship.” “When we are finally financially secure, we will be ‘free’ to serve God and our fellow man.” Rather, we should be aware of whatever condition we find ourselves in. We are also called to dedicate our lives to God.
So Peter, John, James, Thomas and Matthew were freed to no longer be attached to their lives, their jobs, their fishing nets and their tax tables. They set aside their preferences for what their lives should be and embraced the future that Christ was going to give them.
(I can’t help but think that these people weren’t necessarily all that “spiritually free” before they met Jesus. Perhaps it takes a lot of Christ’s persuasive work to bring out that spiritual flexibility.) They needed a look and sometimes had to empty the sea of fish, yet no one forced them to follow Jesus.
In the fall of 1997, I attended a friend’s wedding and it was raining that day. I mean, it was really raining. The reception was at Happy Hollow Country Club, and the rain poured down on that happy hollow.
It was as if a dark angel had sent down a bucket of water to see if this downpour would make her miserable and gloomy. My friend? She wasn’t fazed in the slightest. (It was clear that she was not just “putting on a brave face”; she was full of joy, regardless of the weather.)
She was not attached to a sunny or soggy wedding, preferring to embrace only what God moved her to embrace. She set aside her preference for the sky on her wedding day and embraced the actual way the sky looked.
Is this a bit of a quibble? Compare the young brides of the late 1990s “giving up” on wedding weather expectations to the first century disciples “giving up” on them. Throughout life To follow the Messiah, the Suffering Servant, the Lamb of God? Perhaps.
But the truth is, I still remember the beaming face on her face as she walked out of the reception hall in the pouring rain, and that has left me with a woman who didn’t mind rain on her wedding day, a free spirit who wasn’t attached to material circumstances and just accepted the reality of the moment, all these years later.
And if any of us could have even a tenth of that attitude, that embrace of God, that calmness, it would be no small thing.
If we, like my friend (and still do), came even remotely close to giving our all to the God of irresistible joy, who knows what energy that would unleash? I don’t know either. No one knows how far it will spread around the world. Who knows what seeds will blossom and inspire countless others to do the same by witnessing such an exciting moment of pure spiritual freedom.
