The first reading for mass today says, “Children, let no one deceive you. The person who acts in righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous.” And then it ends with this sentence, “no one who fails to act in righteousness belongs to God, nor anyone who does not love his brother.” These two verses in the first reading for mass have everything to do with the gospel reading today as well.
Andrew was standing there with another disciple, when John the Baptist pointed Christ out to them as he walked by. John said, “Behold, the Lamb of God.” John certainly acted in righteousness, because Jesus Himself was righteous. John’s two disciples left him and followed Jesus. That’s how it should be. John the Baptist taught his disciples well, he taught them all that he could, and then introduced them to their Lord and Savior, who would become their new teacher, and let them go.
It’s pretty amazing that John’s disciples simply walked away from their lives and followed Jesus. However if you think about it, that is exactly what our modern day priests do as well. They walk away from their lives and teachers they had in college and follow Jesus too.
Jesus turned and saw them following him and said to them, “What are you looking for?” He could ask the same question of many young men who are his modern day followers, that feel drawn to Him and are seeking something deeper. Perhaps they are seeking something that is missing in their lives, a deeper connection with the living God that they hunger and thirst for, and do not know how to fill this void in their lives.
Andrew and the other disciple asked him where he was staying and Jesus said, “Come, and you will see.” He could have simply said, “come and see”, but he didn’t. Christ said to them, “come and you will see”. It was an invitation to come home with him, in more ways than one. They were drawn to Christ and stayed with him the whole day. The time must have been etched in Andrew’s mind to have been able to recall the exact hour that he went to Simon Peter and told him that they had found the Messiah. Saint Peter heard about Jesus for the first time, at four o’clock in the afternoon. It was a very important moment in their lives.
The last sentence of the first reading for mass said that “no one who fails to act in righteousness belongs to God, nor anyone who does not love his brother.” It’s very obvious in the gospel today, that Andrew acted in righteousness and that he loved his brother Simon, by the very act of going to get him in order to introduce him to Jesus.
The first pope, who was also the person that Jesus founded his entire church on, did not come to him on his own. Another person, introduced him to Christ. This is the very basis of evangelization and the call to the priesthood too. It was a very simple act that had profound implications for all of mankind, to this very day. Andrew loved his brother and wanted to share this treasure that he had found in Jesus.
Do you love Jesus enough to want to share him with someone close to you? Has the facts, figures, and teachings of the Catholic church about Jesus Christ actually gotten in the way of simply loving the Lord Jesus? Jesus isn’t a doctrine, he is a person, both human and divine, but still a person. It’s easy to grow away from a relationship with Jesus that is developed through time in prayer and the sacraments, and get distracted by the pursuit of intellectual knowledge of Christ.
Andrew simply loved his brother and wanted him to discover this new found treasure, and to have a personal encounter with the living Christ too. Why do we complicate things so much? Love really isn’t complicated at all. Jesus really isn’t complicated at all. We just need to learn to live more in the present moment. Jesus is found in the present moment and is reflected in the faces of those around us, if we can stop our busy lives long enough to recognize him. Andrew, Saint Peter and the other disciple with them would have missed out on meeting the son of the living God, if they had not stopped what they were doing long enough to encounter Christ’s real presence among them.
