Jesus Calls Us to Follow Him
Week 9   He is Waiting for My Decision
 
Opening Prayer
Lord Jesus, we praise You.  You are wise.  In Your perfect plan, You invite us into Your life.  You lovingly seek us in our daily lives and offer us the free gift of a relationship with You. 
Forgive us for the times we’ve failed to recognize and respond to Your call in our lives.  In Your Scripture You tell us, “It was not you who chose Me, but I who chose you.” (John 15:16)  Thank you for choosing us and inviting us into the adventure of following You.  Help us to know, not just with our head but with our whole being, that You seek each one of us and call us to follow You as Your faithful disciples.  Lord, give us the desire and dedication to follow You with all our hearts.  Jesus, we trust in You.  We make this prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
AMEN
 
Reflection
From Holy Longing by Ronald Rolheiser
 
For most of us, our relationship with Jesus is one of hero-worship:  we admire Him and see Him as a model to be imitated.  But this is not enough.  What Jesus wants from us is not admiration, and not even imitation, though it is far easier to admire figures of great morality and courage than to do what they do.  No, what Jesus really wants of us is that we undergo His presence so as to enter into a community of life and celebration with Him.  Jesus, as John Shea says, is not a law to be obeyed or a model to be imitated, but a presence to be seized and acted upon.
 
With great love, Jesus has found you and called you.  He is waiting for your decision. 

 
What does it mean to you to undergo Jesus’ presence?  What does a community of life and celebration with Jesus look like? 
 
 
In those times when you have undergone Jesus’ presence, in what way did you seize His presence and act upon it?
 

Jesus has found you and is calling you.  In what way are you being invited into a deeper relationship with Him?
 
 
What is holding you back?
 
 
Praying with Tradition
CCC, #520 - 521
Jesus calls us to follow Him
 
520
In all of His life Jesus presents Himself as our model.  He is “the perfect man,” who invites us to become His disciples and follow Him.  In humbling Himself, He has given us an example to imitate, through His prayer He draws us to pray, and by His poverty He calls us to accept freely the privation and persecutions that may come our way.
 
521
Christ enables us to live in Him all that He Himself lived, and He lives it in us.  “By His incarnation, He, the Son of God, has in a certain way united Himself with each man.”  We are called not only to become one with Him, for He enables us as the members of His Body to share in what He lived for us in His flesh as our model:
 
We must continue to accomplish in ourselves the stages of Jesus’ life and His mysteries and often to beg Him to perfect and realize them in us and in His whole Church…For it is the plan of the Son of God to make us and the whole Church partake in His mysteries and to extend them to and continue them in us and in His whole Church.  This is His plan for fulfilling His mysteries in us.
 
 
What strikes you from this passage?

 
How does this connect with what we already talked about in Scripture?
 
 
Closing Prayer
 
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
 
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
 
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
 
                                                                                          Praying by Mary Oliver

Jesus Calls Us to Follow Him 
Week 8   Jesus Calls ME 
 
This past month, we reflected on Jesus as the Good News.  We hope you were able to make time to pray each day.
 
The Good News is that God loves us too much to leave us in our brokenness – He never gives up on us!!
 
For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish, but might have eternal life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him (John 3:16 – 17).
 
 Opening Prayer
Lord Jesus, we praise You.  You are wise.  In Your perfect plan, You invite us into Your life.  You lovingly seek us in our daily lives and offer us the free gift of a relationship with You. 
Forgive us for the times we’ve failed to recognize and respond to Your call in our lives.  In Your Scripture You tell us, “It was not you who chose Me, but I who chose you.” (John 15:16)  Thank you for choosing us and inviting us into the adventure of following You.  Help us to know, not just with our head but with our whole being, that You seek each one of us and call us to follow You as Your faithful disciples.  Lord, give us the desire and dedication to follow You with all our hearts.  Jesus, we trust in You.  We make this prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
AMEN
 
 
Reflection
Jesus is actively seeking us.  He is seeking each of us personally and directly.  Jesus is seeking us and inviting us into friendship with Him.  Jesus is making the first move, seeking and finding us wherever we are, and calling us into a relationship of discipleship.
 
Jesus seems to prefer friendship with ordinary people like us.  Consider His first disciples.  They were ordinary fishermen who said and did dumb things.  They didn’t always understand.  They made mistakes.  They came with fears, questions, excuses, other plans, and sometimes reluctance.  But they turned to Jesus in openness and followed Him.  Jesus calls us to do the same.
 
 
Who is Jesus for you, really?  A historical person, a great moral teacher, a philosophy, a church, a dogma, a figure for piety, a mythical super-Santa? 
 
 
Reflecting with Scripture:  Luke 5:1 – 11
 
The crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening to the word of God.  He saw two boats there alongside the lake; the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets.
 
Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, Jesus asked Simon to row out a short distance from the shore.  Then Jesus sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.  After he finished speaking, Jesus said to Simon, “Row out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”
 
Simon said in reply, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.”  When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing.  They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come to help them.  They came and filled both boats so that they were in danger of sinking.
 
When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”  For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him and all those with him.  Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”
 
When they brought their boats to the shore, the men left everything and followed Jesus.
 

• When Jesus gets in the boat, where is Simon?  Why is that significant?  What do you notice about them?

 

• What is Peter’s reaction to Jesus’ instruction to lower the nets?  What do you think was going through his mind when Jesus tells him to do this? 

 

• Have you ever felt this way in response to Jesus?

 

• When he sees the catch, how does Peter react?  What triggered this reaction?

 

• What is Jesus’ response?  What does this tell us about who Jesus chooses and calls?

 
Closing Prayer
 
 
He Desired Me So I Came Close
St. Teresa of Avila
 
He desired me so I came close.
 
No one can be near God unless He has
prepared a bed for
you.
 
A thousand souls hear His call every second,
but most everyone then looks into their life’s mirror and
says, “I am not worthy to leave this
sadness.”
 
When I first heard His courting song, I too
looked at all I had done in my life
and said,
 
“How can I gaze into His omnipresent eyes?”
I spoke these words with all
my heart.
 
but then He sang again, a song even sweeter,
and when I tried to shame myself once more from His presence
God showed me His compassion and spoke a divine truth,
 
“I made you, dear, and all I make is perfect.
Please come close, for I
desire
you.”

Jesus is Good News in our Lives
Week 7   Jesus’ Boundless Mercy 
 
Opening Prayer
Lord Jesus, we praise You, for You are the source of all blessings.  You make a way for us to live in relationship with You.  You lovingly come to free us, forgive us, and show us the way to a new life in You.  Forgive us for the times we’ve failed to recognize that the stories of our lives are the story of You redeeming us.  Thank you, Father, that You so love the world that You gave Your only Son, “so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16).  Thank you for so generously giving Yourself for us.  Help us to know, not just with our head but with our whole being, how Jesus’ coming is truly good news for our lives.  Lord, help us to live in the true joy and gratitude for all that You have done for us.  Jesus, we trust in You.  We make this prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
AMEN


Reflection
Throughout this theme of Jesus is the Good News in our Lives, we began our Discipleship Journey by reflecting on God’s love for us.  God loves us more than we can imagine, so much that He fashioned each of us in our mother’s womb as a unique creation for all time (Psalm 139).  The Creator of the universe actually knows each of us by name and, believe it or not, has every hair on our heads counted (Matthew 10:30).  God created us to live in loving relationship with Him now and for all time (1 John 3:1 – 3).
 
The problem is that we all have things in our lives that keep us from fully experiencing this loving relationship with God.  There have been times when we’ve turned away from God’s plan and chosen to go our own way, which breaks our relationship with God.  We essentially tell God that we don’t want or need him in our life.  This brokenness leaves us with feelings of guilt, emptiness, or loneliness, as if God is far from us or doesn’t exist at all. 
 
Can you recall a time in your life when you felt as if God was really far away from you?  What was that like for you?  Journal about that experience.
 

 
The good news is that God loves us too much to leave us in our brokenness – He never gives up on us!!
 
For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him (John 3:16 – 17).
 
By His sacrifice on the cross, Jesus takes upon Himself the consequences of our sins, and by His resurrection He restores our relationship with God.  This is why He says, I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me (John 14:6).
 
No matter who you are or what your life circumstances have been, Jesus is good news for your life.  If you are burdened by the weight of sin, know that Jesus has lovingly died for those sins on the cross so that you can be with Him now and for all eternity.
 
 
 
Praying with Tradition
CCC, #430, 545, 654-655
Jesus saves us
 
430
Jesus means in Hebrew: “God saves.”  At the annunciation, the angel Gabriel gave him the name Jesus as his proper name, which expresses both his identity and his mission.  Since God alone can forgive sins, it is God who, in Jesus his eternal Son made man, “will save his people from their sins.”  In Jesus (as the new Adam), God recapitulates (undoes the wrong done by Adam) all of his history of salvation on behalf of men.
 
545
Jesus invites sinners to the table of the kingdom: “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”  He invites them to that conversion without which one cannot enter the kingdom but shows them in word and deed his Father’s boundless mercy for them and the vast “joy in heaven over one sinner who repents.”  The supreme proof of his love will be the sacrifice of his own life “for the forgiveness of sins.”
 
654
The Paschal mystery has two aspects:  by his death, Christ liberates us from sin; by his Resurrection, he opens for us the way to a new life.  This new life is above all justification that reinstates us in God’s grace, “so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”  Justification consists in both victory over the death caused by sin and a new participation in grace.  It brings about filial adoption so that men became Christ’s brethren, as Jesus himself called his disciples after his Resurrection: “Go and tell my brethren.”  We are brethren not by nature, but by the gift of grace, because that adoptive filiation gains us a real share in the life of the only Son, which was fully revealed in his Resurrection.
 
655
Finally, Christ’s Resurrection – and the risen Christ himself is the principle and source of our future resurrection: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep…For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”  The risen Christ lives in the hearts of his faithful while they await that fulfillment.  In Christ, Christians “have tasted…the powers of the age to come” and their lives are swept up by Christ into the heart of divine life, so that they may “live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”
 
 
How have you experienced the Father’s Boundless Mercy (see 545 above)?
 
 
 
Christ liberates you from your brokenness, how does this lead you into newness of life (see 654 above)?



Closing Prayer
 
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
               my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
For He has looked upon His handmaid’s lowliness;
               behold, from now on will all ages call Me blessed.
The Mighty One has done great things for Me,
               and holy is His name.
His mercy is from age to age,
               to those who fear Him.
He has shown might with His arm,
               dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart.
He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones,
               but has lifted up the lowly.
The hungry He has filled with good things;
               the rich He has sent away empty.
He has helped Israel His servant,
               remembering His mercy,
According to His promise to our fathers,
               to Abraham and his descendants forever.
 
                                                            Luke 1:46b - 55
​

Opening Prayer
Lord Jesus, we praise You, for You are the source of all blessings.  You make a way for us to live in relationship with You.  You lovingly come to free us, forgive us, and show us the way to a new life in You.  Forgive us for the times we’ve failed to recognize that the stories of our lives are the story of You redeeming us.  Thank you, Father, that You so love the world that You gave Your only Son, “so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16).  Thank you for so generously giving Yourself for us.  Help us to know, not just with our head but with our whole being, how Jesus’ coming is truly good news for our lives.  Lord, help us to live in the true joy and gratitude for all that You have done for us.  Jesus, we trust in You.  We make this prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
AMEN
 
Reflection
Brokenness
 
Seeing the sign, “Puppies for Sale”, a little boy asked the store owner, “How much are you asking for those puppies?’’
“Fifty dollars each.”
The boy emptied his pocket.  “I have $2.37 – can I have a look at them?”
The storeowner whistled, and out came Lady, followed by five balls of four-legged fur.  One puppy limped and lagged considerably.  “What’s wrong with that one?” the boy asked.
“He was born without a hip socket.  The vet says he’ll limp for the rest of his life.”
The boy’s face lit up.  “That’s the puppy I want to buy!”
“If you really want him, I’ll give him to you.”
“I don’t want you to give him to me,” said the boy, annoyed.  “He’s worth every penny.  I’d like to give you $2.37 right now and fifty cents every month until he’s paid for.”
“Young man, this puppy is never going to be able to run, jump, or play!”
The boy rolled up his pant leg to reveal a badly twisted, crippled leg supported by a bulky metal brace.  “Well, I don’t run so well myself, and this puppy will need someone who understands.”
 
We all see “crippled” parts of ourselves that sadden, discourage, infuriate, embarrass, or even repulse us.  We know they are there.  Some of our own making, but most are not.  And we do our best to wish or will or pray them away…The problem is, as long as I’m bent on fixing, repairing, and renovating in order to make myself more presentable or lovable or acceptable, I am postponing the ability to receive any gifts in the moment is have right now…We have the ability to receive, to be loved, to know our value – only from a place of vulnerability.  Because in our nakedness, our crippledness, our brokenness and our vulnerability, we have no power, no leverage, nothing to bargain with.  Our identity is not dependent on becoming somebody, impressing somebody, or removing all imperfection. We can be – literally be – at home in our own skin...
 
Granted, there are flawed and weak parts that could change.  But we can’t change anything until we can love it.  We can’t love anything until we can know it.  We can’t know anything until we can embrace it…And we touch wholeness in that place of vulnerability.  There we are human.  There we are sons and daughters of God.  There we hear God speak our name.  The very image of God is imbedded in this fragile nature, in its very breakability.  It is in that vulnerability where we find exquisite beauty:  compassion, tenderness, empathy, listening, understanding, and hospitality.  The alternative?  To protect ourselves from all manner of breakability and crippledness and to seal off our hearts and souls.
 
(Excerpts from The Power of Pause, Terry Hershey; Loyola Press, 2009)

Reflect on those parts of yourself you have hidden from God. 
 
Write a letter to God about that on a piece of paper or on your computer.

 
Closing Prayer
 
Psalm 51
 

Have mercy on me, God, in Your kindness.
In Your compassion blot out my offense.
O wash me more and more from my guilt
and cleanse me from my sin.
 
My offenses truly I know them;
my sin is always before me.
Against You, You alone, have I sinned;
what is evil in Your sight I have done.
 
That You may be justified when You give sentence
and be without reproach when You judge.
O see, in guilt I was born,
a sinner was I conceived.
 
Indeed, You love truth in the heart;
then in the secret of my heart teach me wisdom.
O purify me, then I shall be clean;
O wash me, I shall be whiter than snow.
 
Make me hear rejoicing and gladness,
that the bones You have crushed may revive.
From my sins turn away Your face
and blot out all my guilt.
 
A pure heart create for me, O God,
put a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from Your presence,
nor deprive me of Your Holy Spirit.
 
Give me again the joy of Your help;
with a spirit of fervor sustain me,
that I may teach transgressors Your ways
and sinners may return to You.
 
O rescue me, God my helper,
and my tongue shall ring out Your goodness.
O Lord open my lips
and my mouth shall declare Your praise.
 
For in sacrifice You take no delight,
burnt offering from me You would refuse,
my sacrifice, a contrite spirit,
a humbled, contrite heart You will not spurn.