St.

Paul's Letter to the Romans 2:10-16

Prokeimenon. Mode 1.
Psalm 32.22,1
Let your mercy, O Lord, be upon us.
Verse: Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous.
Brethren, glory and honor and peace for every one who does good, the Jew first
and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality. All who have sinned without
the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law
will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous
before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles who
have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to
themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law
requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and
their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when,
according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.
2nd Sunday of Matthew
The Gospel according to Matthew 4:18-23
At that time, as Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon
who is called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they
were fishermen. And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers
of men." Immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on from
there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother,
in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them.
Immediately they left their boat and their father, and followed him. And he went
about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the
kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people.

The call of the disciples and their immediate obedience to Jesus is in itself miraculous.
We are not given an explanation as to why they so completely submit themselves to
Christ, but they do. And though they leave the boat and their father to follow Christ,
we know later in the Gospels they still have a boat to use and in Johns Gospel are still
clearly fishermen after the resurrection of Christ so they arent abandoning the
profession completely, but now additionally follow Christ after being called.
The other version of the call of the disciples, found in the Gospel according toSt. Luke
5:1-11, has Jesus performing a miracle in helping the disciple make a huge catch of fish
and then they are called to follow Christ. In the Luke version the response of the
disciples to Christs call is explained by the miracle of the catch of fish.
Sister Katrina, a nun of New Skete wrote of the response of the fishermen after the
miraculous catch of fish to follow Christ:
When we go to the depths with Christ, we learn who we really are often by
learning who we are not, and leaving that behind. Its interesting that the choice
Peter and his fishing partners make is to leave behind exactly what they thought they
had been hoping for, and working so hard for. They learned something about who
they really were. When they realized who they really were, the amazing catch
became just a smelly heap of dead fish. (Gospel Reflections, pps. 9-10)
Part of what Christians come to realize is that all the success in the world really does
not amount to all that much when one considers that life on earth is relatively short
when compared to the eternity of existence. We can pursue all the material wealth we
want on earth, but it really is only borrowed goods and never permanently ours for
when we die we do not take the material wealth with us. Our pursuit of the things of
the earth proves to be a temporary illusion a mirage on the sojourn through earth.
For earth turns out not to be paradise but despite it offering us some oases along the
way, still a desert compared to the paradise of God.