Today’s readings: 1 Samuel 3,3-10.19; 1 Corinthians 6,13-15.17-20; John 1,35-42.
We have problems today with institutions that regulate our lives. Where belief, values and style of life are concerned it seems we shun parameters and prefer to give priority to what we feel convinced of in conscience. This is a major task ahead even for the Church which for centuries banked on obedience to objective rules binding each and everyone whatever the circumstances.
For many this seems to be the end of religion. But it can also be a call to go back to the drawing board and return to other ways and means of transmitting the faith. It may be a return to authenticity, beyond the historical and cultural support in which faith was mummified. What we need today is a faith that provides a ‘home’ in the face of so many areas of our life where we are homeless.
In today’s gospel, the way John narrates the first callings suggests this. “Where do you live?” they asked Jesus, as their master, John the Baptist, suggested. It is significant that this account, which John the evangelist says happened “about the 10th hour”, around 4pm, sets the stage for an entire gospel whose leitmotif is ‘searching’. Andrew, Peter and other disciples of John the Baptist were searching for the Messiah. Throughout the gospel they are followed by many others on the same track.
The pre-existent Word entered time as man among men, not to be admired or simply to serve as role model. The gospel says: “They went and saw where he lived, and stayed with him the rest of that day”. He was a turning point.
Israel had for so long expected this turning point. For almost 400 years no prophets were around and people were tired of waiting and fast losing hope. This was the ripe moment, the hour of grace, the time not of promises but of fulfilment of things hoped for.
Many a time the faith we are transmitting seems to bear within it no message at all. It is becoming mute in the face of the hard talk and facts we have to digest daily.
Faith in Christ is no longer at the centre of our culture, our academies, our politics. That may seem tragic in the eyes of generations used to the idea of a societas Christiana, with faith being the soul around which everything revolves. But is it so tragic?
Faith as an ideology can give birth to atrocities of all sorts, can translate itself in dogmatism, can be converted into fundamentalisms that know no limits and that generate no respect for humanity at its core. Humanity has experienced this throughout the ages and quite scandalously in the 20th century. All this happened in times when the signs of faith were everywhere.
The locus of faith is first and foremost the heart, not culture, society or politics. It is in interpersonal relationships, in the conscience, in intimacy as represented iconically in the simple yet profound first question of the Johannine gospel: Where do you live?
If we all revisit the history of our personal faith, we have to distinguish between faith lived as in incubation, where the right conditions were provided and assured, and faith when lived as an encounter, an event, a turning point in our own personality and outlook. That encounter is the gist, the essence of what faith is about.
In today’s first reading we have Samuel’s calling and opening up to the Lord to the extent that “the Lord was with him and let no word of his fall to the ground of all that the Lord had told him”.
True faith is born in intimacy, in the depth of our conscience, because it is a response that involves us totally, that opens our existence to someone out there who really cares and who can really provide a turning in our life. It is only the capacity to listen that makes this miracle of faith possible. If I do not know what I am searching for, it’s difficult for me to find what I need.
Faith can best be transmitted in connection with our search for the sense of things and through person-to-person contact. Our circle of friends can be determining for each and every one of us in what we search for and what we actually find.