Follow Me !
What could be simpler than the words of our Lord with which He began the gathering of His Disciples, and the work of His ministry. . ."Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men`. This is addressed to (Simon) Peter, Andrew, and James and John (the sons of Zebedee). They were fishermen tending their boasts. But when Christ came and called them, they immediately left their boats (and their father, Zebedee, in the case of James and John), followed Jesus.

Since Jesus Christ came into the world to save it, we might ask the obvious question, "Why did the world, and man need to be saved?" St. Paul writes that Jesus Christ came in order to rescue us from this present wicked world (He) gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father (Gal 1:4). Thus man was told that Jesus Christ is the One Who is to save His people from their sins, for the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost. It is clear that not only is the world wicked, but we who live in it are sinners and we are lost.

This takes us back to the Garden of Eden, and there we learn that God created Man in His own Image and Likeness. He placed him in this world, blessed him, and said to him: be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion…over everything that moves on the earth (Gen.1:26). But man, who was given all this and told to follow God`s will, was seduced by the Devil, and having abandoned the following of God, found himself floundering and slipping into the "nothingness" from which God had called him. In short, man had fallen into sin, and was on his way to destruction – Death.

The coming of Christ was for the purpose of saving man from the awful end, and that salvation could only be accomplished if man would return to his original purpose, that, to follow God`s will. Therefore, it makes sense that the first appeal that God`s son makes to those who are to be saved is: Follow me! – that is, abandon the wrong way of using our world – to work against God (under the Devil`s influence)- and follow the right way of "doing" the will of God and working with God – abandon your boat, your Father, and Follow me!

In the world today, we are once again beginning to hear the words of an old teaching, we must live in such a way as to respect the world, and its laws, we cannot ignore or change the laws of nature, failure to do so invites disaster. This can be readily in seen in the havoc we are creating in the world by abusing our environment-the air we breath, the earth we live on, the water we drink. When we pollute these, abuse them in any way, we are in danger of drowning, of being poisoned, of being choked to death in our own filth.

The same is true of our moral and spiritual life. It is madness to think that we can ignore the basic laws of decency written into our conscience and our moral intuitions, these we can not abuse for long and hope to survive! The moral filth and pollution of the mind and spirit can and will drown us, choke us, and even destroy us, surely as polluted water, soil, and air. If we think for one moment that we can break with impunity these fundamental laws of divine nature and survive, we are sadly mistaken. Our hearts and our spirits are crying out to our minds that disaster is close at hand, and it is our own making.

      The world that Jesus Christ came into was in the very same danger. It was such a world that God sent His Son, to save and not destroy. But there is one fundamental difference today. We stand on the other side of the Cross. Jesus Christ has come. He had indeed put an end to the slow, slide of man as a moral, spiritual creature, into corruption and death. He halted that process by dying for us on the Cross, by rising on the third day, and ascending to the Father, lifting up our redeemed nature, and by praying the Father to send down upon us the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to sanctify that which He had saved. Thus we may have the road to salvation opened to us. But a road is of no value to anyone unless we get on that road and follow it to its destination:

Today Christ calls us to follow Him – and I will make you fishers of men. Not only will we be saved but we will be in the position to save others.. But we must bear in mind that following Christ means to abandon "the boat" – the old way that has no hope, but leads only to destruction and death and our father, like James and John did and acknowledge a new Father of us all God Himself and His Son Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer.