Love At First Sight

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle A

Is 8:23-9:3-1
Ps 27:1,4,13-14
1 Cor 1:10-13, 17
Mt 4: 12-23

It was love at first sight.

Do you believe in love at first sight? For years I didn’t. I thought that love is too complicated to fall into so casually. Love is not a thunderbolt that strikes you, it comes only through gaining knowledge of another person over time, which eventually turns to trust and then to love. Anything else is just infatuation. And yet for Peter, Andrew, James and John it was love at first sight. All it took for them to leave their jobs, their families and the lives they’d built for themselves was one look at Jesus. Their love at first sight was life changing and everlasting. They never went back to their old ways of life. Everything had changed for them in an instant.

The political and social commentator Dennis Prager wrote a couple of articles recently on the subject, “What do men and women want?” He started with what men want most, and he made the point that what a man wants most of all from the woman he loves is to be admired. At first I thought that was a bit shallow, but then I thought that maybe he was right, and I could relate to it. We men work hard to make a name for ourselves, and we look for acceptance and kudos most from those whose opinion we value the most. He then followed up with what a woman wants most of all. I figured it would be love, love, love, because women are all about love. Or jewelry. Prager said that what a woman most wants is to be loved by a man she admires. Men want to be admired by those they love, women want to love someone they admire. Sounds perfectly complementary. But I think it is a bit too restrictive. I think we all want to be admired by those we love, and we all want to be loved by those we admire. It’s not a gender thing. It’s universal. When we are loved by someone we admire it raises our self worth. If someone so special loves us then we must also be special, and everyone wants to feel special.

And that explains a bit about why those fishermen could leave hearth and home and follow someone they had just met. There must have been something special about Jesus’ manner, how he carried himself, how he spoke, the way he looked at you, that compelled people to follow him. We have a word for it – charisma. And I think that special thing was a pure and unconditional love. Along with a complete knowledge and understanding of who they were and what they wanted. When Jesus looked at them they looked into the eyes of love himself. With no judgments or preconditions or baggage. Just love. And that must have been overwhelmingly attractive.

It was love at first sight for Jesus, too. He asked those fishermen to follow him because he loved them from the moment he first saw them. He loved them because he admired them, too. He admired them from the moment he conceived his first thought of them, before their parents or grandparents were even born. From the beginning of time. He admired them because he knew them from the womb. He knew all their strengths and weaknesses. He knew all their joys and fears. He knew who they had been and who they were destined to become. And all that knowledge shone forth in his eyes as he greeted them on the shoreline.

That look of love was only the beginning. When Jesus invited the apostles to follow him he didn’t sit and talk to them awhile about who he was or what he was all about, or leave them with a little pamphlet to read. He simply went on his way and left it up to them whether or not they came after him. His invitation was not to follow him intellectually, it was to leave their old lives behind completely and live the life he had chosen. He didn’t ask them about their pasts or backgrounds. He didn’t care about their sins or shortcomings. He wasn’t worried about where they had been. He was interested in where they were going. He never judged them, but he challenged them. When they left their old selves behind they were called to a life of action. And that action led eventually to their martyrdom. Just like Jesus.

Jesus came upon James and John mending their nets. They were not fishing, they were preparing to fish. They had been preparing to meet Jesus their entire lives, without knowing it. And Jesus took them where they were in their stations in life and turned their vocations into discipleship. We also have been preparing to meet Jesus our entire lives, without knowing it. When we finally encounter his look of love we are also called to discipleship. And he calls us where we are, as who we are. If we are educators he calls us to be teachers of men. If we are doctors he calls us to be healers of men. If we are mothers he calls us to be nurturers of men. If we are fathers he calls us to be providers and protectors of men.

He calls us all in his own way, and he doesn’t just leave us with a pamphlet, or a bible, or a DVD. He simply says, “Come, follow me”. He doesn’t care where we’ve been, he’s only concerned where we are going. He looks into our eyes and knows us. He admires us for who we are. All he asks is that we look back into those eyes of love and accept that love and admiration.

But then we have to walk along life's shoreline and call others to him in exactly the same way.