A Word for the Second Sunday After Pentecost (11)

And He said to them: come after Me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they at once left their nets and followed Him (Mt 4:19-20).

Today, beloved brethren, there was read at the Liturgy the Gospel of the Lord’s calling to the apostolic rank of the blood brothers, the fishermen Peter and Andrew, and of two other blood brothers, James and John, sons of Zebedee, likewise fishermen. It happened thus: Jesus Christ, «walking by the Sea of Galilee» — otherwise called the Lake of Galilee, or of Tiberias — «saw two brothers: Simon, called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen, and He says to them: come after Me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they at once left their nets and followed Him. Going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and He called them. And they at once left the boat and their father, and followed Him» (Mt 4:18-22). Then the Gospel tells of Jesus Christ’s going about the region of Galilee, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every sickness and infirmity among the people.

This same Gospel is read at the All-Night Vigil on our patronal feast of the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called. By the calling of Peter and Andrew, James and John, the Lord laid, in His Church, the foundation of the apostolic and priestly calling—a high, heavenly, angelic calling, even higher: the rank of Christ Himself; for the apostles and the clergy continue the very work of Jesus Christ the Savior, that is, the work of the salvation of men, the work of their reconciliation with God. Let us speak now, then, for our common benefit, of why Jesus Christ called to the apostleship simple, unlearned, poor people.

So then, why did the Lord call to the apostolic calling not the noble and mighty or the rich of this world, not the wise and understanding, or the learned, but people of low estate, unlearned and poor? The holy Apostle Paul, called to the apostleship out of persecutors of the Church of God and out of the learned, explains the reason why the Lord called simple people to the apostolic calling.

God chose the senseless of the world, to put the wise to shame; and the weak of the world God chose, to put the strong to shame; and the unimportant of the world and the despised and the things that mean nothing God chose, to abolish the things that mean something—so that no flesh should boast before God (1Cor 1:27-29). The Apostle Paul himself, called out of the wise of this world, says of himself that God sent him too to proclaim the good news not in the wisdom of speech, but in simplicity, so as not to abolish the cross of Christ (1Cor 1:17)—that is, the power of the merits of the cross of Christ our Savior, which are mighty to save believers even without our own vain wisdom.

So then, this is why the Lord called the Apostles from among simple people—that it might be evident to all that the Christian faith, and the salvation it grants to men, and its wondrous spread across the earth, is the power of God, and not the work of human wisdom and strength. This is the first reason.

The second reason is this: since the Lord came into the world in our flesh to heal our nature, fallen through the pride and cunning of the enemy and through the intemperance of the belly, then, wishing to teach the whole of mankind a lesson of simplicity, humility, and moderation in all things, He chose, even in the very choosing of the future physicians and fishers of mankind, men who were simple and poor, who limited themselves to only what was necessary, and never dreamed at all highly of themselves. For this same reason He Himself, as the Physician of ailing mankind, is born of a poor Virgin, in a poor cave, and had a poor man for His supposed father, and lived in poverty, having nowhere to lay His head. This is the second reason.

The third reason why the Lord chose the Apostles from a simple and poor estate, and not from the noble and the rich, is this: as you yourselves all know, riches bind the hearts of men to themselves and tear them away from God, and give occasion to many, many sins.

The Lord Himself says: you cannot work for God and riches (Mt 6:24); it is easier for a camel to pass through the needles’ ears than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God (Mt 19:24). The holy Apostle John the Theologian says: whoever loves the world, in him there is no love of the Father, that is, of God, our heavenly Father, for all that is in the world: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and worldly pride (1Jn 2:15-16). How, then, could the Apostles, if they had been chosen from rich people who loved riches, have led people to God, have kindled in the hearts of men a burning love for Him, without themselves having love for Him in their own hearts? This is why the Apostles were chosen from among poor people—that is, so that for the love of God they might more easily break their bond with the world and with sin, and cleave with their whole heart to God.

The fourth reason why the Apostles were chosen from poor and simple people is this: that they might more readily receive into their hearts the riches of the grace of God, which is poured out abundantly into hearts that are humble and simple, hungering and thirsting for the righteousness of God, and does not find room in hearts proud and haughty in their own imagined righteousness. Had they not renounced narrow self-love and earthly acquisitions, or the imagined wisdom of earth, they could not have had love for God and for all mankind; and without love they could not have been fit for the apostolic ministry, which demanded a burning love for mankind, being saved by God the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit: they had to enter into the Spirit of the love of Christ, and to be bearers and dispensers to others of this same spirit—the spirit of righteousness and holiness, the spirit of meekness and humility, freedom from malice and patience, self-restraint and incorruption. They would have become salt that had lost its savor, and so unable to preserve mankind from the corruption of sin, had they themselves been rich and noble.

And the apostles’ hearts received the grace of the Holy Spirit abundantly on the day of Pentecost, and with this grace they filled the whole world, and it has reached even to our own day, and will be poured out upon the worthy until the end of the age.

Notice, from today’s Gospel, how the fishermen Peter and Andrew, James and John, swiftly and irrevocably left both their homes and their scant possessions, and followed after Jesus Christ; how simply and admirably they acted! Had they been rich, they would not have left their homes and their possessions so simply. A certain rich young man once came up to Jesus Christ to ask His counsel for attaining eternal life, but, on hearing that he must give away his goods to the poor, went away sorrowful from Jesus Christ. But in the Apostles, the resolute leaving behind of earthly and perishable goods was, by the grace of God, the cause of their burning love for God and neighbor and for their high calling and their work; it was their spiritual riches, their strength, their glory, their adornment and their light. What shall separate us from the love of God, says the Apostle Paul? Nothing; neither tribulation, nor distress, nor persecution, nor sword, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor death, nor life, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature—not even Angels, nor principalities, nothing (Rom 8:35-39).

And how they loved their neighbors! Not as we love—indeed, we have never even dreamed that we love anyone as the apostles loved: they were ready at every hour to lay down their souls for people; and for this the godly people loved them so much that they were ready to pluck out their own eyes and give them to them. The Apostles had nothing, yet possessed everything—were as beggars, yet enriched many by the grace of God. Silver and gold I do not have, says the Apostle Peter to a man lame from birth, but what I have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk: and the lame man rose up and began to walk and to leap (Act 3:6-8). See what power was theirs: they healed every kind of sickness, raised the dead, cast out demons, trod upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy (Lk 10:19), that is, of the demons, without any harm to themselves; they could comfort every sorrowing soul with the same comfort with which they themselves had been comforted by God. Is this not power? And what of their glory? While still in mortal flesh, or out of the flesh, they were caught up to the third heaven and heard unspeakable words (2Cor 12:4)! While still in the flesh, they were counted as gods come down from heaven, and men wished to honor them with sacrifices and incense! All the people of Jerusalem magnified them (Act 5:13), says the holy Evangelist Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, of the apostles and the first Christians.

The fifth reason why the Lord called simple people to the apostleship is this: since the apostles were to teach people on earth a heavenly manner of life—passionless, blameless, holy—in expectation of the future blessed life, which never grows old, they themselves too had to show to all on earth an example of passionlessness and holiness, of freedom from possessions and of a heavenly life on earth, so that believers might the more readily be taught by the example of their life and their own freedom from passion. When it pleased God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb, to reveal His Son in me, I did not confer with flesh and blood (Gal 1:15-16)—that is, he cast off every worldly attachment.

The sixth reason: the holy Apostles, as preachers of spiritual freedom in Christ, had themselves to be clothed with spiritual freedom, through complete indifference to everything temporal; but one who is attached to earthly things cannot be spiritually free—he is a slave to his own whims. The Apostles, however, were, by the will of God and their own free choice, free from every earthly attachment; they taught a new life in Christ, and were themselves, before all others, a new creation. The Apostles were soldiers of Christ, for whom there lay ahead a warfare not only with men, or with their passions and lawless deeds, but with the kingdom of Satan, with the principalities and powers and the world-rulers of the darkness of this age, with the spirits of wickedness under heaven (Eph 6:12). What, then, must the soldiers of Christ be like? They had to be spiritually invulnerable to all the powers of the enemy, and they could be invulnerable only when they had no attachment to anything earthly, not even to their own life: for the enemy usually wounds through fleshly and worldly attachments; let these attachments not be in us, and we are invulnerable, by the grace of God. Such were the apostles, and all the holy martyrs, hierarchs, venerable fathers, unmercenary healers, all the saints. They were strong in their own freedom from attachment, in the putting to death of the flesh with its passions and lusts. For no one who becomes a soldier binds himself with the affairs of everyday life, so as to please his commander (2Tim 2:4).

The hellish malice of their tormentors, and the fearsome torments to which they subjected the confessors of the name of Christ, were powerless to break their courage and patience: they were above every fear and torment. Such was the meaning of their freedom from attachment to the flesh and to the world!

Finally, the seventh reason is this: that God rests in simple hearts, but in cunning hearts there is no place for Him.

Let us too, according to our own strength, imitate the apostolic freedom from passion, that we may serve God with a pure heart, may succeed more and more in love for God and neighbor, spurring one another on to good works (Hebr 10:24). Amen.