CHOOSING TO FULFILL OUR CALL

SAINT MATTHIAS, APOSTLE

Act 1:15-17,20-26; Ps 113; Jn 15:9-17

The Called and the Choice

The celebration of the feast of Saint Matthias offers us the opportunity to meditate on the manner of our destination to God. We have understood from our Lord that no one comes to him without the Father drawing him. We have also explained that this initial pull is natural in every man and arises from our nature made for God. The fact that God created us to know, love, and serve him in this world, to be happy eternally with him in the next, implies our connaturality with the Eternal Word. God draws us to his knowledge through his word. Since we are part of his creation, God draws us through our nature, which seeks good, and God, who is the ultimate Good. This natural pull to life, truth, and goodness constitutes the structure of moral law within each of us. Thus, God’s revelation of his Son corresponds to this inner and natural pull he placed in each of us to receive his revelation. Given this natural endowment to receive God’s revelation of himself in his word, one who turns away or closes his mind and heart to the word of God commits sin and dies subsequently. He dies because the word of God is our true life, and he turns into darkness because the word of God is our light. We conclude from this understanding that God made no one and destined him to hell of fire, but a result of the choices we make.

The above gives a good background to the story of Judas Iscariot. He was born with the natural pull to life, truth, and goodness like any other. The Father re-enforced the natural by drawing him to encounter the Son of Man. Hence, on the authority of our Lord’s words, we can say that all the Father gives him, come to him. Therefore, that he came to be with the Son of Man implies that the Father gave him to the Son. But our coming to the Son of Man is in stages. We have explained the stages as purification, illumination, and mystical union. These three stages constitute a successful coming to the Son of Man. We have also described the journey as into mysteries of the Son of Man. The coming is a choice we must make and keep making by continuous profession of faith in Jesus Christ, his humanity, and divinity. The love of the Son and the Father continues to abide in us as long as we continue in faith. The Holy Spirit leads us into the mysteries of Christ. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.”

The only way to make the demanding journey into the mysteries of Christ is to know this love of the Son and the Father demonstrated by the Son of Man in his life, death, and resurrection. Thus, Jesus says: “A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you.” So, frequent and constant reading, meditation, and contemplation of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the way into the mysteries and union of love. Judas’ lack of attention to these mysteries was his undoing. He came physically to the Son of Man but failed to mentally and spiritually be with him. His mind and heart were not with Jesus. Peter spoke of him, “Brothers, the passage of scripture had to be fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit, speaking through David, foretells the fate of Judas, who offered himself as a guide to the men who arrested Jesus—after having been one of our number and actually sharing this ministry of ours.” God has called all of us to his Son; we must come to Jesus Christ and remain with him physically, mentally, and spiritually to be chosen or elected. “We must therefore choose someone who has been with us the whole time that the Lord Jesus was travelling round with us, someone who was with us right from the time when John was baptising until the day when he was taken up from us—and he can act with us as a witness to his resurrection.” God chose Matthias to be an apostle because he was steadfast in following Jesus. He calls us to be in the company of Jesus Christ so that we may testify to his life, death, and resurrection. The attainment of union with him and the communion of saints entails this witnessing till death.

Let us pray: O God, who assigned Saint Matthias a place in the college of Apostles, grant us, through his intercession, that, rejoicing at how your love has been allotted to us, we may merit to be numbered among the elect. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.