2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Cycle B) – January 18, 2009

Scripture Readings
First 1 Samuel 3:3b-10, 19
Second 1 Corinthians 6:13c-15a, 17-20
Gospel John 1:35-42

Prepared by: Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P.

1. Subject Matter
• Vocation and discipleship
• Belonging to God
• The attractiveness of Christ; Christ as the supreme and ultimate object of our desire

2. Exegetical Notes
• “The Lord called to Samuel…. Speak, for your servant is listening” – “The story opens (1
Sam 3:1-2) with the vocabulary of sight and insight. Visions are infrequent. Eli’s eyesight is
growing dim; he cannot see. The lamp has not yet gone out. This visual vocabulary prepares
us for an ironic contrast. The boy Samuel sleeps near the ark, which is a source of divine
presence and illumination, but he cannot perceive what is really happening, whereas the
priest Eli, nearly blind and sleeping apart from the divine presence of the ark, finally
perceives that the Lord is speaking to Samuel.” (The New Interpreter’s Bible).
• “You are not your own” – “Paul lays down the defining claim for the believers: They are those
who were set apart for God, who were ‘bought for a price,’ who do not belong to themselves
but to their (new) Lord, who will ultimately share with their Lord in resurrection, and whose
bodies, their very selves, are members of Christ and the temple in which the Holy Spirit
dwells. As persons who have nothing that was not given to them as a gift by God and
therefore who are indistinguishable the one from another (4:7), believers should not form
cliques as if their baseline stories are not the same but should instead ‘glorify God in your
body’ (6:20)…. For Paul, and indeed for everyone in his time, nobody was without a master,
a lord to whom they were in some measure responsible. Their culture was in this way a
vertical one; even Marcus Aurelius, the emperor, mused about everyone being ultimately
derived from and dependent upon deity…. All people are dependent on some being or some
thing beyond themselves to give them meaning and significance (cf. Rom 14:7). So for Paul
the issue is not whether one has a lord or not; one simply will have some lord. At stake is
what lord one will have.” (The New Interpreter’s Bible)
• “Come and you will see…. It was about four in the afternoon” – “The invitation ‘Come and
you will see’—a conditional imperative conveying the sense ‘If you come - and I want you to -
you will see’(D. B. Wallace)—is issued on Jesus’ behalf by Philip to Nathaniel in Jn 1:46….
The evangelist’s reference to the “tenth hour” is the first reference to time in this Gospel (later
instances are 4:6, 52; 19:14). Clearly, by mentioning the time, the evangelist gives evidence
of eyewitness testimony.” (Andreas J. Köstenberger, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the
New Testament)
3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church
• 1 God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created
man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every
place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all
his strength.
• 44 Man is by nature and vocation a religious being. Coming from God, going toward God,
man lives a fully human life only if he freely lives by his bond with God.
• 1269 Having become a member of the Church, the person baptized belongs no longer to
himself, but to him who died and rose for us. From now on, he is called to be subject to
others, to serve them in the communion of the Church, and to "obey and submit" to the
Church's leaders, holding them in respect and affection.
• 1877 The vocation of humanity is to show forth the image of God and to be transformed into
the image of the Father's only Son. This vocation takes a personal form since each of us is
called to enter into the divine beatitude; it also concerns the human community as a whole.
• 2567 God calls man first. Man may forget his Creator or hide far from his face; he may run
after idols or accuse the deity of having abandoned him; yet the living and true God tirelessly
calls each person to that mysterious encounter known as prayer.
4. Patristic Commentary and Other Authorities
• John Cassian: “The Lord desired that one whom he judged most worthy to be selected by
himself should be reared by an old man so that the humility of him who was called to a divine
ministry might be tested and so that the pattern of this subjection might be offered as an
example to young men.”
• St. John Chyrsostom: “If our body is a member of Christ and Christ has risen from the dead,
our body will surely follow his lead.”
• St. John Chrysostom: “The two disciples did not right away go and interrogate Jesus on great
and necessary doctrines, nor in public, but sought private converse with him; for we are told
that Jesus turned, and saw them following, and said to them, What seek you? Hence we
learn, that when we once begin to form good resolutions, God gives us opportunities enough
of improvement. Christ asks the question, not because he needed to be told, but in order to
encourage familiarity and confidence, and show that he thought them worthy of his
instructions.”
• St. John Chrysostom: “Christ does not describe His house and situation, but brings them
after Him, showing that he had already accepted them as His own. He says not, It is not the
time now, tomorrow you shall hear if you wish to learn; but addresses them familiarly, as
friends who had lived with him a long time.”
• Theodore of Mopsuestia: “‘What are you looking for?’ Jesus did not say this out of ignorance
but rather in order to give them an occasion to trust him. They immediately called him ‘Rabbi’
and showed their profound intention, that is, that they had been led to Jesus for not other
reason but the desire to obey him as a teacher. And at the same time they asked him where
he lived, as if they wanted to come to them often. He did not point out a house but told them
to come along with him and see, by giving them the space for greater familiarity and trust
toward him.”
• St. Cyril of Alexandria: “Then they beg to know where Jesus lives, since they are looking for
an appropriate time to tell him their concerns. They probably did not think it was right to talk
about such vital topics as companions on a journey.”
• St. Elizabeth Ann Seton: “Jesus our all is ours, and will be ours for ever. And yet we are not
our own—but his to whom he has committed us. O happy bondage! Sweet servitude of love.
Look up my soul, fear not, the love which nourishes us is unchangeable as him from whom it
proceeds. It will remain when every other sentiment will vanish. O glory, honor, praise and
thanksgiving! He is our own priest, our tender mediator, our faithful friend, who will never
leave us. No distance can separate, no time obliterate, for life and death he is our own. O
sacred, precious, dear possession, he will never leave us nor forsake us.”
• Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar: “Discipleship here [in John] simply means follwership, walking
behind Jesus without knowing anything more than that one has been sent…. [They ask,] Tell
us where you are at home, so we can get to know you better… ‘Abiding’, or ‘staying’ is the
word John uses for Jesus’ ultimate being, the word of faith and of love.”
• Fr. Maurice Zundel: “We are often taken in by success, dazzled by gold braid, flattered by
titles, subdued by money. We are carried away by words, we beg for compliments, we pay
marked attention to people who have made it so that they may hasten our climb. But all that
remains exterior to ourselves. Our soul experiences the void in all that as soon as it is turned
on itself. Something it never does better than when it comes across someone animated by
the impulse of true kindness. What a mysterious baptism are these tears we can hardly hold
back when we see a loving face, revealing to us a world we possibly believed to have been
abolished, and to which we, in all the sinews of our being, now feel we belong: the world of
the spirit and of quality, of silence and of light. We were there as we had been on other days,
involved in the same gestures, enslaved to the same attitudes, and this light passed by,
drawing forth beyond this undiscerning automatism, beyond common routines, a Presence
still hidden but immediately recognized in the excitement it stirred within ourselves.”
• Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar: “The dispossession that takes place in these stories of vocation
is total, not partial; the whole man enters God’s service bodily, to accompany, see, stay.”
• Msgr. Luigi Giussani: “The first two who followed Jesus on the banks of the River Jordan are
the first protagonists, after Mary, of a mysterious re-conquest of what is human: they were
the first protagonists of the encounter with Christ, with an exceptional presence in history.
The Gospel, in which John after so many years wrote down his memories of that day, barely
sketches the encounter with Jesus near the Jordan, how he followed him after the Baptist’s
‘strange’ words when he pointed him out, the sojourn at his house after they asked him
where he lived and he replied simply, ‘Come and see.’ And yet, as F. Mauriac notes in his
Life of Jesus, that episode still constitutes the most moving passage of the whole Gospel. In
fact, the story is told of an encounter, an encounter both precise and historic (even the time
of day is recorded – four in the afternoon) and yet nearly everything is left implicit in the
 disciple’s notes in the Gospel. We can well imagine what is left implicit seeing how later on it
became explicit and changed the lives of those two fishermen. But already in that first
decisive encounter their humanity and their hearts must have been stirred by a presentiment,
by an initial yet clear evidence: no one had ever spoken to them the way that man did; they
had never met anyone like him before. Years later how many more things had they seen
since that day and how much more had they understood (albeit confusedly) of what he had
started to say then! And yet, the whole exceptional nature of that encounter was still intact in
the mind of the elderly evangelist. Their hearts that day had encountered a presence which
unexpectedly and evidently corresponded to their desire for truth, for beauty, for justice – that
constituted their simple, unpretentious humanity. From then on, though betraying him and
misunderstanding a thousand times, they would never leave him and would become ‘his
own.’ Right from the start that Presence had instilled an urgent desire for change in their
lives, for the fulfilment of their humanity so strong that history would be changed by their
activity and holiness would penetrate the world as the unimagined experience of purity and
human fruitfulness. In fact, the inevitable consequence of the Christian event is that a new
type of ‘morality’ is born. It flourishes not out of devotion to rules that, however subtly, are
dictated in the last analysis by the common mentality (even masked as individual morality)
and, therefore, by the power that influences it most. It flourishes, rather, out of the recognition
of an exceptional encounter. It is a morality, a change in our judgment and actions that is
brought about by the dynamics Romano Guardini expresses so well: ‘In the experience of a
great love, all that happens becomes an event in its sphere.’ For the presence of Christ and
being his friends puts into our lives a capacity and a tendency to see and treat people and
things while taking all the factors at play into account: with respect and attention to both
detail and destiny. In this sense true morality, like true reason, consists in wanting to be
consciously open to all the factors at play in reality.
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes—
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars

• The certainty and conviction that St. Therese of Lisieux had about her religious vocation at
an astoundingly young age in large part was driven by her desire. She explains it this way:
How merciful is the way God has guided me. Never has he given me the desire for
anything which he has not given me, and even his bitter chalice seemed delightful to
me…. Instead of doing me any harm, of making me vain, the gifts which God showered
upon me (without my having asked for them) drew me to him; and I saw that he alone
was unchangeable, that he alone could fulfill my immense desires…. I know that Jesus
cannot desire useless sufferings for us, and that he would not inspire the longings I feel
unless he wanted to grant them. Oh! How sweet is the way of Love! How I want to apply
myself to doing the will of God always with the greatest self-surrender!… God cannot
inspire unrealizable desires. I can, then, in spite of my littleness, aspire to holiness. It is
impossible for me to grow up, and so I must bear with myself such as I am with all my
imperfections…. [The Lord] has always given me what I desire or rather he has made me
 desire what he wants to give me…. Your love, [O my God,] has gone before me, and it
has grown with me, and now it is an abyss whose depths I cannot fathom…. I ask Jesus
to draw me into the flames of his love, to unite me so closely to him that he live and act in
me. I feel that the more the fire of love burns within my heart, the more I shall say: ‘Draw
me’.”
6. Quotations from Pope Benedict XVI

• “The Gospels agree in mentioning that the call of the Apostles marked the first steps of
Jesus’ ministry. They were men who were waiting for the kingdom of God, anxious to know
the Messiah whose coming had been proclaimed as imminent. It was enough for John the
Baptist to point out Jesus to them as the Lamb of God (cf. Jn 1:36), to inspire in them the
desire for a personal encounter with the Teacher. This is how the Apostles’ adventure began,
as an encounter of people who are open to one another. For the disciples, it was the
beginning of a direct acquaintance with the Teacher, seeing where he was staying and
starting to get to know him. Indeed, they were not to proclaim an idea, but to witness to a
person. Before being sent out to preach, they had to “be” with Jesus (cf. Mk 3:14),
establishing a personal relationship with him. On this basis, evangelization was to be no
more than the proclamation of what they felt and an invitation to enter into the mystery of
communion with Christ (cf. 1 Jn 1:1-3).”
• “In biblical language: in order to know Christ, it is necessary to follow him. Only then do we
learn where he lives. To the question, ‘Where are you staying?’ (Who are you?), he always
gives the same answer: ‘Come and see’ (Jn 1:38—39). The disciples were able to give a
different answer to the question about Jesus than ‘men’ [in general] did, because they lived
in fellowship with him.”
• “Authentic Christian discipleship is marked by a sense of wonder. We stand before the God
we know and love as a friend, the vastness of his creation, and the beauty of our Christian
faith.”
• “Have we perhaps lost something of the art of listening? Do you leave space to hear God’s
whisper, calling you forth into goodness? Friends, do not be afraid of silence or stillness,
listen to God, adore him in the Eucharist. Let his word shape your journey as an unfolding of
holiness.”
• “Have courage! You too can make your life a gift of self for the love of the Lord Jesus and, in
him, of every member of the human family. Friends, again I ask you, what about today? What
are you seeking? What is God whispering to you? The hope which never disappoints is
Jesus Christ. The saints show us the selfless love of his way. As disciples of Christ, their
extraordinary journeys unfolded within the community of hope, which is the Church. It is from
within the Church that you too will find the courage and support to walk the way of the Lord.
Nourished by personal prayer, prompted in silence, shaped by the Church’s liturgy you will
discover the particular vocation God has for you. Embrace it with joy. You are Christ’s
disciples today. Shine his light upon this great city and beyond. Show the world the reason
for the hope that resonates within you. Tell others about the truth that sets you free.”
• “My dear young friends,…may you step forward and take up the responsibility which your
faith in Christ sets before you! May you find the courage to proclaim Christ, “the same,
yesterday, and today and for ever” and the unchanging truths which have their foundation in
him. These are the truths that set us free! They are the truths which alone can guarantee
 respect for the inalienable dignity and rights of each man, woman and child in our world….
Let your faith and love bear rich fruit in outreach to the poor, the needy and those without a
voice…. I urge you: open your hearts to the Lord’s call to follow him in the priesthood and the
religious life. Can there be any greater mark of love than this: to follow in the footsteps of
Christ, who was willing to lay down his life for his friends?.... Dear friends, only God in his
providence knows what works his grace has yet to bring forth in your lives.”
• “Only the man who ‘risks the fire’, who recognizes a calling within himself, a vocation, an
ideal he must satisfy, who takes on real responsibility, will find fulfillment. It is not in taking,
not on the path of comfort, that we become rich, but only in giving.”
• “The breakthrough to the new man takes place in Jesus Christ. In him the real future of man,
what he can be and should be, has in fact begun. The inner self of Jesus, as it is portrayed
throughout the whole of his life and finally in his self-sacrifice on the cross, offers a measure
and prototype of future humanity. It’s not for nothing that we talk of following Christ, of
entering upon his way. It is a matter of inner identification with Christ—just as he identified
himself with us. That is really what man is moving toward. It is in the great stories of
discipleship, which extend across the centuries, that we first see unfolding what is hidden in
the figure of Jesus. It is not the case, then, that a schematic pattern is imposed, but that
every potential development of true human existence is contained therein. We see how
Thérèse of Lisieux or Saint Don Bosco, how Edith Stein, the apostle Paul, or Thomas
Aquinas, has learned from Jesus how to go about being human. All these people have
become truly like Jesus—and they are nonetheless different and original.”
• “Discipleship means that now we can go where (according to John) Peter and the Jews
initially could not go. But now that he has gone before us, we can go there too. Discipleship
means accepting the entire path, going forward into those things that are above, the hidden
things that are the real ones: truth, love, our being children of God…Discipleship is a
stepping-forward into what is hidden in order to find, through this genuine loss of self, what it
is to be a human being.”

7. Other Considerations
• The theme of “looking” dominates today’s Gospel (also 1 Sam 3:1-2!). John is moved to cry
out: “Look! There is the Lamb of God!” John has spent his life watching for the coming of
Jesus. John the Baptist’s life is fulfilled once he has directed others to set their sights on the
Lord. Once the disciples begin to follow the Lamb, Jesus turns around, notices them, and
asks: “What are you looking for?” They in turn ask: “Rabbi, where do you stay?” And Jesus
responds: “Come and see.” Jesus invites all those who regard him with attentiveness, trust,
and abandon to look at the intimacy of his life more closely and personally. This seeing of
Jesus’ dwelling leads the new disciples to stay with the Lord throughout the day. And as they
remained with Jesus in the place “where he was lodged,” the disciples came to recognize
Jesus as the Messiah. Looking is a form of conversion. This meeting transforms the
disciples, and it propels one of them, Andrew, to rush to tell his brother Simon about their
discovery. Once in his presence, we are told that Jesus “looked at him and said, ‘You are
Simon, son of John; your name shall be Peter.’” Those who have looked away from worldly
concerns and have seen Jesus where he lives are in turn “looked at” by the Lord. As with
Peter, this gaze of Jesus sets us apart and blesses us with a new identity, a new name, and
a new purpose.
Recommended Resources
Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament.

Benedict XVI, Pope. Benedictus. Yonkers: Magnificat, 2006.

Biblia Clerus: http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerus/index_eng.html

Cameron, Peter John. To Praise, To Bless, To Preach—Cycle B. Huntington: Our Sunday

Visitor, 1999.

Hahn, Scott:
http://www.salvationhistory.com/library/scripture/churchandbible/homilyhelps/homilyhelps.cfm.

Martin, Francis: http://www.hasnehmedia.com/homilies.shtml