As mentioned in the Introduction, a brief summary of the Bible is this: God is love and Jesus shows us what love is. The goal of the Christian life is to embrace and live out that love. We do that by following Jesus: the basic call of the gospel. We need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, and even more so, we need to keep our hearts open to the invitation: “Follow me.” (Mk 2:14)
Jesus is always our companion and model as we seek to answer the fundamental questions of “where are we going and how do we get there?” Following Jesus goes beyond the teachings of the church, beyond reading the Bible, beyond any devotions or other favorite religious expressions. Following Jesus is at the heart of authentic spirituality. Following Jesus turns our lives upside down. Following Jesus is the same today as it was in the day of the disciples on the lonely roads of Galilee. It calls one out of the comfortable hiding places and takes us “where you do not want to go.” (John 21:18)
This task of following Jesus is a very complicated maneuver. It is not enough to have the right information. It is not enough to follow the standard practices and regular rituals. Truly following Jesus is only possible by dying to our selfish patterns and diminishing our passion for control and independence. Following Jesus is about living the truth that is God’s love revealed in Jesus. Our Christian journey is a slow process of growing into surrender to the Father. “Not my will be done but yours be done.” (Lk 22:42)
In the Gospels, Jesus is continually expanding the horizons in accepting all people. He draws near to the blind man, the many possessed and the lepers. His tenderness and acceptance of the many troubled women shattered the rigid separation and degradation of women that was standard practice at the time. He had compassion and acted on it in feeding the multitude. Jesus’ gift of his life on the Cross was simply an expression of how he lived his life reaching out in love and kind-heartedness for all.
Following Jesus is only possible for us with many levels of conversion and deep-seated personal change. We slowly learn how expansive the gospel horizons of inclusion actually are. We start out with immediate relationships and responsibilities. We need to live each day with a sense of call to include more in a truly loving way. This demands a continual shattering of our comfortable limits. Each of us, in our concrete situation, will receive the call to be like Jesus going the marginated, the excluded and the rejected. “Follow me” only makes sense when our death to the false self lets us reach out to our brothers and sisters.
In The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis has this marvelous comment on our personal call to follow Jesus: “Jesus wants us to touch human misery, to touch the suffering flesh of others. He hopes that we will stop looking for those personal or communal niches which shelter us from the maelstrom of human misfortune and instead enter into the reality of other people’s lives and know the powers of tenderness.” (The Joy of the Gospel: #270)
We move from a head trip to the reality of true personal commitment when we reach out in love to the “other”. This is how we let “walking with Jesus” transform our lives. True faith and true knowledge of God only happen when we truly live the gospel message.
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