Today's gospel is a call to discipleship. Who knows if it happened like this? Do John and James just get up, walk away, and leave poor old Zebedee to finish hauling in the nets and bring the boat to shore? It rather looks that way. It says "they immediately abandoned boat and father to follow him." The scene could be true. The other gospels present these two as rather impetuous. Jesus Himself calls them the 'sons of thunder'.

This language of immediacy, -- get up and go, do it, -- is addressed to all of us. It is a prod, a goad from on high, to get a move on in our Christian life.

God's prompting can often be recognized as a kind of spiritual hunger, a restlessness and dissatisfaction with our lives, yet we aren't sure what it all means. We can go for years like that, perhaps trying to disregard the feelings, throwing ourselves into work and play because we do not know what to do about something so strong and yet so unclear.

But one day, something opens a door -- something as dramatic as a life event or something as subtle as meeting with someone who seems to understand. Perhaps it is a book we read, or a movie, which on the face of it can seem quite inconsequential, but coming at the right time it seems to show us the way.

And yet, as with Simon and his companions, we don't necessarily change our whole lives at once. It takes time for the message to come clear, for prayer and sharing of confidences with people we trust to make sense of it all. It takes time for us to see the implication, to begin to understand what we are called to do in practice.

The amount of time varies; it may be a few weeks or a few years, because each person, each situation is different. But the time comes, as it came for Simon and Andrew, James and John, and so many men and women after them, when a real and apparent change is demanded. We have to drop the nets and follow.

The way to enter that relationship is, in the words Jesus'* words, to "repent". This is the response to the call of Jesus'* call. 'Repent' usually means to be sorry for, to regret some wrong actions we have done in the past. Jesus is asking for much more than that. It is a call, not to wipe out the past, which is really not possible, but for a change of direction from now on into the future. The original Greek word metanoia is rendered as 'repent'. Metanoia implies a radical change in one's thinking; it means looking at life in a completely new way, making what is sometimes called a 'paradigm shift'. This new way of seeing life is spelled out through the whole of the Christian Testament.

It is only when we begin to make this radical change that we begin to become part of the Kingdom. It is only when we make this radical change that we come under the influence of God's power in our lives. We begin to see things the way God sees them and our behavior changes accordingly. The call is not just to be sorry for past sins and not to do them anymore. There has to be a complete change of direction, a deep involvement in doing God's work. Jesus can give us the only thing worth having -- knowledge of God.

Our parish patron, St. Thomas Aquinas, is one of those men and women who responded to the call of Jesus' * call and devoted their life to the pursuit of knowledge of God.

St. Thomas Aquinas was born near Naples, Italy in 1225 to a noble family. Thomas'His life was mapped-out by his parents who enrolled him in the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino at the age of five, planned he would become a Benedictine, and assumed the family's noble status would secure Thomas' him the position asof Abbot ofat Monte Cassino.

Thomas eventually began to experienced the call of Jesus'* call to drop the 'nets' of family expectation and follow a new path. He would become a simple Dominican, not a Benedictine. A month after joining the Dominicans, Thomas' his mother and brothers kidnapped and kept him for more than year as a house prisoner to persuade him to give up his membership in the Dominican order. Thomas would not renounce his calling, and they allowed him to return to his order through the intervention of Pope Innocent IV.

Thomas wanted to joined in the hunt of God and world, of heaven and earth, of happiness of man and the happiness of God. He had an important influence on the intellectual awakening that occurred in Western Europe during and after his lifetime. Previous to this time, during the Dark Ages, almost no important scientific advances had occurred in Europe or North Africa.

A central tenet of Thomas' Aquinas thinking and philosophy was that an all-knowing, all-powerful God had created the universe out of nothing. One of his major contributions to the development of scientific thought and methodology was advocacy of the idea that truth (or understanding) could be discovered through rational investigation of the natural world. As such, truth was not only the "word of God," as could be revealed by a literal interpretation of the Bible, which was commonly believed during those times. In other words, much could be learned about by the natural world by directly investigating organisms and phenomena. This approach to knowledge was crucial in the subsequent development of science as a way of understanding the natural world -- faith and reason.

Jesus came to bring light to those who live in darkness -- at the start of his ministry, during St. Thomas' time, and now. Those who are in the dark about what God plans for the world will be enlightened. For us, it is this realization that the only real answers to the great questions of life are found in Jesus. It is that realization which triggers our desire to follow him. Unlike the disciples we don't actually see the man; all we have is his words recorded in the Gospels. And yet we have chosen to follow him. We have been given the insight to see that he really is the way, the truth and the life, just as he claimed to be. This is surely the action of God's grace in our lives.

We are the apostles for the world today. It is our task to become so well acquainted with the message of Jesus that we can teach it to others. We therefore need to immerse ourselves in the Gospel, to become completely familiar with the words of Jesus and know him deeply through a lively conversation with him in prayer. It is only when we do these things that we will become more effective in our task.

Remember Jesus pursues us. His grace has been quietly acting in our lives all along. We might think that we are not worthy or able for the task -- but he knows best. Look at our patron saint. At one point in his education, his fellow students nicknamed him the "dumb ox." Sseemingly because of his large physical stature and his apparent lack of intellectual genius. But he was open to the call of Jesus and became one of the great intellectuals of the Western world. Perhaps the Aquinas of the 21^st century is seated here right now. Will YOU respond to the call of Jesus?

Deacon Paul Brown

* For the possessive form of Jesus, I prefer to use ...call of Jesus, or words of Jesus, rather than JESUS'