Friday of Week 2 – Heb 8:6-13; Ps 84:8.10-14; Mark 3:13-19

The vocations crisis is a crisis of love. Love is wrongly understood as being the maximisation of pleasure, wrongly experienced in taking advantage of another person. We are not called to any sort of love, but to the model of love left to us by Jesus Christ, about which we gain knowledge from the Gospel. Today’s word of God, which concludes with the word “betray”, is the announcement of something that later happens. Judas was the only disciple who didn’t hear the call of Jesus to love, which is why he left the Upper Room. We know the rest of his story. He betrayed Jesus, but in reality he also betrayed himself, he betrayed his vocation. We also often leave, not hearing the words of Jesus to the end. However, we can always return because the door, after our departure, does not slam shut for ever. Peter left too and betrayed his vocation. This is why when Jesus again called him, He asked him about love: “Do you love me?”. Faithfulness to our vocation to love has a very important consequence. The more we are faithful to it, the more we become witnesses for those who are still distant from Christ.

Lord Jesus, I do not want to reduce love to just nice words and empty gestures, but I want to make it the basis of my life, always having in You the perfect model. Amen.