|Bishop Barron
翻译|Carrie

朋友们，在今天的福音中，耶稣邀请首批门徒与祂同住。我想耶稣这个命令有点像入会仪式。为了预备好成为终生的信徒，追随耶稣的人必须首先经过一段强化的精神修炼，就像修道院的见习者或者橄榄球的集训营或者军队的新兵训练营。在这个强化阶段，信徒们要深刻学习这种全新生活方式的精髓，懂得如何彻底依赖天主。

 

那么，这与我们有何关系？你会说：“我身为一个年届五旬的男人，有妻子儿女有职务责任，岂能坐上渔船随波逐流，全心全意仰赖天主。”

 

你说得对，但你可以每年避静一次。每年在修道院或避静中心逗留一周，热切地进行灵修；或者把今年的四旬期过得更苛刻更彻底，比如进行难度大的斋戒或持续施舍直到心痛。诸如此类的事我们每一个人都可以做到。

 

Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus invites his first disciples to come and stay with him. I think that this command of Jesus is a bit like an initiation ritual. In order to prepare themselves for a lifetime of discipleship, his followers must first pass through an intensive period of spiritual formation, much like a novitiate in a monastery or training camp in football or boot camp in the army. During this concentrated time, they were to learn, in their bones, the essentials of this new way of life. So the disciples learn a new way of radical dependency upon God.

 

Now what does all of this have to do with us? You say, "I’m a 50-year-old man with a wife and kids and job and responsibility; I can’t very well go drifting off in a boat, trusting in the providence of God."

 

True enough, but you can, for instance, go on a retreat every year. Spend a week once a year at a monastery or a retreat center, living the spiritual life intensely; live Lent more severely and more radically this year, perhaps undertaking a difficult fast or giving alms until it hurts. These are things that any of us can do.