Discipleship and Complacency

The story of the disciples in the New Testament is one that has always captivated my imagination. It's an amazing tale to envision: twelve men being taken from various lives and being drawn close to this one man. They see Him heal the sick, hear Him preach to the crowds, witness him multiplying loaves and fishes. They look on in awe when He walks on water, and three of them see Him speak with Moses and Elijah. Then they walk with Him into Jerusalem as people lay palms beneath His feet. Just a few days later, these twelve men share a meal with Him that will be shared with millions of people throughout the ages. Then, they leave Him. They abandon Him. One of them directly betrays Him, ten other flee out of fear, and only one, the youngest, remains to stand at the foot of His cross. But after He has died, they come back. They seek forgiveness; they can only wander so far away before being drawn back to Him. And three days later, they receive the news that He is alive.

As if these events weren't extraordinary enough, their lives become even more extraordinary from here on out. These eleven men, soon to be twelve again, receive blessings and powers that they never could have imagined. Through the power of the One they followed, they begin to work miracles and healings. They speak in different tongues and proclaim Him to authorities they so recently feared. As the years go on, they will scatter across the globe to tell more people about Him. All of them will suffer for Him, and ten of them will die for Him. The only one who won't directly shed His blood will be the last of the disciples alive, the one who stood at the Cross, and he will suffer a white martyrdom of exile.

All in all, the disciples had pretty amazing lives. And yet, these stories are not the stories of their whole lives. These stories are the parts that we know. However, what were their lives like before they met Him, before they met Jesus? In all likelihood they were normal. Their lives were filled with their faith, friends, family, and work. In many ways, they were unremarkable. And this fact, the fact they they went from unremarkable to surely remarkable, attests to the heart of the Incarnation, and thus to discipleship. It is the transformation of the ordinary into the extraordinary. It is sharing in divinity, because Christ shared in our humanity. It is the exaltation and transformation of the normal.

To be a disciple of Christ is to truly experience this in our lives. Through our baptism we are remade; our whole lives are remade. No longer is their such thing as simply ordinary. Every moment, every action becomes possibly an extraordinary moment or action that will hopefully be remembered in eternity. Every moment and action becomes an opportunity to love Christ and to know Him better, and each moment that we do will bring great joy to us forever when this life is over.

And yet, because every moment is extraordinary, we often let the extraordinary become ordinary. It must be an effect of original sin that we let the life of grace become ordinary simply because we are continually living it. It is an absurdity of fallen man that the extraordinary becomes ordinary simply by repetition. Really, the extraordinary should become more extraordinary if it happens all the time. Had Jesus continually multiplied loaves and fishes, it would not have been any less of a miracle, though perhaps man would have stopped to wonder at as much. Similarly, had Jesus walked on the water every day He would still be defying laws of physics on a daily basis, though man would have simply grown to call it His daily walk.

But in order to live the life of a disciple, we can never allow ourselves to forget the extraordinary workings of God in our lives, even if our lives do not change as drastically as the disciples. What made the disciples saints, though, was not that they continually remembered how Jesus had freed them from the lives of fishermen, tax collectors, zealots, etc. Rather, it was the fact that they continually remembered that Jesus had freed them from the lives of sinners. In remembering the true miracle of Jesus's effect on their lives, the disciples did not become complacent, as we so often do. They recognized, and gave thanksgiving for the extraordinary workings of God.

We, on the other hand, often fail in this area of discipleship. At least, I know I do. Too often I become complacent. I take the blessings of God, the mercy of God for granted. I'm happy to take His mercy and live as a good man, even though He is calling me to be a holy man. I look at my life and I say to myself "there are plenty of days, hours, and minutes left to experience the mercy of God." Every time I do say this, I have missed an opportunity. I have forgotten that all I have is right now, this day, this hour, this moment. I become complacent because I don't truly believe this. I think of being a disciple of Christ, the commitment that goes along with this, and I think "I cannot really do that for so many days, hours, and minutes. I will be good today, and perhaps tomorrow I will give my all to God." And yet, that is not what God asks of us. He does not ask us to commit ourselves to Him for the rest of our lives. He only asks us to give everything to Him right now. If I only focus on right now, giving myself to Him this moment, then I can do it. Being small, we cannot bear much more than this, and He knows that.

Discipleship requires this extraordinary living in every moment. A simple thing to do, and yet so hard because of our fallen natures. Perhaps if we just forgot tomorrow, and lived for Him today. "Be not therefore solicitous for tomorrow; for the morrow will be solicitous for itself. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof." Mt 6:34.