I hope your first week of ordinary time was very exciting and fulfilling as we try to our journey from now until Lent and Easter. I know to talk about spring is crazy since last week we had some of the coldest temperatures we’ve seen all winter, but spring is coming which means the Church’s celebration of Easter is just around the corner! So if you didn’t have anything to look forward to, now you do.
This past Sunday’s Gospel is one of my favorite passages from the Gospel of John. In the above passage we see the beginning of what is likely to be Andrew and John’s vocation story. They respond to John the Baptist’s declaration of Jesus as the Lamb of God. They then begin to follow Jesus, seems kind of weird and stalker-ish in itself. Then Jesus turns around and asks both of them what they are looking for. Upon first read it sees like kind of a random question. I can imagine them being quite surprised with a question from this man they have come to know as the Lamb of God and even more anxious about coming up with a qualified answer. “Where are you staying?” they asked. Where are you staying!! What kind of question is that? Is that all they could come up with? Now come on, they are standing in front of the Messiah and all they ask is where are you staying?! But we must reflect upon that question, to see how profound it truly was.
Let me be a seminarian for a second and say the actual Greek word used in this question was the word “dwell.” Where do you dwell? With the Greek meaning of the word it makes this question even more beautiful. These new followers of Jesus wanted to know where he dwelled. A few verses earlier in John’s Gospel is his famous line of “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). God came to dwell among us and with great faith, the first followers of Jesus wanted to know where he dwelled because they wanted to be close to Him. They left their ways of life, their families and all that they knew to be with Jesus. Where are you staying? What a great question.