In This Tyranny, Christ Is Calling Us Ashore to a New Life
Jesus calls his first disciples in the dark, not once order is restored — and America is now being summoned to conversion in the face of a dictatorship of lies.
Dear friends —
Beginning this month, I’m publishing a weekly Sunday reflection grounded in the Mass readings — offering a clear-eyed way to follow Jesus amid today’s political realities, not by retreating from public life or baptizing any ideology, but by letting the Gospel shape our conscience, courage, and compassion.
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“He said to them, ‘Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.’ At once they left their nets and followed him.” — (cf. Matthew 4:19–20)
Today’s Gospel presents a striking scene. Simon and Andrew dropped their nets at once, and James and John left their boat and family behind to follow Jesus. That swift, total “yes” meant saying no to everything else. They closed off their former life because a brighter path beckoned ahead.
But let’s not romanticize it. This wasn’t just a spiritual awakening. It too was an economic and social rupture. They gave up security, stability, and social roles. They weren’t just “following their hearts.” They were saying: this new life is worth more than the one I’ve built so far. And they made that decision in a moment.
Jesus issued this call at an unlikely time: John the Baptist had just been arrested. Yet Jesus didn’t wait for a safer moment. He stepped into Galilee’s darkness as light. It’s a lesson we ignore at our peril. If we wait for perfect conditions to follow God, we may never move.
God often calls us when it seems most inconvenient, working even in our fear, even in our disorder, even when the road is unclear.
Following Jesus isn’t a self-help strategy or a productivity hack. It requires movement — and movement requires leaving. For those fishermen, it was their nets, boats, and family. For us, it might be our comfort zones, our idols of success, our patterns of escapism.
I know this because I fight this every day. I like keeping my options open, playing both sides, hedging every bet. But to say a real “yes” to Christ is to say a real “no” to everything that hinders that journey. There is no version of Christianity that lets us follow Jesus while dragging along everything he asks us to leave behind.
That’s where discernment matters. The Catholic faith tradition invites us to ask not “What do I want?” but “What does God want for me?” That question can terrify us, especially if we imagine God as a cold master or a disinterested tyrant. But if we believe God is a loving friend — someone who wants our deepest joy — then the question becomes liberating.
Because our truest desires aren’t in conflict with God’s will. They are planted by God.
In short, God’s deepest desires are, in fact, our own.
So what gets in the way? Clutter. Fear. Status obsession. The idol of other people’s opinions. Our fear of missing out. Our need to control outcomes. Our refusal to choose. These are the nets that tangle our feet and keep us on the shore.
And if we don’t name them, we’ll live our whole lives staring out at the water, never taking the step that might change everything.
Pope Francis once warned, “When we stop walking, things go wrong.” That’s not just true for us as individuals. It’s true for our country too.
What do I mean?
