Office for Vocations

FOLLOWING CHRIST
From a commentary by St Jerome 4
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Peter spoke up and said to Jesus, “Look, we have given up everything and have followed you. What are we going to possess?”

Great self-confidence! Peter was a fisherman, he had never been wealthy, he earned his bread by his labour and skill; and yet he confidently asserts, “We have left everything.” And since it is not enough merely to leave everything, he completes his thought by adding, “And we have followed you. We have done what you commanded. How then will you reward us?”

But Jesus said to them, “Amen I say to you that you who have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory, you shall also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Jesus did not say, “you who have left everything.” For…many others besides have shown contempt for wealth. What Jesus did say was, “you who have followed me.” This applies only to the apostles and believers.

In the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit upon the throne of his glory, when even the dead will rise incorrupt from their state of corruption, you also shall sit on judgment seats….And everyone who has left house, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting.

This passage agrees with that other statement of our Saviour, where he says, “I have come not to send peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man at variance with his father, and a daughter with her mother, and a daughter-in-law with her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be those of his own household”. Those, therefore, who, for the sake of their faith in Christ and the preaching of the gospel, have sacrificed their natural feelings and all the wealth and pleasures of this world — they shall receive a hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting.

4
In Matth., 3,19. PL 26, 138-139. Trans. from “Cistercian Lectionary Project, 1968,” 40-41.