We probably all think we know how to put together a good group of people, a good team, a good organization.  We know the kind of people to look for, the talents to identify, and the abilities that are going to be needed.  It doesn’t matter if you’re putting together a hockey team, or a civic service organization, a rock band, or a corporation, or a church, you’ve got to find the right people.  And you want the best people in just the right positions.  When I was a kid, my brothers and I banded together with all the other kids in the neighborhood, and one summer we created our “Gang”.  We didn’t want to call it a club, or a society, or a benevolent organization.  Maybe it was because of that old TV show, but we just called it “The Gang”.  And we chose our neighbor Dean to be the president, because every group had to have a president, and because Dean was the oldest and the strongest.  We chose Dean’s younger brother, Bruce, to be the Vice-President, because he was the smartest.  We chose a girl from our neighborhood named Sara, to be the Secretary of Snacks, because she believed that her mother made the best snacks.  I gotta tell you, I really wanted to be the Secretary of Snacks, because I really believed that my Mom made the better snacks.  But then again, I really didn’t think that I wanted to be a secretary of anything.  Besides, and I know we were sexist pigs, it seemed to all of us that a girl should be Secretary of Snacks.  They made me the Chief Architect and Head of Engineering, which meant that I got to design our secret club house.  And my young brother, was the Social Director of our Gang.  We weren’t sure what a social director did, but we felt pretty certain that my brother could do it.  He was a very social kind of guy.  We put our best people in place.  And for the five or six weeks that we had together, before school started up in the fall, our Gang kept the neighborhood safe and in peace.

        We come to Mass today and we hear the story of Jesus beginning to put together His team, His posse, His home boys, His Gang.  John the Baptist is in prison.  Jesus has moved from Nazareth, to Galilee, to begin His own ministry.  And walking along the seashore, Jesus calls His first Apostles.  Jesus isn’t looking for the strongest, or the smartest, or the most creative.  In fact, if you look at a list of the men that Jesus called to be His Apostles, very few of them had any of the right credentials to do ministry.  The one Apostle who stood out with the best experience and education, was Judas, and that certainly didn’t work out very well.  I mean, look at these guys today.  Andrew, Peter, James, and John were not exactly the type of guys that you’d see on a vocation’s poster.  They were graduates of the hard-knocks school of the fishing life on the sea.  These guys didn’t know any theology, or have management skills, and nor were they trained in communications.  These guys knew fishing.  And that was about it.  And poor St. John, barely even knew any of that, because he was so young.  But Jesus saw something in those guys.  Maybe it was because Jesus knew that the profession of fishing was also a way of life that demanded Faith and Trust.  Maybe it was because Jesus knew that real fishermen are patient people, and that building His Kingdom was going to take a lot of patience.  Or maybe it was simply because, just like so many times in the Old Testament, God chose those that you would least expect to work for Him, because He wanted to make it clear that it was God who was doing all of these incredible things, and not these simple fishermen.  For whatever reason, God chose Peter, and Andrew, and James, and John, and we see the beginning of Jesus putting together His Church.

       My brothers and sisters, today we are the legacy of those first four Apostles.  Just like them, we can’t explain why we were chosen, why we were called.  But called and chosen WE ARE!  Today, two-thousand years later, the same Church that we founded by Jesus and His Apostles is entrusted to us.  Today we are to be busy building the Kingdom of God.  Jesus didn’t want to just do it by Himself, He wanted us to be intimately involved in building the Kingdom that would be our salvation.  We have a job to do, all of us!

How important it is that we see and realize every day that if the Kingdom is going to ever become a reality, we have a very important role to play.  We too might not be the smartest, or the strongest, or the bravest, or the most creative, but we are called.  We might not speak Greek, or know the entire Code of Canon Law, or have the Catechism memorized,  but we still have our job to do.  Let us get busy!  In our example, in our service, in our evangelization, in all of our efforts, may that Kingdom that Jesus taught about, that Kingdom that we pray for so often, may that Kingdom become a reality in us, and through us!  Let us use all that we have to be the new Apostles!

May God bless us,  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…AMEN !!!

St. Maria Goretti…Pray for us !!!