2nd Sunday of Matthew

On the Second Sunday after Pentecost the Church gathers into a single commemoration all the saints, known and unknown, who have shone forth in a given land. Having celebrated on the previous Sunday the whole choir of All Saints across the ages, the Church now narrows her gaze to her own soil. In the Antiochian Archdiocese this Sunday keeps the memory of the saints of Antioch together with the saints of North America—a fitting pairing, for the two are bound by a single thread of mission. It was at Antioch, as today’s Epistle relates, that “the disciples were first called Christians,” and it is from that same apostolic See that the Gospel was carried, century upon century, until it reached this continent.

The harvest is genuinely diverse. North America has already given the Church saints in nearly every category: equals-to-the-apostles and missionaries such as St. Herman of Alaska, the first of the canonized North American saints; hierarchs such as St. Tikhon of Moscow, who served as bishop here before his patriarchate and martyrdom, and St. Raphael of Brooklyn, the beloved Antiochian shepherd of the “scattered sheep” of North America; martyrs such as St. Juvenaly and St. Peter the Aleut; and righteous teachers such as St. Alexis Toth and St. John Maximovitch of Shanghai and San Francisco, whose relics rest in California. From the Antiochian motherland the calendar is older still, reaching back to the great hierarchs and martyrs of Syria—Sts. Ignatius the God-bearer, John Chrysostom, the holy martyrs of Antioch, and the desert ascetics of the Orontes valley.

The connection to the Gospel is direct and deliberate. The four fishermen of Galilee heard “Follow Me” and “immediately left their nets.” Every saint commemorated today is, in the end, one more catch of that same net—a man or woman who heard the same call, in a synagogue, a tundra village, an immigrant parish, or a city tenement, and answered it. The saints of Antioch and North America are the proof that the apostolic vocation given on the shore of Galilee did not end with the Twelve. It runs unbroken to our own continent and our own day, and it is extended, on this very Sunday, to each worshiper in the nave.

The Prophet Elisha lived in the ninth century before Christ and was a native of Abelmaum near the Jordan. He was called to the prophetic ministry by the Prophet Elijah himself, who found him plowing and cast his mantle upon him. When the time came for Elijah to be taken up into heaven in the fiery chariot, he asked his disciple what he might do for him before departing. Elisha asked boldly for the great inheritance: “Let there be a double portion of your spirit upon me.” Taking up the mantle that fell from his ascending master, Elisha received the power and the prophetic gift of Elijah, and he served as prophet for more than sixty-five years, under six kings of Israel from Ahab to Joash.

His life overflowed with miracles. He divided the waters of the Jordan by striking them with Elijah’s mantle; he healed the bitter spring at Jericho; he multiplied a poor widow’s oil to deliver her from her creditors; he raised the son of the Shunammite woman from death; he cleansed Naaman the Syrian of his leprosy; and after his own repose, a dead man cast into his tomb came to life upon touching the prophet’s bones. In every wonder Elisha appears as a foreshadowing of the Gospel: the healing of the leper, the raising of the dead, the feeding of many from little.

The Church appointed Elisha’s feast in this season with care, and the Fathers love to read him typologically. Elijah, taken up into heaven, is a type of the ascended Lord; Elisha, who receives a double portion of his master’s spirit and continues his work upon the earth, is a type of the apostles, who received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and went out to do greater works than they had seen. On this Sunday of the calling of the first apostles, the Prophet of the double portion stands as the Old Testament’s own icon of what it means to inherit a master’s spirit and take up his mantle.

Saint Methodius was born of wealthy parents in Syracuse of Sicily toward the end of the eighth century. Drawn to the service of God from his youth, he went to a monastery on the island of Chios, which he restored with his own means. Sent to Rome as an envoy of the exiled Patriarch Nicephorus during the second outbreak of iconoclasm, he became a tireless champion of the holy icons. For this confession he was exiled by Michael the Stammerer and later, under the Emperor Theophilus, shut up for years in a dark and fetid tomb on an island, where he nearly perished.

After the death of Theophilus, the holy Empress Theodora recalled Methodius, and by the common vote of clergy and people he ascended the patriarchal throne in 842. Together with Theodora he restored the veneration of the holy icons—the event the Church celebrates each year on the First Sunday of Great Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy. He spent his remaining years binding up the wounds left by the long iconoclast persecution, governing with both firmness and mercy, and laboring, even in old age, as a gifted calligrapher who copied out many books of the Psalms. He fell asleep in peace in 847 and was numbered by the Church among her Confessors. His memory is kept on June 14 together with that of the Prophet Elisha.

• “Christ comes, fishing for them.”—Theophylact of Ochrid
• “They delayed not, they procrastinated not... but they forsook all and followed, even as Elisha did to Elijah.”—St. John Chrysostom
• “Such is the obedience which Christ seeks of us, as that we delay not even a moment of time.”—St. John Chrysostom
• “When they had not as yet seen any sign, they believed in so great a reach of promise.”—St. John Chrysostom
• “The teacher casts the net of the divine word upon the people, not knowing who among them will come to God.”—St. John Chrysostom
• “It is the greatest of virtues to care for one’s father in his old age.”—Theophylact of Ochrid
• “When does it become necessary to leave one’s father? When the father becomes an impediment to virtue and reverence for God.”—Theophylact of Ochrid
• “He begins with miracles, to give credibility to what He teaches.”—Theophylact of Ochrid

”And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen.”

St. John Chrysostom (+ 407)

John tells us that they were called in another manner, so that this was a second call; and from many things one may perceive it. There it is said that they came to Him while John was not yet cast into prison; but here, after he was in confinement. And there Andrew calls Peter, but here Jesus calls both. The difference is no contradiction but a sign of their progress: in the earlier meeting they were instructed beforehand, so that here, having heard one bare word, they followed immediately. Their ready obedience and their abandonment of all things show how well they had been prepared.

Theophylact of Ochrid (+ 1107)

These two had been disciples of John, and while John was still living they had approached Christ. But when they saw John arrested, they returned again to their fishing, and so Christ comes, fishing for them.

”Then He said to them, ‘Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.’”

St. John Chrysostom (+ 407)

Mark both their faith and their obedience. For though they were in the midst of their work—and you know how greedy a thing fishing is—when they heard His command they delayed not, they procrastinated not, they said not, “Let us return home and converse with our kinsfolk,” but they forsook all and followed, even as Elisha did to Elijah. Such is the obedience which Christ seeks of us, that we delay not even a moment of time, though something most needful should press upon us. And most of all do I admire them for this, that when they had not as yet seen any sign, they believed in so great a reach of promise, and accounted all things second to following Him.

Theophylact of Ochrid (+ 1107)

Behold obedient men, who followed Him immediately. From this it is clear that this is the second time He called them. For they had been taught by Christ on a previous occasion, then left Him, and when they saw Him again they followed Him readily.

”They immediately left their nets and followed Him.”

Theophylact of Ochrid (+ 1107)

Behold obedient men, who followed Him immediately. From this it is clear that this is the second time He called them: for they had been taught by Christ on a previous occasion, then left Him, and when they saw Him again, they followed Him readily.

”Going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. He called them,”

Theophylact of Ochrid (+ 1107)

In a boat with Zebedee their father: it is the greatest of virtues to care for one’s father in his old age, and for the father to be supported by the just labors of his sons. Mending their nets: they were poor, and as they were unable to buy new nets, they were stitching together their old ones.

”and immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed Him.”

St. John Chrysostom (+ 407)

He calls them while they are actually at work, to show that following Him ought to be preferred to all occupations. The operations of their secular craft were a prophecy of their future dignity. As he who casts his net into the water knows not what fishes he shall take, so the teacher casts the net of the divine word upon the people, not knowing who among them will come to God; those whom God shall stir abide in his doctrine. “Fishers of men,” that is, teachers, that with the net of God’s word you may catch men out of this world of storm and danger.

Theophylact of Ochrid (+ 1107)

It appears that Zebedee did not believe, and it is for this reason that they left him. Do you see when it becomes necessary to leave one’s father? When the father becomes an impediment to virtue and reverence for God. When James and John saw the first two follow Christ, they rightly followed Christ as well, imitating their good example.

”And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people.”

St. John Chrysostom (+ 407)

When He had caught them, then He begins in their presence to work miracles, by His deeds confirming the words of John concerning Him. And He continually frequented their synagogues, even by this instructing them that He was not an adversary of God but had come in accordance with the Father. Whenever anything strange and surprising is done, and a new way of life is introduced, God is wont to work miracles as pledges of His power, which He affords to those who are to receive His laws.

Theophylact of Ochrid (+ 1107)

Jesus enters the synagogues of the Hebrews to show that He is not opposed to the Law. He begins with miracles, to give credibility to what He teaches. By “disease” is meant chronic illness, and by “infirmity,” a temporary bodily disorder.

Source: Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, Homily 14

Chrysostom dwells at length on the apparent discrepancy between John’s account of an earlier meeting and Matthew’s account of the call by the sea, resolving it as a deliberate pedagogy: Christ first instructs, then calls definitively. He draws out the pastoral lesson that the obedience of the four is praiseworthy precisely because it was given before any miracle had been seen—faith resting on the word alone. He also reads the fishermen’s craft as itself a prophecy of the apostolic office, the casting of the net standing for the universal, indiscriminate preaching of the Gospel.

Source: The Explanation of the Holy Gospel According to Matthew

Theophylact, condensing the Eastern tradition for parish use, supplies the human detail the brief Gospel omits: that Peter, Andrew, James, and John had already met the Lord through John the Baptist, and that this was a second and final call. His comments on Zebedee are pastorally rich—praising filial care for an aged father while teaching that even such a good must yield when a parent becomes an obstacle to godliness. His one-line summary, that Christ “comes, fishing for them,” gives the whole passage its governing image.

The hinge of the Gospel is a single adverb: “immediately.” Twice it falls—Peter and Andrew “immediately left their nets,” James and John “immediately left the boat and their father.” Chrysostom marvels that this obedience came before any sign, resting on the bare word of Christ. The Fathers do not read this as recklessness but as freedom: the soul that has decided to follow Christ rather than itself is loosed from its possessions, its livelihood, even its attachments, and so can move without the long deliberation that betrays a divided heart. The call is not to admire Christ from the shore but to leave the shore. For a preacher, the question this places before the congregation is not whether Christ has called—He has, in baptism and chrismation—but whether the response has been “immediately” or “after I have first attended to everything else.”

Christ does not abolish the disciples’ trade; He transfigures it. The skill of the fisherman—patience, knowledge of the waters, the casting of a net that cannot see what it will catch—becomes the image of the apostolic ministry. Chrysostom presses the point that the one who casts the net “knows not what fishes he shall take,” so that the preacher labors in hope and not in calculation, leaving the gathering to God. On the Sunday that commemorates the saints of Antioch and North America, this theme reaches its full span: the net first cast on the Sea of Galilee has been drawn across continents and centuries, and every saint of this land is one of its catch. The vocation is not archived in the past; it is handed to the Church of every age and every place.

The pairing of this Gospel with the feast of the Prophet Elisha opens a third theme. Elisha receives a “double portion” of Elijah’s spirit and takes up the mantle that falls from his ascending master; the apostles receive the Holy Spirit from the ascended Christ and continue, indeed amplify, His work. Both are accounts of inheritance—of a spiritual power that passes from master to disciple and does not diminish in the handing on. The Church reads her own apostolic succession in this light: not the mechanical transfer of an office, but the living continuation of one Spirit through many generations. The saints of Antioch and North America are the visible fruit of that inheritance, the proof that the mantle has not been dropped.

The Epistle supplies a theme the Gospel only implies. At Antioch the scattered preachers do what the four fishermen were first commissioned to do, and the result is a Church: believers gathered, a teacher (Barnabas) sent, a theologian (Saul) recruited, a year of catechesis, a new name—“Christians”—and, immediately, charity organized across distance to relieve a famine. The Antiochian Church thus appears in Scripture as the model of a missionary community that does not collapse evangelism into mere words but completes it in doctrine and in mercy. For a congregation that traces its descent from this very See, the reading is a mirror: this is what it has always meant to be the Church at Antioch.

”When the stone had been sealed by the Jews, and the soldiers were guarding Thine immaculate Body, Thou didst rise on the third day, O Saviour, granting life unto the world.”

The first-tone resurrectional hymn anchors the day in Pascha: even as the Church turns to the Gospel of Christ’s earthly ministry, every Sunday remains “a little Pascha,” and the calling of the disciples is read in the light of the empty tomb toward which it tends.

”As the bountiful harvest of Your sowing of salvation, the lands of North America offer to You, O Lord, all the saints who have shone in them. By their prayers keep the Church and our land in abiding peace through the Theotokos, O most Merciful One.”

The image of harvest answers the Gospel’s image of the net: the saints are the in-gathering of the seed of salvation sown in this land, the catch of the apostolic net drawn upon a new continent.

”Today the choir of Saints who were pleasing to God in the lands of North America now stands before us in the Church and invisibly prays to God for us.”

The kontakion sets the visible congregation within the invisible assembly of its own land’s saints, who continue, beyond death, the intercessory work begun when they first followed Christ.

”O protection of Christians that cannot be put to shame, mediation unto the Creator most constant: despise not the suppliant voices of those who have sinned, but be thou quick, O good one, to come unto our aid.”

This is the kontakion appointed for ordinary Sundays after the Leavetaking of Pentecost; where the rubrics of a given parish call for it in place of the feast’s kontakion, it commends the whole assembly to the unfailing intercession of the Theotokos.