In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me.

I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and the grace to make this time of prayer

fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my Father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

The topic of our prayer today is delicious, if we can put it that way.

It is recalling that decision that each of us made to follow Christ.

Each of us can point to a moment when we were touched by Jesus

and decided to follow him more closely.

In some cases it was a very dramatic moment. For most people probably it was

something that appeared gradually until one day we just realized, now this is the most important

thing. I'm going to give this relationship the priority that it deserves.

But how easy it is for us to identify with St. John the Evangelist,

imagining him as an old man, surrounded by that first generation of Christians,

a whole bunch of teenagers, for example.

And to observe St. John, as he described that moment so many years earlier, when he first

came, went running up behind Jesus and said master where are you living where are you

staying and the old man John looked at those little ones and said it was about

four in the afternoon it was his way of saying that he had never, not even for a single day,

forgotten that moment that turned his life upside down,

transformed his life, and gave to his life such meaning.

That decision, responding to our own vocation, to follow Christ closely, that vocation

is like a tidal wave, like an avalanche that carries us along irresistibly if we do not

...