Monday, First Week in Ordinary Time
Monday, January 13, 2025
First Week in Ordinary Time
Saint Hilary, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Heb 1:1-6/Mk 1:14-20 (Lectionary #305)
In Mark, the headline proclamation of the Good News is, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near!” That is what Jesus preached. He invited people in response to do two things. First, “Repent,” which is the verb for metanoia, a complete change of mind, of outlook, of direction in life. The second specifies the first step in this “extreme makeover” of mentality: “Believe in the good news.”
This invites us to ask two questions of ourselves: 1. Do we believe in the Gospel as news — as something new and exciting that we wake up to every morning? 2. Do we believe it is good news? And if so, just how good is it?
The lead idea in Jesus’ proclamation of the Good News was, “The time is fulfilled!” This is to say there is a plan that God has been bringing to fulfillment in time, in human history. That in itself is good news.
How would you like to live in a world that was going nowhere — at least, nowhere with any purpose to it? A world that is just “there,” in which various human beings are trying to give directions and to shape history, but all guided by their own perceptions of reality and their own goals and desires? Would it make a difference in the way you experience your life? In the satisfaction you get from your activities?
That is a question worth spending some time on. Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” But the people of Socrates’ time sentenced him to death. It isn’t just religions that burn heretics at the stake. Anyone who calls into question the assumptions of any culture or peer group is in danger of anything from physical death to social exclusion. People like to feel secure in the house they live in, and don’t want anyone knocking about, testing the foundations.
Jesus didn’t just announce the Good News. The first thing Mark reports of him after he started preaching was that he invited four men fishing in the Sea of Galilee to get involved and help him proclaim it: He said, “Follow me and I will make you into fishers of people.” He invited them to play a part in bringing God’s plan to fulfillment by working to establish the “kingdom of God” on earth.
Every single one of us is being called today to take part in a “new evangelization.” What this is will be our focus as the readings take us through Mark’s Gospel.
Initiative: Those Jesus called “immediately left their nets and followed him.” Ask if you would have to “leave” anything to “fish for people” in your own way of life.
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