January 21, 2024
III Sunday of Ordinary Time B
Mark 1:14-20
This Sunday's Gospel (Mark 1:14-20) takes us to the shores of Lake Tiberias in Galilee, where Jesus goes after his baptism along the Jordan River.
Upon learning the news of the Baptist's arrest, Jesus leaves Judea and returns to the place where he grew up, where he begins his public ministry.
The evangelist Mark tells us that this beginning is fulfilled in two ways: first, Jesus announces that the time is fulfilled and that the Kingdom of God is at hand (Mk 1:15); then, passing along the shores of the lake, he calls four men, who were working there, and invites them to follow him (Mk 1:16-20).
To get into this passage, I would first like to pause on one of the first words spoken by Jesus. After saying that a new time is beginning, Jesus invites everyone to conversion, "Repent" (Mk 1:15).
It may happen to think that to convert means to enact different attitudes, a radical change of life to be achieved with considerable personal effort. Or that a conversion necessarily depends on striking events, like that of St. Paul on the road to Damascus.
And because we are not capable of great effort, and because great events do not happen to us, we think that conversion is not something for us.
Actually, the good news of today's Gospel is something else.
Conversion has something to say about us, about every man, something very important.
It says that no one is fated to remain always the same, a prisoner of the same patterns, the same thoughts, the same attitudes.
It says that everyone, always, can change, can start over, and can be made new.
To convert, before being a struggle, is a possibility, and it is what gives hope to our lives.
Then Jesus begins to fulfill his mission by proclaiming, that new life is possible for all; that there is a passage to which we are all called, and that each one can make it; to do this it is not necessary to strive more than one has done so far, but simply to surrender to the encounter with the Lord Jesus.
Conversion is also a look at the other, at those around me: for not even the other is condemned to repeat the same pattern of life. Newness is possible for the other as well, as for me.
The second part of the passage (Mark 1:16-20) tells us practically how this happens.
Men, two pairs of brothers, are working on the lake, for they are fishermen.
Jesus passes by them, sees them, and chooses them as his friends, his disciples.
They leave their former life and, following Jesus, begin a new one.
The disciples choose to accept God's choice, and they accept that this involves leaving behind something they previously cherished. Above all, they accept leaving behind a self-image they had rightly constructed for themselves, with their work, with their belongings, and they accept thinking of themselves in a new way, as capable of something else: "I will make you fishers of men" (Mark 1:17)
Then we can say that conversion is this: it is letting the Lord choose you; it is living as people the Lord has chosen.
Because love is fundamentally a choice, it is choosing to bind oneself to someone and remain in that bond.
The Lord chooses to bind himself with each of our lives and asks that we do the same.
Everything that happens next, along the streets of Galilee and Judea, along the pages of the Gospel, will be the happening of this word within the individual lives of so many other people: so many who leave behind a hopeless past and allow themselves to be put back on the road by their encounter with the Lord.
Sick people, lepers, sinners, but also law-abiding people, honest people, people seeking God: new life is life for all.
+Pierbattista
