3d Sunday of Ordinary Time
Jan. 26, 2014
Matt 4: 12-23
Wartburg Home, Mt. Vernon, N.Y.
“When Jesus heard that John had been arrested,
he withdrew to Galilee” (Matt 4: 12).
For the last 2 Sundays, our gospel readings have
placed Jesus with John the Baptist, being baptized and being heralded as the
Lamb of God. Skipping over Jesus’ going
into the wilderness and his temptations—which we’ll deal with when Lent
comes—we read today of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.
The passage begins ominously: John the Baptist has been arrested. John has dared to preach repentance. He has denounced sin, even in the highest
places like King Herod’s household. St.
Matthew is hinting at the fate that awaits Jesus because of his preaching.
The opposition and the hatred of the world await
anyone who follows Jesus, anyone who is faithful to what Jesus teaches, e.g.,
about universal human dignity, the value of all human life, sexual
morality. 8 days ago, the governor of
this state declared opponents of abortion and homosexuality personae non
gratae, people not welcome in New York.
In case you missed the story buried deep inside Wednesday’s Journal News or Thursday’s NY Times—it wasn’t important enuf to
merit their attention till Catholics and political conservatives raised Cain
about it for at least 5 days—Andrew Cuomo said on the radio last Friday with
reference to people who oppose his legislative agenda: “Are they these
extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is
that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme
conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not
who New Yorkers are.” You and I,
sisters, are “extreme conservatives”; we believe that unborn human beings are,
in fact, human beings, and as such merit the same legal protection as other
human beings. The governor hasn’t
threatened to arrest us yet. But it’s
clear enuf—we already knew it, didn’t we?—that like John the Baptist and Jesus
we live in a hostile environment; we are challenged to be faithful in a culture
that tells us either to shut up or to agree that evil is good.
So Jesus leaves the area of the
Jordan and goes back to Galilee. He also
leaves his home town of Nazareth and settles in Capernaum on the shore of the
Sea of Galilee. We don’t know why he
does that, but we can guess: Capernaum
is on one of the main roads of the region, the highway between Syria and
Jerusalem, and between the Mediterranean on the west and the Decapolis (the Ten
Cities region) to the east. If Jesus is
going to have an audience for his preaching, he has to go where the people are,
the same way that advertisers compete for air time during the Super Bowl.
As he does so often in his gospel,
Matthew links this relocation of Jesus to the Scriptures: “that what had been said thru Isaiah the
prophet might be fulfilled” (4:14).
What’s being fulfilled here is Jesus’ bringing the light of God’s word
to the darkness of the pagan world—the world of Roman soldiers and government
officials, Greek and Arab traders, all the sorts of people who traveled that
highway along the lake, as well as the Jews who lived there. It’s the same impetus that impels Pope
Francis to tell bishops and priests to get out of the churches and into the
public, into the barrios and the squares and social media where people are, and
to bring them the light of God’s word, especially his mercy and compassion.
“From that time on, Jesus began to preach and
say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’” (4:17). Once he’s settled in Capernaum, he begins to preach. His preaching, as summarized by Matthew in
that 1 sentence, has a twofold message:
we must repent, and God’s kingdom is close, near at hand. Jesus himself is the voice of that kingdom;
he personifies the presence of the kingdom.
He opens the way for all of us to enter the kingdom.
But—and this is the key to the door
to the kingdom that a lot of people overlook when they speak of God’s mercy and
of Jesus’ inclusiveness—the way into the kingdom is the way of repentance. If John the Baptist had preached only that
God was close at hand, Herod wouldn’t have arrested him, and Herodias wouldn’t
have demanded his head. If Catholics and
evangelicals today preached only God’s compassion, we’d fit in just fine with
the powers of this earth: the politicians,
the mass media, academia, warlords, drug traffickers, etc. But Jesus calls on us—all of us!—to repent,
to admit our specific sins and our sinful passions, and to regret them for
God’s sake—for the sake of the kingdom of heaven—and to amend our lives (as
best we sincerely can within the limits of our human frailty).
 |
| Jesus calls Simon and Andrew James Tissot |
When Jesus calls Simon and Andrew,
James and John, to come after him and become fishers of men (4:18-22—which
obviously includes everyone, not only males), he’s calling them to join him in
preaching his twofold message. This
mission of Jesus, this message of Jesus, is exactly the Church’s mission and
message still. When the world hears that
certain of its values and its behaviors are evil and need to be repented, the
world isn’t happy. If it can’t ignore
the messenger, it shoots the messenger, as it were: off with their heads! Pro-lifers and adherents of public morality
are not welcome here!
As St. Paul instructed Timothy, the
Church must preach the Word “in season and out of season; whether it is
convenient or inconvenient” (2 Tim 4:2).
The most convincing preaching, however, isn’t what we read in an
apostolic exhortation or a Catholic newspaper, or what we hear from the pulpit. It is the preaching of authentic Christian
lives, the lives of those who are walking with Jesus on the road of repentance,
turning from their various sins and practicing the virtues of charity,
kindness, chastity, simplicity, honesty, devotion, etc. Think of yesterday’s saint, Francis de Sales,
and of Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, St. Vincent de Paul. You who are Franciscans no doubt are familiar
with the saying attributed to St. Francis:
“Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.” So the preaching of Jesus that we should
repent is addressed also to you and me, sisters; not only that we might be able
to pass thru the door of the kingdom ourselves, but also that we might
“proclaim the gospel of the kingdom” (4:23) by our manner of life, making the
invitation to enter the kingdom an irresistible invitation.
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