3rd Sunday Year B - Homily 7

Homily 7 - 2024

What a great Gospel passage this evening! Let’s take it slowly, and see how far we get!

“After John had been arrested, Jesus went into Galilee…”. Not exactly a safe world for him, and perhaps not for the population in general. Galilee was an occupied country, administered by a paranoid puppet-king, Herod. Even the popular figure, John the Baptist, had just been arrested and would soon be executed. This was the atmosphere in which Jesus chose to work.

“There (Jesus) proclaimed the Good News from God.” “proclaimed the news..” Something was stirring; something was about to happen — and, as far as Jesus was concerned, it was “Good News”.

“‘The time has come’” he said. The past is past. Things are changing “‘and the kingdom of God is close at hand’”. Can we feel his excitement? And he was the one charged by God his Father to start things moving. This Kingdom of God would be quite different from anything they ever experienced, perhaps even could imagine. But it is something essentially to be experienced, not so much to be learnt.

But what it will involve would be change on their part. Their cooperation would be necessary. They were to be part of it, not on-lookers, not free-loaders, not students. What the Kingdom of God would involve on their part would be that they “Repent, and believe the Good News”. By “repent” he meant change — to change, to let go of how they have looked at life so far, and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. And by “believe the Good News”, he meant, not to learn it and to accept it, but something much more personally involving: to trust it, to recognise its “good news” dimension, to radically re-adjust their lives accordingly.

Since Jesus’ is himself an essential agent of the Kingdom, and his presence an indispensable constituent of the Kingdom, to “believe the Good News” involved learning to trust him and to entrust themselves to him.

Immediately, that was precisely what He asked Peter and Andrew, James and John, He invited them, perhaps even challenged them to do: “He called them at once … (and) they went after him”. For them, personal relationship with Jesus would be what the Kingdom was about, and what would make the Kingdom Good News.

And here we are: Catholics, at Mass, in Hamilton, in 2024. Are our numbers growing less? As a community, a Church, we are not exactly “the flavour of the month”. Who is to blame? Is anyone to blame? Do we want to blame? I suppose blaming others relieves the pressure on ourselves a bit. That hardly sets us up effectively to “proclaim the Goods News”.

When Jesus challenges people to “Repent, to believe the Good news”, does he see the change required on our part to be a “one-off” decision or a constant “way of life”? Do we like changing? Are we constantly on the look-out for how we can change for the better?

Why did Jesus challenge the disciples to “follow him”, “to go after him”, if not because He wanted them to keep on getting to know him, and especially to come to love him, to see what burned in his heart, how he faced life and the ever new challenges that confronted him, to hear what he had to say to them, to discover how important each one of them was to him, how much they mattered to him.

Have we in the Church continually prized, prioritised and worked on our personal relationship with Jesus? We know enough about our faith. We have got our act reasonably together. How do things stand with Jesus? Admiration, worship even, are perhaps not enough. Could we work more on the “heart to heart” relationship?
Surely we want to?