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| "Jesus Teaches the People by the Sea," by J. Tissot. Brooklyn Museum / Public Domain. |
Today’s Gospel shows us the beginning of the
public life of Christ in the fullness of his manhood.
John the Baptist had been preaching the
message, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Then the kingdom showed up in the person of Christ
seeking and undergoing the baptism of repentance at the hands of John.
Then, with the leading of God the Holy Spirit, as the Gospel
recounts elsewhere, Christ, God the Son, did not begin straightaway his “hands-on” public work and
preaching, but withdrew into the desert to be alone with God the Father for forty days.
There he prayed, fasted and withstood
temptations by which the devil tried to lead him to “repent” from the mission
the Father gave him.
After the forty days, Christ went to his home
in the hills of Galilee, but, as the Gospel says today, “He left Nazareth and
went to live in Capernaum by the sea,” that is, on the shore of the lake of
Galilee.
There he started his public mission.
He began preaching the same message as John
the Baptist.
From that time
on, Jesus began to preach and say,
“Repent, for
the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Calling all to repentance, he sought to fish
them into life in the kingdom of heaven.
Then he also began to sharpen his message of
repentance for specific persons.
The meaning of “repentance” in the original
language of the Gospel is “change of mind.”
While everyone else heard Christ say,
“Repent,” a few Galilean fishermen heard him say to them personally, “Come
after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
For them— Simon Peter, Andrew, James, John— to
repent, to change mind, would be to follow Christ and to think of themselves as
no longer fishing to eat or sell, but as fishing men and women into the life of
the kingdom of heaven.
Christ would send them to do this new kind of
fishing by preaching the same thing that he and John the Baptist preached.
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand.”
When the day came for the risen Christ to
ascend to his throne at the Father’s side, he told his apostles “that
repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all
nations” [Lk. 24:47].
Ten days later, with the leading of the Holy
Spirit, their public preaching was born from the “upper room.”
That day, Peter told the thousands of Jewish
Pentecost pilgrims in Jerusalem what they should do [Acts 2:38].
Repent, and be
baptized every one of you
in the name of
Jesus Christ
for the
forgiveness of your sins;
and you shall
receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Mark the shift of wording!
It is no longer straightforwardly that “the
kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Rather, “at hand” are: the name of Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
To repent, to change mind, as baptized
sinners, is to receive the God the Father’s forgiveness, God the Son’s name, and God the Holy Spirit’s gift.
The beginning of Christ’s own preaching, the
beginning of the preaching he gave his Apostolic Church, and thus the beginning
of heeding Christ and his Church is repentance.
Repentance lets us be fished into the kingdom
of the life of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
When Christ rose from the dead and ascended,
leaving in the hands of his Apostolic Church his own “hands-on” work and
preaching, the Church, rather than begin straightaway to preach publicly,
withdrew for a while into the “upper room” [Acts 1:13], the birth place
and chamber of the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
From the Eucharistic Body and Blood of the Son, the Spirit of the Father brings to birth the preaching and works of the Church, calling
all nations to a change of mind.
Take
eat
this is my body
given up for
you
drink
this is
my blood
shed for you
and the many
so that sins may
be forgiven
Do this in
memory of me.
Christ is fishing here in the Church, here at
this Eucharistic Sacrifice.
Repent, and let him catch you that you may
live.
Turn. Love. Repeat.
