Homily
for January 27, 2008
Liturgical Year A- Cycle II
3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
By Fr. Andrew Moyo Topic:
Come Follow Me
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Gospel
: Mt
4:12-17 When
Jesus heard
that John had
been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He
left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum by the sea, in the
region of Zebulun and Naphtali, that what had been said through Isaiah
the
prophet might be fulfilled: Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the
way to
the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who sit
in
darkness have seen a great light, on
those dwelling in a
land overshadowed by death light has arisen. From that time on, Jesus began
to preach and say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today’s Gospel tells
us
clearly that that Jesus began his mission after
the arrest of John the Baptist.Jesus takes over from where John left
off.John, as we saw from the
advent texts, was a voice crying in the wilderness
or the desert.The voice in the desert
now becomes another voice.A voice that
now can be heard in the villages and the countryside.The message from this voice is very clear:
Repent for the kingdom of God
is close at hand. To fulfill this
mission, Jesus needed collaborators. In
today’s Gospel, we meet Jesus calling four men to
assist him in his mission.Their call is
very clear, “Come follow me, I
will make you fishers of men.”It is an
invitation to go out fishing.What does
it really mean to become fishers of men? Who
is the fish and who is the fisher?Where
are we expected to fish?To understand
more clearly this expression,
we must first understand how the ancient looked at the sea. For modern people,
the sea
is beautiful and sparkling. Instead, the
ancients saw it as a deep, dark place, home of terrible monsters, the
abode of
the devil, of disease and of all the other forces hostile to humans.The call to go fishing is a call to liberate
people from such evil forces.Jesus’ mission was to save and
deliver people from sin.The spirit of the
Lord is upon me.He sent me to preach the
good news to the
poor, to proclaim liberty to captives…Christ draws people
from darkness to the light, “The people who sat in darkness have seen a
great
light and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has
dawned.” This is also our
mission.Sadly but surely, our land is
still overshadowed by darkness and the evil forces: death caused by
abortion,
terrorism, ethnic conflicts, drugs, despair etc. The greatest challenge
in our
time is not the fact that people are ignorant of God, but people
deliberately
choose darkness, in the name of freedom.Jesus says, “And this is the
judgment that the light came
into the world, but people preferred darkness to the light, because
their deeds
were evil.”Let us illustrate this with
two examples. Our legislators are Catholic and they know the teaching
of the
church and the teaching of Christ. Nevertheless,
they continue to vote for bills and move bills that contradict their
Christian
faith.They are not ashamed at all to
even mention that they are Catholic. These are the
forces of
darkness, of evil.Our mission then as
fishers of men is to liberate God’s people from such forces.
Jesus’ first disciples as we
know, were fishermen. He chose
ordinary folks and entrusted them with an extraordinary task of
liberating
people from the forces of evil.This
reminds us that God needs ordinary people as his collaborators.As such, we should avoid religious extremism
in all its forms. Let me illustrate this with this story.
A
minister sold a blind mule to a fellow and
told him that the critter was trained to go when the rider said,
“Praise the
Lord” and to stop when the rider said, “Amen.”The
purchaser mounted the beast and said,
“Praise the Lord” and he mule raced away.Becoming excited, the rider kept saying “Whoa” with no effect on
the
animal.Then he remembered and said, “Amen.”The mule
stopped abruptly.
The rider looked down and found the
animal had stopped right at the edge of gigantic cliff.Wiping his brow, he declared gratefully,
“Praise the Lord.”
Religious
extremism could
be dangerous. St.Theresa of Avilla once said,
“Holiness does not consist in
doing extra ordinary things but ordinary things extra ordinarily well.” God
chooses ordinary
people, like you and me, as his ambassadors.
He uses the ordinary circumstances of our daily lives and work
situations to draw others into his kingdom.