Homily: 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle B
Today in our Gospel reading, we hear
the first words that Jesus utters, according to the Gospel writer Mark; and
they are rather mysterious ones. “Repent
and believe in the Gospel” is often touted as being his first words, but they
aren’t. Rather, his first words are:
"This is the time of fulfillment." “Huh? What
does this mean?” It means that, when
Jesus Christ came onto the scene, it was a turning point in the history of the
world. From this we have come to
understand that, with Jesus, the third age of human history has been
inaugurated.
The first age was the era of
creation. During this period, mankind
lived in the fullness of communion with God.
It was when Adam and Eve lived in paradise: in unspoiled friendship with
God. This, of course, ended when our
first parents committed the first sin and, subsequently, fell from grace,
allowing evil to enter into the world.
From this, the second age began: the
age of the Promise. As we read in the
book of Genesis, soon after the first sin, God promised Adam and Eve that he
would send a Savior to free the human family from domination by the devil. In this second age God gradually prepared the
world, through the education of his chosen people, Israel, for the arrival of
Jesus Christ. This is the age of history
encapsulated by the Old Testament in the Bible.
With the coming of Jesus, the third
age began: the "time of fulfillment," by which we mean, “the
fulfillment of the promise of salvation.”
In this age, the Christian age, God actually entered into time and space
in order to rescue it from sin and destruction.
He did so, at first, through the Incarnation, and he continues to do so
through the activity of the Church, which is gradually expanding into every
corner of the globe. At the end of this
third age, Christ will come again, ushering in the fourth and final age: the
age of glory, when evil, death, and sorrow will be banished from his Kingdom
forever.
This is weird, of course, because
we’re used to thinking of history in terms of secular “ages”: the “stone” age,
the “bronze” age, the “iron” age, etc., none of which hinge on the life of
Christ. But if we see things from the
perspective of these four “Christian” stages of history, things begin to make
more sense: history seems to have a purpose and an end to which it is moving,
which has the effect of filling us with wisdom, interior peace, and a sense of
purpose. Even still, I think that we
have to ask ourselves: “Do we actually look at things this way?”
You know, the advances of modern
science and technology tend to make us forget about this. Pleasures and power are so easy to find in
our modern world that we can subconsciously start thinking that maybe we can create heaven on earth by
ourselves, skipping over God's plan for history. We forget what St. Paul always remembered—and
what he explained in today's Second Reading—that "the world in its present
form is passing away." In
forgetting this, we fail realize that our attempts to bypass God's plan for
human history and to create heaven on earth was at the root of the most hideous
crimes of the twentieth century.
When Nazi fascism rejected Christ as
the Lord of history and tried to put nationalism in his place, it led to a
World War, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb. When Marxist Communism rejected Christ as the
Lord of history and tried to put human work in his place, it led to a
multi-national Soviet empire of state oppression, the mass starvation of 20
million peasants under Stalinist Russia, and the death of another 20 million
under Mao Zedung's "Great Leap Forward" in China. And, in our current age, secular humanism has
rejected Christ as the Lord of history and is trying to put radical
individualism in his place. This has led
to a moral recession that has fed the world's economic recession. And it has already led to a global resurgence
of child slavery and human trafficking, not to mention the death of more than 60
million unborn babies through legalized abortion. You know, when we consider all these horrors—especially
how wide-spread they are in today’s world—it’s not surprising that even the
most fervent Christians can feel discouraged.
But discouragement is a lie, because,
as Saint Paul has already assured us, "the world in its present form is
passing away." Friends, Christ is
building his Kingdom even in the midst of the world's evils. He is giving meaning and hope to the drama of
human history. And when we put our trust
in him and follow him, we become part of the everlasting solution, not the
passing problem.
You know, the most exciting aspect of
the Christian view of history is that Christ is constantly inviting us to take
part in it. What happened in today's
Gospel passage happens to each one of us throughout our lives. Peter, Andrew, James, and John were all
living their normal lives, working to keep food on the table. By all external signs, they were
indistinguishable from any of their contemporaries.
But then one day Jesus Christ walked
into their lives and called them each by name.
Jesus didn't see them as average people: that is, generic
fishermen. Jesus saw each one in the
revealing light of God's love. He knew
that he had created them for an active role in his plan to redeem the human
race and to conquer the forces of sin and evil.
And just as he invited each one of them to join him and to share his
mission, so Jesus does with each of us.
Some of us he calls to leave behind
our nets, boats, and even our families, so that we can serve the Church full-time
as “special agents”, if you will: that is, as priests, religious, and
missionaries. Others—the majority of us—he
calls to be his ambassadors in the middle of our normal family and work life: bringing
his redeeming power to the world from within, like leaven in a batch of
dough. Regardless of the end to which he
calls us, he, nonetheless, calls each one of us. And today he will renew his call when he
offers himself to us, once again, here in the Eucharist.
My brothers and sisters, by reminding
us today of the true course of human history, Jesus has motivated us to renew
our response to his call in our hearts: to let our friendship with him become
the most important thing for us once again—more important than our plans, our pleasures,
our hopes, and our comfort—because all those things are just part of the
"world in its present form," which is "passing away." Let us, then, renew our response to him today
so as to conquer this age in which secular humanism tries to destroy all that
is human (especially the most vulnerable among us) and, thus, usher in the age
of glory in which we are restored to that perfect communion with God that we
enjoyed in the age of creation, and in which Christ, our Savior, rules over
all.
Given
at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – January 21, 2018
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