Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, January 20, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, B, Vigil
January 20, 2024

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us this Sunday, when we will enter into the dramatic scene of what he said and did at the beginning of his public ministry. He preached his first homily — just 18 words in English, 16 words in St. Mark’s Greek original — and then entered into a short, but life-altering conversation on the shore of the Sea of Galilee with two sets of brothers who would become key collaborators in how he would change the world. In these words and interactions, Jesus sets forth for believers in every age the various consequences he hopes for in his personal interaction with us.
• Let’s enter the scene, beginning with Jesus’ homily — what he, as God, had been waiting since the Fall to announce. In his first public words, Jesus, the Word-made-flesh declared, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent and believe in the Gospel!”
• Jesus first announces two essential facts: The first is, “The time is fulfilled.” Jesus says that the time of waiting is over. The fullness of time has come. Therefore, now, not later, is the time to act. Now, as St. Paul would later say, is the day of salvation. The second fact is, “The kingdom of God is at hand.” Jesus declares that the long-awaited kingdom of God has arrived. God’s presence is erupting, and the time to enter his kingdom, to share in his reign, is today. Much like he would do in his hometown synagogue of Nazareth after reading the messianic prophecy of Isaiah when he proclaimed. “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” so in his first homily at the Galilean Sea, Jesus could say his words about the fulfillment of time and the coming of God’s kingdom were coming to fruition in him.
• After these two table-setting facts, Jesus turns to four ways we’re supposed to respond to this awesome reality. These are the four conditions for entering and living in his kingdom. These are the four action verbs we need to do in order not to waste the time God has given us but make the most of it. The first action is “Repent.” The second is “Believe.” The third is “Follow.” And the fourth is “Fish.” Now’s the time, he was saying, to do all four. Let’s examine each of these realities in turn and ask ourselves whether we’ve been heeding Jesus message.
• The first verb is “repent.” In Greek, this word ismetanoete, which etymologically means a total revolution of our mind, of the way we look at things. It’s a call to conversion, to think no longer as everyone else thinks, to do no longer as everyone else does, but to put on the mind of God, to align our head, heart and actions to his. It is a summons to compare ourselves to God rather than to everyone else and to recognize we’re not yet living enough as the image and likeness of God. For some people this call will mean a 180-degree turn. For others it might mean a 50-degree turn or a 10-degree turn. But all of us need this conversion and we will always need it. The Christian life is one of continual conversion, in which we literally learn how fully to “con-vert” or “turn with” Jesus in all parts of our life. As Jesus turns in prayer to the Father, we turn with him; as he turns with charity to our neighbor, we turn with him; as he turns with mercy to a family member who has sinned against him and against us, we, too, turn with mercy. This call to continual metanoia means that we’re incessantly seeking to change for the better to become more and more like the Lord who calls us to that penance and renewal. That’s the first consequence of the encounter with Jesus in the fullness of time.

• The second verb is “believe.” To believe means not just to accept something as true. To believe means totally to submit oneself to a reality on the basis of a trust in the one testifying to the reality. To believe in Jesus means to entrust ourselves completely to him and on that foundation ground our lives fully on what he says. Our Christian life is meant to be marked by this type of faith. Because of our trust in Jesus, we believe in what he tells us about the path of happiness in the Beatitudes, what he reveals to us about God the Father, what he says about his presence in the Eucharist, what he did when he sent out the apostles and their successors for the forgiveness of sins in confession. We believe in what he says about caring for others as if we were caring for him, about praying for our persecutors and even loving our enemies. To believe in him, to believe in the Gospel he enunciates and enfleshes, means truly to seek to grow in both our intellectual knowledge of the Gospel and our putting it into practice. This Sunday is the Sunday of the Word of God, a new observance created in 2020 by Pope Francis, to help us all “grow in … intimate familiarity with the sacred Scriptures,” “appreciate the inexhaustible riches contained in that constant dialogue between the Lord and his people,” and “experience anew how the risen Lord opens up for us the treasury of his word and enables us to proclaim its unfathomable riches before the world.” Faith comes through hearing and we grow in faith through the gift of the word of God. And so on this Sunday of the Word of God, we seek to live with faith off every word that comes from Jesus’ mouth, because we believe, as St. Peter confessed, that Jesus has the words of eternal life.

• The third verb is “follow me” or “Come after me.” Jesus says those words to Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John in the Gospel and they immediately leave their nets, their boats, their fish, their employees and their families to follow him. They were open to the type of revolution in the way they looked at their life that is contained in Jesus’ word repent and they believed in Jesus already enough to leave all they had and knew behind to base their entire life on his word calling them to follow him. Likewise for us it’s not enough to repent and to believe, because the Lord Jesus always calls us to follow him in faith, turning back on other things. The Christian life features this type of discipleship, in which we focus on following the Lord Jesus, rather than leading him and calling the shots. It means following him into dark valleys and up steep mountains, retracing his steps up close on the Way of the Cross all the way to heaven. To be Jesus’ disciple means to become, with Jesus’ help, more and more like him. That’s the third consequence of our encounter with him as we seek to enter and remain in his kingdom.
• And the fourth verb is “fish.” Jesus says in the Gospel that if we follow him, “I will make you fishers of men.” He wanted to form Peter, Andrew, James and John to be apostles, to share the Gospel, to spread the faith, to draw others to him with his words, with his deeds of healing and exorcism, ultimately with his very presence in the sacraments. When we repent and believe, when he become Jesus’ true followers rather than fans, then we have a burning desire to go to others, like Andrew did last week to Simon, and say “We’ve found the Messiah! The time is fulfilled. The door of the kingdom of heaven is open. Now a new life with God-with-us is possible. Come, experience that new life!” And we show them how to enter into that new life through repentance, faith, discipleship and apostolate.
• When Peter, Andrew, James, John heard Jesus’ words and received his personal call, their whole life changed. It was a truly consequential conversation. This Sunday Jesus wants to have a similarly momentous dialogue with us. In the fullness of time, right now, the Lord is summoning us to conversion and faith and has chosen us to be his followers and fishers-of-men today. In the midst of a broken country that needs the light of the Gospel now as much as ever, in the midst of a Church in which there’s a need for repentance, greater faith, more loyal discipleship and more ardent apostolate, you and I are part of Jesus’ response. He is summoning us to live and announce the reality that Christ the King and his kingdom are at hand, that he’s calling us to a new life, and showing us the way. Let us seize the gift of the kingdom and, like the apostles before us, dedicate ourselves to helping others to do so, too.

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was: 

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