Monday in the First Week of Ordinary Time, January 13, 2025

Mark 1, 14-20

After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the Gospel of God: “This is the time of fulfillment. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”  As he passed by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting their nets into the sea; they were fishermen. Jesus said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Then they left their nets and followed him. He walked along a little farther and saw James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They too were in a boat mending their nets. Then he called them. So they left their father Zebedee in the boat along with the hired men and followed him.

After the Lord’s baptism by John in the Jordan, the Holy Spirit drove him out into the Judean wilderness where he fasted, prayed, and was tempted.  Subsequently he returned to the area where John continued to baptize.  He dwelt there for a time, likely taking shelter in the niches in the rocky ground there and, like John, subsisting on grasshoppers and wild honey.  During this time he met with his future Apostles Andrew and John the son of Zebedee.  Herod, provoked by his wife, finally sent his guards for John, and it is then that the Lord begins his Public Life in earnest.  We should note that the Lord does not first preach in Judea.  He goes back to Galilee.  The Lord waits until John the Baptist is arrested before he commences preaching in order to not seem in competition with him and also to show that he has come to fulfill what John said and did.  He returns to Galilee to show that he has not come only for the Judeans, who considered themselves the true Jews, but for those distant from Judea as well.

“This is the time of fulfillment.”  The time of fulfillment, when the Son of God would complete the Law and all of God’s promises of redemption.  “The Kingdom of God is at hand.”  The Greek has, The Kingdom of God has drawn near.  It has drawn near because mortal man, burdened by sin and bereft of grace, was helpless to approach it.  The proof that it has drawn near is that God himself has come down from heaven to earth.  “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”  The Gospel is the announcement that the Kingdom of God has drawn near.  It is as if Jesus were saying, Believe me when I tell you that the Kingdom of God has approached you.  And he demonstrates that it has through his miracles.

“He passed by the Sea of Galilee.”  Mark provides few details here, not even the name of the town in which he was staying at the time, which we know from other Gospels was Capernaum.  His account of the call of Simon Peter and Andrew is almost a schematic.  It strikes us as very abrupt.  We can surmise that the Roman Christians for whom Mark was writing were well-acquainted with this story from Peter’s own lips and so he saw no need to flesh it out.  “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  Now, apart from the unheard of action of the teacher calling for students (students, rather, sought out and hired their teacher), this is a very strange invitation.  The Lord does not define the odd term “fishers of men” for them or try to make it sound exciting or otherwise attractive.  And he calls Peter and Andrew and James and John at a most inopportune time, while they were finishing up for the night and were mending their nets.  It is almost as if the Lord was trying not to gain any disciples.  We might think back to the Prophet Elijah, who challenged the prophets of Baal to pour enormous quantities of water on his offering to God so that it would seem impossible for it to be burnt, yet “the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the holocaust, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench” (1 Kings 18, 38).  Likewise, the fishermen left the lives that they had known at the word of a carpenter from Nazareth who had yet to perform his first miracle.  This tells us of the strength of the Lord’s personality, which drew people to him, and the power of his preaching, which made his hearers followers.  This also tells us of the immense faith of these first followers in the Lord Jesus.  We ask their intercession that we may possess this as well.