Monday of Week 1 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Mark 1:14-20

We now begin our readings from Mark’s Gospel and we will be following him for the next several weeks. Today’s reading follows immediately on the short accounts of Jesus’ baptism and temptations in the desert that Mark gives. It is the beginning of his public ministry. The reading consists of two main parts—a summary of Jesus’ teaching and the first response to it.

As the passage opens, we are told that John (the Baptist) has been arrested (the reason for his arrest will be given later). The word for ‘arrest’ is literally ‘handed over’, a key word which will be used later of Jesus himself, his disciples, and indeed of many others down the centuries. The term is also used in our Eucharist when the celebrant at the consecration says:

This is my Body which will be given up for you.

Our translation of ‘given up’ represents the Latin word tradetur, which literally means ‘handed over’. Jesus is daily handed over to us, or rather, he hands himself over to us and expects us to do the same for our brothers and sisters.

Jesus begins his ministry by proclaiming the gospel, the good news, of God. It is summed up in the words:

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.

It is a deceptively simple statement which, in fact, is rich in meaning. One can say that the whole of the gospel message is contained in those two sentences.

The following words require comment:

• time
• kingdom
• repent
• believe in

The time is fulfilled
In the Scriptures, ‘time’ is translated using the Greek word kairos. Specifically, kairos refers to a moment when something is ripe to happen, a serendipitous moment. And that exactly describes the appearance of Jesus, an appearance which the whole of the Old Covenant has been preparing for and leading up to.

The Kingdom of God is at hand
The whole of Jesus’ message centres round the idea of the ‘Kingdom of God’. It was the coming of that Kingdom which he proclaimed; it was the core of his teaching. Because of Matthew’s use of the term “Kingdom of heaven”, there is a possibility that we think of the ‘Kingdom’ as only belonging to the life after death. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The word ‘Kingdom’ translates the Greek word basileia, an abstract noun which is better rendered as ‘kingship’ or ‘reign’. Kingdom here does not refer to a place. It points to the ruling power of God, a power based above all on love. Wherever the love of God prevails in our world we can say that the Kingdom is there. Love essentially involves other people, so the Kingdom is not a place or an action, but a complex of harmonious and interacting relationships. Jesus came to call every single person to belong to such a world.

We need to emphasise that the Kingdom and the Church, or the Kingdom and Christianity, do not coincide. The role of the Church is to be a sacrament of the Kingdom. It fulfils that role with varying degrees of success. There are Kingdom people everywhere, that is, people who base their lives on love and justice, on peace and freedom, who are not Christians at all—but they are Kingdom people, because their lives reflect the spirit of God. Mere membership in a Christian group does not guarantee one is a Kingdom person.

Repent
Here we have the basic steps needed to become fully a Kingdom person. First, we need to repent. This is the most common translation of the Greek verb for the noun metanoia. It is not a very happy rendering. ‘Repent’, for most people means being sorry for something done in the past. That is not excluded here; rather metanoia looks much more to the future. Metanoia really means a radical change in one’s thinking, in this case, about the meaning and purpose of life, and how that life is to be lived. Jesus is calling here for a radical conversion, and for us to take to heart his vision of life.

Believe in the good news
And how is that metanoia to be achieved? It will come about by our believing in the “good news”, i.e. the gospel. For many Christians, ‘belief’ means the total acceptance of the teachings of Christ as interpreted for us by the Church. But something more is asked of us here. We are asked not just to believe, but to believe in. It is one thing to believe something is true, but that belief may not affect our lives very much. In calling on us to believe in the message that the gospel brings, we are being asked for a total investment of ourselves, and not just the accepting of doctrines as true. We are being called on to live our lives and pattern them on the model of Jesus himself. Again, we will see what that entails as we go through the Gospel in coming weeks.

The second part of the reading gives us a dramatic example of some people who did just what Jesus was asking. As Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother, Andrew, who were fishermen, casting their nets into the sea. They were doing their daily work. Jesus said to them:

Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.

There and then, they dropped their nets, their whole means of livelihood, and went after Jesus. A little further on Jesus saw two sons of Zebedee, James and John, who were mending their nets. These two Jesus also called. They promptly left their father in the boat with his hired men and followed Jesus. Later Jesus will say:

Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)

Here we have that metanoia, that radical change of life, taking place. They follow Jesus with total trust. As they go off, they have no idea where they are going or what it will entail. They believe in Jesus, putting all their trust in him. They were to meet many trials and tribulations on the way, but they never regretted the step they took. Only by following their example will we too have the same experience. The only guarantee we have is that those who do take Jesus’ call seriously, and live it to the fullest, know that they made the right choice.

Finally, we might say that this story is to be read as a kind of parable. We say this because we know that later on, the disciples will still be in contact with their families and those boats will appear several times in the Gospel story. What is being emphasised here is the total commitment to the Way and vision of Jesus, which is symbolised by the total abandoning of the boats and family members.

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Monday of Week 1 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Hebrews 1:1-6

Today we begin reading from the Letter to the Hebrews. Although grouped with the Pauline letters, it was clearly not written by Paul. The style is very different, and it has the best Greek in the New Testament. The identity of the author can only be a matter of speculation. It is written more as a sermon than a letter, but does seem to have been sent to a distant congregation, possibly in Rome. It seems to have been written some time after 65 AD and perhaps around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.  

Because of extensive quoting from the Old Testament, the words of this letter are taken as addressed to Jewish Christians. The community addressed may have suffered persecution, and there are signs of a falling away from the Church. Hence, the Letter emphasises strongly the role of Christ as the Way to God, a Way endorsed even by the Old Testament. There is the emphasis on faith and on Christ as the only High Priest.

The Letter opens with a magnificent statement of the role of Christ in the plan of God. In the past, God had spoken to his people in many different ways through the prophets. ‘Prophets’ here means all who spoke in the name of God, and would include some of the patriarchs, such as Abraham, Moses and Joshua, some of the kings, especially David, and other leaders, as well as others considered prophets.

Now “in these last days” God has spoken through his Son. The early Christians believed that the coming of Christ was a precursor of the final days and that all things would soon come to an end. As time passed, this conviction grew weaker, and this can already be seen in later writings of the New Testament.

This Son is the “heir of all things” and, through him, we too become heirs to all God’s promises made to us through Christ. He is in a totally different category from any of his predecessors, being not just a messenger but the very Son of God. Through Him also were all the “worlds” created.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God…All things came into being through him. (John 1:1,3)

“Worlds” in the plural here may refer to this world and the world to come or to the many heavenly realms through which Christ ascended (Heb 4:14; 9:24).

The role of Christ is then beautifully described:

He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being…

In these sentences we have the sophia (Greek, ‘wisdom’) and logos (‘word’) metaphors. The wisdom is totally shared between Father and Son, but the Son as Logos is made in some way distinct from the Father.

Jesus as Word is the manifestation, in human form, of our God. Jesus communicates, not just through what he says, but through his actions and his whole being. When we see Jesus and hear Jesus, we see God and we hear God. When Jesus speaks, it is God who speaks; when Jesus acts, it is God who acts. And yet, because of his humanity, in Jesus we see God only, as it were, in a clouded mirror. He is the Way we follow to the fullness of union with God, something not to be experienced fully in this life.

He sustains all things by his powerful word.

He is the Wisdom of God. Jesus’ word is not just something spoken; it is a creative word, a making word. Through the Word all things were made. On a lower level, our words too can be creative—whether it be through speech that galvanises people into action, or through the ‘word’ of a visual artist or a great musician.

When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high…

This purification was done through Jesus’ suffering and dying on the Cross. Jesus “emptied” himself as a manifestation of God’s unchanging love for us, even though we were in sin and because we were in sin.

He sits now at the right hand of the Father, sharing fully in his power and glory as Son, and far exceeding the angels in status and dignity. He has a “name” far more excellent than theirs. That name is “Son”, an ‘un-created’ Son who has been with the Father from all eternity:

Therefore God exalted him even more highly
and gave him the name
that is above every other name,
so that at the name given to Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth… (Phil 2:9-10)

The reading today concludes with a series of scriptural verses. These come mostly from royal psalms and illustrate Jesus’ supreme status as an equal with the Father, far surpassing that of the angels. The once-humiliated and crucified Jesus has been declared God’s Son, and this name shows his superiority to the angels.

The reason for the author’s insistence on that superiority is, among other things, that in some Jewish traditions angels were seen as mediators of the Old Testament (see Acts 7:53; Gal 3:19). Jesus’ superiority to the angels also emphasises the superiority of the New Covenant to the Old because of the heavenly priesthood of Jesus.

Today is an occasion for us to express our deep thanks to God for the gift of Jesus his Son. Because of him, we have a better understanding of how we are to live our lives and how to foster and deepen God’s image in us. We do this by our assimilating our human way of living to that of Jesus who is the Way.

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