3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024
Jonah 3:1-5, 10 1 Corinthians 7:29-31 Mark 1:14-20
Pope Francis declared this, the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary time, ‘Sunday of the Word of God’. Were called to celebrate the “constant dialogue between the Lord and his people”. St Paul reminds us that “when you were pagans you were led astray to idols that could not speak” (1 Cor 12:2). And in Psalm 115 we hear; the pagan gods had “mouths but they could not speak”. But our God speaks! As Pope Francis says, it is a ‘constant dialogue’. Each time we celebrate the Eucharist the Lord comes to us in ‘Word and Sacrament’ – they are sacredly linked: the Word prepares us for the reality of the Presence of Christ and the Sacrament strengthens us in our Faith and in our Mission to proclaim the Word of God in our lives.
God has always been present to God’s people. Through the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament and in the Books of History and the Psalms it was God speaking. Moses delivered the Ten Words spoken to him by God; Samuel realised that the call he heard was, indeed, spoken by God; God touched the lips of Jeremiah so that He could speak through him; Ezekiel ate the scroll of God’s word ‘and in my mouth it was as sweet as honey’. God’s Word is alive and active, it is Real.
“At various times in the past and in various different ways, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets; but in our own time, the last days, he has spoken to us through his Son” (Heb 1:1). The Word of God has become flesh and the life of Jesus, our Lord, continues to be revealed to us through the Gospels and teachings of the Evangelists and the Apostles. This God has come among us as a human being, acting and behaving in a way that makes sense to us. That is what Mark’s Gospel, this year’s Gospel, is all about – what all the Gospels are about, but Mark was the first. Mark was the first to write it down. Mark, among the evangelists, is the ‘Pioneer’ just as Matthew was the ‘Teacher’, Luke ‘The Portrait Painter’ and John the ‘Theologian’.
As pioneer, Mark was the first to write down the story of the encounter of God, made man, with humankind. He called it ‘the Good News’ (Mk 1:1), or the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And, from the very beginning of his Gospel, there is an urgency to Proclaim this Good News. The other evangelists have some type of prologue to their story, but Mark gets down to the proclaiming from the start; John the Baptist had been arrested – his mission ended, or fulfilled and now Jesus acts immediately; “After John had been arrested …. Jesus went into Galilee. There he proclaimed the Good News ….” There was no time to waste. In order to preach the Good News, He needed proclaimers. It was a direct call; “Follow me!” The early disciples seem to have picked up on the urgency of the Mission – “at once (immediately) … they followed him.”
Mark uses similar words of urgency no less than 41 times in the course of his Gospel; ‘at once’, ‘immediately’, ‘straightaway’, ‘again’, ‘then when’, ‘the next morning’. This gives a terrific pace to the story that Mark relates and packs a great amount into what is the shortest of the four Gospels. Even in our Gospel passage of today’s Mass the two main themes of Mark’s Gospel stand out; ‘Jesus as Teacher’ and the ‘Call to Discipleship’. The call to discipleship is never watered down by Mark. It is urgent, it is essential to the Kingdom but it is also assured of completion or success. The story of the call of Jonah in today’s 1st Reading has the same urgency; ‘Up! Go to Nineveh’. Jonah’s story is given to us to reassure us that God’s word, the call to repentance, will achieve what God wants it to do.
We can come very quickly to the end of Saint Mark’s Gospel and, there, find that the message is the same, it is the one Good News story:
“So, then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and proclaimed the Good News everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it.” (Mark 16:19-20)