Fishers of Men

                       3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

                      B cycle

 

 

 

Everyone knows about Jonah, the reluctant prophet who was cast overboard by frightened sailors who believed that Jonah’s bad luck had put them in danger during a storm. Today, the word Jonah is still a symbol of bad luck. Nevertheless, in today’s reading Jonah brings good luck to the people of Nineveh. Jonah’s preaching convinced the people of Nineveh to depart from their evil ways and repent. As a result, we are told, the whole great city was saved from destruction.

 

Jonah has always been regarded as a precursor of Jesus who was sent by the Father to save the whole world from sin and destruction. Some even go so far as to say that the three days that Jonah supposedly spent in the belly of a whale or great fish were a symbol of the three days that Jesus spent between his own death and Resurrection. 

 

In any event, in today’s gospel St. Mark wastes no time in preliminaries. He brings Jesus immediately on stage to announce the purpose of his mission. Like Jonah, he has a message of repentance to proclaim.

 

“This is the time of fulfillment.

The Kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

 

Practically the first thing that Jesus does when he sets out on his public mission is to call disciples to follow Him and assist in His work of healing. In today’s gospel we see Him walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee when He sees Peter and his brother, Andrew. They were fishermen and He says to them, “come after Me and I will make you fishers of men.” We are told that immediately “they abandoned their nets and followed him.” 

 

Then he saw two other fishermen, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, and called them as well. They also “left their father Zebedee in the boat along with the hired men and followed him.” 

 

What strikes me most about this passage is how quickly these fishermen were converted. They did not require instruction or lessons in theology. They did not have to go through an extended course of study. They seemed to have asked no questions or made any inquiries about His background. From what follows in the gospels we know that these first disciples did not have a clear idea of who He was or what He was going to do. Like most of us when we embark on life’s great adventures, they did not know what they were getting into or where they would wind up.

 

There must have been something about Him that made them immediately give up their jobs and families to follow Him. There was something that led them to put their full faith in Him. They certainly could not have thought themselves worthy or able.

 

This passage reminded me of a book I once read about Brother Andre, a recently canonized Canadian saint, who had as little theological knowledge and book learning as his namesake, Andrew, in today’s gospel. Andre was a poor orphan who received practically no education beyond what his mother taught him before she died when he was only 12. Thereafter, he had to work to help support himself and help out with his brothers and sisters. Eventually, a local priest, impressed with his holiness, asked the Holy Cross Fathers in Montreal to take him in. Since he did not appear to be very intelligent, he could not even be made a brother, but they gave him a job as doorkeeper or porter at their school.

 

To make a long story short, within a few years people were flocking to the school because Andre had gained a reputation as a healer. Some would come on crutches but go away walking on their own, leaving their crutches behind. Many of these crutches can still be seen today in St. Joseph’s Oratory, the magnificent church eventually built to accommodate all the pilgrims who wanted to visit him. When Brother Andre died in 1937 over a million people filed by his casket.

 

I mention Brother Andre because during his whole life he denied that he was a miracle worker possessed with great healing powers. Like Jesus, Andre often used material objects like oil and medals in healing people but he also denied that these had any magical powers. He had a special devotion to St. Joseph and asked all who came to him to pray to St. Joseph but even that he regarded as only a means for them to enhance their faith in Jesus, the light of the world. Andre always gave the credit for all of his accomplishments to faith in Jesus Christ.

 

If Jonah is a precursor of Jesus, he is also a precursor of the first Apostles, Brother Andre and even us. In today’s second reading from the Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul warned these early Christians that “time is running out,” and that they must change their behavior. We don’t know when the end of the world will come, but we do know that it came to an end for some of the members of our community last year. We also know that some of us will not make it through this new year. 

 

For most of us New Year’s resolutions are a joke, but we should all consider ways to change for the better and get our priorities in order. Hopefully, in the days to come we will all have the opportunity to follow Jesus like those fishermen on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

 

 

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Reading 1. Jonah 3: 1-5, 10

Reading II. 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31

Gospel. Mark 1: 14-20 (fishers of men)