Gospel: Mark 1:14-20

 

The Gospel today presents to us the beginning of Jesus’ preaching ministry in Galilee. St Mark stresses that Jesus began to preach “after John [the Baptist] was arrested” (1:14). 

 

Precisely at the moment in which the prophetic voice of the Baptist, who proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God, was silenced by Herod, Jesus begins to travel the roads of his land to bring to all, especially the poor, “the gospel of God”. John the Baptist belonged to the time of preparation and completed his mission. He was apprehended and put to silence.

 

The proclamation of Jesus is like that of John, with the essential difference that Jesus no longer points to another who must come: Jesus is Himself the fulfilment of those promises; He Himself is the “good news” to believe in, to receive and to communicate to all men and women of every time that they too may entrust their life to Him. 

 

Jesus Christ in his person is the Word living and working in history: whoever hears and follows Him may enter the Kingdom of God. Jesus is the fulfilment of divine promises for He is the One who gives to man the Holy Spirit, the “living water” that quenches our restless heart, thirsting for life, love, freedom and peace: thirsting for God. The coming of the reign points to this place of freedom where whoever listens to the proclamation can come to Christ or turn from it by refusing the good news.

 

How often do we feel, or have we felt that thirst in our hearts! He Himself revealed it to the Samaritan woman, whom he met at Jacob’s well to whom he says: “Give me a drink”. 

 

God, in becoming man, made our thirst his own, a thirst for a full life, a life free from the slavery of evil and death. At the same time by his Incarnation God placed his own thirst — because God too thirsts — in the heart of a man: Jesus of Nazareth. 

 

And Jesus says “come after me…” It is not an invitation; it is a command. The creative Word of God, that called the light and the other creatures into being, now calls to take part in the new creation. This act of following does not come from a mere personal decision, but from a meeting with the Person of Jesus who calls. It is an action of grace which allows these disciples to respond to His call. Jesus calls with divine authority. It is the Lord who chooses His disciples as repositories of God’s inheritance. The call to become disciples of Jesus is an "eschatological call", for the eternal life.

 

May Jesus’ thirst become ever more our own thirst! Let us continue, therefore to pray and commit ourselves to our full unity of the disciples of Christ, in the certainty that He Himself is at our side and sustains us by the power of his Spirit so that we may bring this goal closer. And let us entrust this our prayer to the motherly intercession of the Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church, that she may unite us all like a good mother.