Homily

“Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee.” This is how the Gospel pericope of the third Sunday of Ordinary Time begins. The evangelist seems to want to underline that Jesus’ preaching begins after John’s arrest and that John’s preaching had been blocked by Herod. With John the Baptist in prison, the voice of justice was no longer heard and the desert went back to being a desert, a place without hope and without words. Even Jerusalem and the surrounding areas once again became mute and without prophecy. Jesus did not resign himself to the silence imposed by Herod; he did not want the men and women, whom he had seen penitent and filled with hope waiting in line at the Jordan for baptism, to remain at the mercy of a ritualistic and exterior religion or to fall under the burden of violence that came out of the desert deprived of life and true words.
Jesus took the initiative and began to speak, no longer in Judea as John had done, but in the peripheral Galilee, in the most northern area of the three regions of Palestine. During the time of Jesus, the strong presence of pagan religious representation had discredited this area. Yet, it is from this peripheral land, located far from the capital, that Jesus came to begin his preaching ministry (1:14), and called his first disciples (1:16) and here the Risen would wait for the disciples for their “second” beginning of the Gospel ministry (14:28). Indeed, Galilee seems to stand out as the symbolic land for every evangelical mission: if there is anywhere to be chosen to announce the Gospel, it should be a peripheral, marginal, excluded, scorned, poor and little-valued land. In the “Galilee of the Gentiles” the Good News resounds for the first time. Here, where pagans and the marginalized mix, Jesus begins to announce that “the time has come;” the days of violence, of hate, of abandonment, and enmity are over and the time of justice and peace has begun. The story of humanity undergoes a total change: “The Kingdom of God has come near.” The reign of love, forgiveness, salvation and of God’s lordship has come and from this moment it begins to establish itself in the life of humanity.
On the banks of the Sea of Galilee, that which had occurred in Nineveh with Jonah’s preaching, figuratively speaking, was becoming fully real now and for the entire world. The Assyrian city of Nineveh, which was “so large that [it] took three days to cross by foot”, is emblematic of every large city and also of the contemporary large cities where the corruption of humanity leads to destruction. God forced Jonah to cross the city, calling everyone to repent. At the end of his preaching, the prophet writes, “The people of Nineveh believed in God...and God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them.” “Something greater than Jonah is here” (Mt 12:41), affirms the Gospel. Jesus himself is the Gospel. He did not come to present a new doctrine or truth for people to learn and promulgate. The Good News is that through Jesus, God has begun to reign in human history and with the prophet we can proclaim, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns...” (Is 52:7).
God’s intervention must correspond to a commitment by humanity. “Repent,” Jesus asked everyone. On the shores of Lake of Tiberias, Jesus also repeated it to Simon and Andrew, who were intent on casting their nets. While walking a bit further, Jesus offered this call to the two brothers James and John who, too, were mending their nets for fishing. These men were workers from a modest profession that had a dubious reputation and at times was considered even impure; however, they were given an extraordinary fate: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Jesus was offering them a new perspective on life in a language they could understand. Indeed, he was proposing to them a way of life, no longer bent on the already-known job, with the same nets and the established schedule; rather he was proposing a life immersed in new waters, those of history, with the goal of “fishing” people from the troubled waters of the world and leading them to salvation. For these four fishermen, a new time, story and friendship began, based no longer on fishing but on humanity.
The Lord returns along the shores of our days and lives, and while each one of us - whether young or old - is preoccupied with untying our nets, overwhelmed by the pains or usual fatigue, we hear the same invitation of the past: “Come, follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” The Gospel notes that immediately the four fishermen dropped their nets and followed him. Truly, as the Apostle Paul notes, “The appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor 7:29-31). Feelings, mourning, merry-making, consumption and dealing with the world often exhaust our lives and our minds to the point of entangling us in an inextricable net. The Lord does not come to disgrace our lives, but to loosen us from this entangled web and to broaden our lives. He wants to amplify love for many people; he does not want us to cry just for ourselves but with those who also are afflicted: he wants joy not only for some but for many and he wants goods of this world to be enjoyed not only by a privileged few, because they are destined to all.