Homily For The Third Sunday In The Ordinary Time Year B (Sunday of The Word of God). January 21, 2024.
“God does not judge Christians because they sinned, but because they do not repent” – St Niphon of Constantia
Sunday Readings
My Dearest Friends in Christ,
I welcome you to another moment of reflection on the Word of God. Pope Francis declared the third Sunday in the Ordinary Time, is to be called “The Sunday of the Word of God”. The readings of today underscore the need for urgency in repenting from our sins and following Christ, as did the first four Apostles, which are recorded in the Gospel of today.
Should We Be Afraid of Preaching Repentance?
The devil’s tactics of destroying souls are by convincing them that sin is nothing to worry about since there is plenty of time to weigh the losses and gains of repenting or not repenting. We live in a world where many, like Jonah, are afraid of preaching repentance because it isn’t fashionable to preach so. On the contrary, the message of the Gospel draws our attention to the urgency and immediacy of the invitation of Christ that His call to repentance demands if we are to embrace the Kingdom of God.
The Time Is not Limitless You Must Repent Now
In the first reading, Jonah was sent to Nineveh, a flourishing city and the capital of the Assyrian empire, to announce a message of disaster. Despite his initial reluctance, Jonah heeded God’s instructions given in this message. “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed.” The message was a prophetic warning to the inhabitants of this great city because of their excessive wickedness and their living contrary to God’s plan for them. You will realize that God did not give the Ninevites a limitless time to repent. It was just forty days. The number 40 appears 146 times in Scripture and often symbolizes a period of testing, trial, or probation. You will recall in Gen 7:12, that God destroyed the world with the great flood which lasted for forty days and forty nights. It was also for forty days and forty nights that Christ fasted and prayed on the mountain to prepare Himself for His ministry. The Israelites were punished at Kadesh Barnea by God for their rebellion by having them wander for forty years in the desert for a journey that would have taken 11 days (cf. Number 14:23). My dear friends, what I want you to be mindful of is that your forty days might be an hour, a day, a month from now before destruction comes. Like Nineveh, our lives and our country are polluted with sin and wickedness. We must turn to God now and demonstrate signs of repentance as the Ninevites did or await the destruction of God. God’s compassion is endless. He spared Nineveh. He will also spare us if we repent from our sins and turn to Him.
“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (cf. 2 Chr 7:14)
Time Is Running Out
The second reading from the first letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians also emphasizes the need to act now, as time is running out. Paul advises us to begin now to live in a manner of detachment because the world is passing away. “If repentance is neglected for an instant, one can lose the power of the resurrection as he lives with the weakness of tepidity and the potential of his fall. “ -St. John Chrysostom
God Is Calling and We Must Follow Him
The Gospel recounts the calling of the first four disciples of Christ who were also known as Apostles. The mission of calling people to repentance did not end with John the Baptist. After John’s imprisonment, Christ continued announcing the principal message of the entire Gospel which is the call to repentance. Some people think that repentance is mostly about feelings, especially feeling sorry for your sin. It is wonderful to feel sorry about your sin, but repent isn’t a “feelings” word. It is an action word. Jesus told us to make a change of mind, not merely to feel sorry for what we have done. Repentance speaks of a change of direction, not a sorrow in the heart. Jonah in a harsher tone preached to the people of Nineveh this message of repentance and they changed the direction of their lives. Christ first called some Galilean fishermen to be His collaborators and changed the direction of their lives into the mission of being fishers of men by drawing souls to God. Very remarkable in the calling of Simon and Andrew, James and John was the spontaneity of their decision and the fact of abandoning their old profession to embrace the new. Humanly speaking, their spontaneous response to Christ’s invitation might seem to be questionable as they do not know who Christ is, at the time of their call. But be that as it may, we can surmise that there was a certain push of the Holy Spirit that moved them to follow Christ without rationalizing what benefits the new profession held for them and the families they left behind.
End Every Attachment to Sin
One reason why people often do not heed the call to repentance, which is the call to leave behind the “old way” to embrace Christ “the new way” is because we are grossly attached to things and to a certain way of life. We allow things we have acquired to define the way we are instead of abandoning ourselves to God, Who truly defines who we are. The Apostles would have been nothing without Christ. It was neither their boats, the nets, nor their families that made them prominent but their identifying with Christ in the mission of catching souls for God. Whatever we do and however we live that does not identify with Christ, is sinful and displeasing to God.
Christ’s call to follow Him was extended to the inner circle of twelve and beyond them. The number continues to grow through many generations to this day. Christianity is essentially a call to follow Christ. Christ is calling you today in the ordinary circumstances of your daily life to leave something behind to embrace the new mission and life He is entrusting to you. We must abandon the old profession of sin to embrace a new life of grace in Christ; to be His worthy collaborators in the mission of catching souls for God.“The heavens will not be filled with those who never made mistakes but with those who recognized that they were off course and who corrected their ways to get back in the light of Gospel truth”.–Dieter F. Uchtdorf
May we heed Christ’s call and change the direction of our lives through Christ our Lord, amen. Happy Sunday. Remain inspired and filled with Divine Grace.
The saints understood how great an outrage sin is against God. Some of them passed their lives weeping for their sins. St Peter wept all his life; he was still weeping at his death. St Bernard used to say, Lord! Lord! it is I who fastened You to the Cross!” -St. John Vianney
I keep you and your family always in my prayers. ©Clem C. Aladi (2024)
