Third Sunday of Ordinary Time

In this week’s Gospel, we see another call to repentance and another immediate response. In fact, everything in Mark’s first chapter seems to happen “immediately.” Mark begins immediately with the events of John’s ministry and says nothing about Jesus’s birth and infancy. John’s ministry abruptly ends, and Jesus’s abruptly begins. Jesus calls the Apostles, who immediately abandon their nets to follow him when he states, “Come after me and I will make you fishers of men.” In fact, in Greek, the word eutheós, meaning “immediately” appears eleven times throughout Mark’s Gospel. So, we see in Mark the sudden arrival of the kingdom or “reign of God” at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry. Jesus says specifically, “This is the time of fulfillment.” One would expect the divine power to have an immediate effect, and so it does. At Jesus’s word, vocations and healings happen immediately. Jesus has only to speak the word and miracles happen. But more than that—to borrow from St. John the Evangelist— he is the Word. Just as the divine Word speaks and everything is called into being, so also the Word Incarnate speaks and re-creates all of being. The Kingdom of God is indeed at hand.

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