Repent, believe and follow

A recording of today's gospel and reflection can be accessed here.

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Today’s gospel (Mark 1:14-20) shows us Jesus in the first steps of His public ministry. His herald has gone before Him and announced His coming, even if the disciples of John struggled to understand why they needed to switch their devotion from the herald to the one whose coming he was sent to announce.   And then Jesus steps forth, gathering His disciples, notably those who will form the core of the Apostolic College: Simon, Andrew, James and John. And in all this movement and change, the going forth of the Son of God and the turning upside down of the lives of His followers, Jesus gives three commands which will remain central to His coming mission: repent, believe and follow me.

Repent: because He came to save us from sin, and not only from sin itself but from all the waywardness in us, the woundedness that prepares the way towards sin. He comes not only to save but to cure, not only to redeem but to raise us up as sons and daughters of His Father in heaven for His grace both heals and elevates us. Imagine what it was like to hear those first calls to repentance. We have forgotten the story of our fallenness, but the Jews were well aware of it, and not only of the fall but of their history of infidelity to the Lord who always forgave them, sent them His messengers, comforted them in their griefs, and taught them to rejoice in Him. Our path now is the very same: to leave behind the old man, as long as it takes, little by little, day by day, with a million moments of saying “yes” to the Lord, separating ourselves from our waywardness to be made anew in Christ; sometimes carried along by the breeze of the Holy Spirit, and sometimes feeling like we alone are rowing a boat in a storm but never less alone than when alone.

And then comes the next command: believe. Because we leave the old life behind to embrace something new in the Lord. To me to live is Christ and to die is gain, St Paul will later tell us. But this new realm is hidden from our eyes, promised to us but not yet in our grasp. We have heard that we are going home but we are not yet arrived. To believe is to have confidence in the coordinates, in the compass points of the gospel, in the vision that compels us forward, an invitation to the inner festival of the life of the Blessed Trinity. And to believe is to hold fast to the means that He gives us to come home: his Mystical Body, the communion of the saints, the ecology of the sacraments, the life of prayer when He joins Himself to us now in advance, placing His hand constantly beneath our elbows as we take our faltering steps towards Him. For He is not only our Creator and Redeemer but our companion and the Spouse of our souls.  

And hence comes his third command at the start of His public ministry: follow me. Christianity is not just ethics; it is ethos also. And its unique ethos is that of friendship with the divine to the point of an intimate union with Him. “Follow me,” thus comes to the ears of these first disciples on the shores of Lake Galilee, as it comes down the ages to us also. In St John’s gospel we learn that when Jesus asked the two disciples of John (one of whom was Andrew) what they wanted, they asked Him: where do you live? Come and see, He answered. And this is His constant invitation to us: follow me, come see where my Father and I live. Paradoxically, this following begins with a procession inwards, to the place where the Trinity takes up their abode in us through baptism and sanctifying grace. There we come to know the Divine Persons, but we also must come to know ourselves, to know our wretchedness and unsuitability, for Jesus prefers the most unsuitable persons that the power of His grace might be more transparent in their transformation. Only then can they become fishers of men.

Repent, believe, follow me: we will need to hear these commands again and again, for our grip on them is poor, and the road goes on longer than our human enthusiasms can ever possibly drive us. Only grace will bring us there, as we leave behind our worse selves, greet the beauty of His plans for us, and answer His “yes” to us, echoing the “yes” of His Blessed Mother” with a constant, grace-given “yes” of our own.