3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle B
January 21, 2024 5pm
Our Lady of Grace Parish, Parkton
“Repent”
“This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
These are the first words that Jesus speaks in Mark’s Gospel. Like the other gospel writers, Mark is putting his memories in order as he writes his account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
Right before today’s verses, in chapter one of his gospel, he tells us that John the Baptist was preaching repentance. And here, he records Jesus saying: “Repent.”
So, repenting must be important. The question I want to think about with you is: what does it mean to repent?
I’ve been doing some reading and thinking about this and want to share two ideas. My focus is: what repenting is and what it is not.
God and Not Just Me
My first idea is that repenting doesn’t mean that we focus just on ourselves.
Instead, it means that we look first at Jesus and God’s love for us. I try to do this when I lead the Penitential Act at the beginning of Mass.
Almost always, I recommend that we entrust ourselves to the love of God. Then, only after that, do we bring to God some area of sin, some area where we need to grow in the way of Jesus.
And right after that, we again turn to God in the prayer of forgiveness that the priest offers. So, repentance is not just about me or us.
When repentance begins and ends with God, we can much more easily remain assured that we are God’s beloved daughters and sons, no matter what we have done or failed to do. This is the basis of true gospel repentance.
Centrality and Not Priority
The other idea I want to share, and this may surprise you, this idea is that repenting doesn’t mean making Jesus my priority.
Instead, it is about centrality – making Jesus central in my life. Here is what I mean.
I recently read that the word priority is never used in the gospels. In everyday life, we almost must have priorities – for our family, our job, our health, and on it goes.
But this word is never used in the gospels, and Jesus never tells us to make him our priority. And so, this may not be a good way to understand our relationship with God.
For one thing, how much do we have to do for God or give to God to say that God is really our priority? That’s a tough question to answer.
And beyond that, if we make God our number one priority, then is your husband or wife or family or friend number two or three or what? That doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.
If we look at Jesus’ teachings and the way he called people to follow him, as in today’s gospel, the word centrality seems to be more accurate. He wants us to make him, to make God central in our lives.
If I look upon it this way, then God or Jesus will be like a stone landing in a pond. It will have a rippling effect upon the whole pond.
So, if I work at making Jesus central, then I will be letting him affect everything else in my life. My relationships, what I say to or about others and how I say it, even my inner attitudes.
Making Jesus central will have a positive effect without getting us into the trap of figuring out who is number one and who is number two. Making God central is part of the process of repenting.
Conclusion
So, I believe that this way of understanding repentance or repenting is truer to the gospel.
It is not heavy and burdensome. It does not lead us into unhealthy, inappropriate guilt about what we have done or, much less, into shame about who we are.
Instead, it starts with a good relationship with a loving God who holds us as beloved. And then, holding God as central moves us to let the way of Jesus influence more and more dimensions of our lives.
That’s how I see repentance. I find this freeing and motivating and life-giving.
