Fr Marco Lazzaron
he Gospel of this Third Sunday of Ordinary Time presents to us the beginning of Jesus’ public mission with the calling of the first disciples. Jesus begins his ministry from Galilee, a region in the north of Palestine where there was a mixing of peoples and cultures and a generally less rigorous observance of the Torah compared to the southern part. For this reason it was considered a rural and somewhat marginal region, giving rise to prejudices such as: “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (Jn 1:46). This region, centuries earlier, after the people of Israel entered the Promised Land, had been assigned to the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali.
Matthew proclaims the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy concerning this land: precisely from that land, which suffered oppression, light will arise—that is, salvation—and ruin will be followed by the splendour of a saving era.
All of this is significant and important: first of all, it tells us about God’s style. Jesus does not start from the centre, from the Temple, but from the periphery, and he teaches us to do the same—to seek contact with people, to observe reality not from the center but from the “existential peripheries”. One cannot understand reality while sitting comfortably in palaces; one must “get one’s hands dirty” and be among the people, in contact with needs, hardships, and sufferings. God starts from there, and we often encounter him precisely there, when life, for one reason or another, has pushed us into a corner. Moreover, Jesus makes a wounded land a place of resurrection. How beautiful it is to know that our own history, sometimes wounded and scarred, can become a space of salvation. God throws nothing away from our history; even the most painful wounds, placed in his hands, can become folds of compassion and wisdom.
And it is precisely in this land and in the simplest daily life that Jesus begins his preaching and calls his disciples with a wonderful invitation: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men”. Jesus imposes no conditions; he asks for nothing except to be followed, offering a promise and a profound transformation. And here is the response of the disciples: “Immediately they left their nets… [and] the boat [and their] father and followed him”. That “immediately” underscores the effectiveness of Jesus’ word, which makes one capable of doing what it says; but it also highlights the readiness of the disciples, who leave because they have found something more, they have found the One who is able to give meaning and fullness to their lives. This freshness of the disciples is good for the heart and challenges us: in us, what is Jesus going to find? Readiness or slowness? Laziness or fervour? Does he find our “here I am,” or rather: “I can’t now, maybe tomorrow”?
The disciples left their nets, that is, the tools that until then had enabled them to earn a living. In our case, it is not a given that in life we do not remain entangled in those nets that end up becoming our everything: work, activities, projects, etc. What are the nets that bind us? What are the boats in which we have comfortably settled? What are those attachments which, though beautiful and important, have become possessions that entangle us? Let us ask the Lord for the grace of an alert, loving heart, attentive to knowing how to recognize and welcome his passings in our lives, knowing that behind our response there is not only our own salvation but that of many.
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, you who enlighten those who live in darkness,
make us ready to leave what holds us back
and to walk with you and behind you,
so as to be a sign and instrument of your saving love.
Amen.