A Passing World
Scripture:
Mark 1:14-20,
Jonah 3:1-5,
Jonah 3:10,
1 Corinthians 7:29-31.
Reflection
My dear sisters and brothers,
We have a text from the Gospel according to Saint Mark (Mark 1:14-20) for our reflection today:
“After John had been arrested,
Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God:
“This is the time of fulfilment.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
As he passed by the Sea of Galilee,
he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting their nets into the sea;
they were fishermen.
Jesus said to them,
“Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
Then they abandoned their nets and followed him.
He walked along a little farther
and saw James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John.
They too were in a boat mending their nets.
Then he called them.
So they left their father Zebedee in the boat
along with the hired men and followed him.”
We reflect the text on 4 points:
1. The world is a passing reality...
When he was 40, the renowned Bohemian novelist and short story writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married, was strolling through Steglitz Park in Berlin, when he chanced upon a young girl crying her eyes out because she had lost her favorite doll.
She and Kafka looked for the doll without success.
Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would look again.
The next day, when they still had not found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter “written” by the doll.
Letter said, “Please do not cry. I have gone on a trip to see the world. I'm going to write to you about my adventures.”
Thus began a story that continued till the end of Kafka’s life.
When they would meet, Kafka read aloud his carefully composed letters of adventures.
Finally, Kafka read her a letter of the story that brought the doll back to Berlin, and he then gave her a doll he had purchased.
“This does not look like my doll at all,” she said.
Kafka handed her another letter that explained, “My trips, they have changed me.”
The girl hugged the new doll & took it home.
A year later, Kafka died.
Many years later, the girl found a letter in the inner pocket of the doll’s dress.
The tiny letter, said, “Everything you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.”
All people aspire to become something in the world.
We try our best to achieve it through our talents, educating and training ourselves, learning the new knowledge and so on.
But, all may not get the chances.
At times the opportunity comes together that we do not know what to do.
We swim along into the world as life takes.
The world is not permanent.
It is a temporary reality.
It is a passing reality.
Every second brings a newness in every cell in our body and in material and non-material things.
We can plan.
We do not know what holds tomorrow.
We are the best of friends today.
What will it be tomorrow?
We are not sure.
The one thing that is permanent is love.
God loved the world and He created it beautifully.
God so loved the world that He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ to the world.
For us Christians, love is permanent.
As Saint John says: God is love.
And love is pure.
Love is holy.
We may lose everything.
We do not lose love…
Yes, the world is a passing reality, despite that love remains the same…
Love incarnated in the form of Jesus Christ.
Jesus was yesterday, Jesus is today and Jesus will be forever the same.
2. Call of God is to…
Call of God is to love.
Love in the name of Jesus.
Because, Jesus is love.
Jesus is God.
We read:
Jesus called Simon, James and John.
They left everything that they were attached with and followed Jesus to make fishers of people in love.
They are not well-educated men.
They lived a simple lifestyle.
They had a tremendous faith in God as they went to fish in deep sea every day for their livelihood.
They were not sure of coming back home.
God was the only refuge for them.
These all made them to understand the meaning of Jesus’ word when he called them to be fishers of people.
They knew that livelihood was important at the same time they understood the importance of life itself.
Our human life is sustained by love, by which we are created…nothing else can sustain us in the world.
Because, God is love.
When we say that God is love, we must remember that we are created in His image and likeness.
So the essence of human life is love.
God calls us to love…
Jesus calls us to love as he called the first disciples.
3. Repent…
The call of Jesus does not come until and unless we repent for our shortcomings, weaknesses, and brokenness.
To understand the meaning of life, we need to repent.
Repentance helps us when we want to lead a peaceful life in the materialistic world.
How?
Repentance mends our broken relationship with God, with others, with nature and with oneself.
That is the reason, John the Baptist and Jesus, calls for the repentance.
4. Believe in God…
The repentance of oneself makes us to understand our own limitedness.
When we understand our limitedness, we experience the grace of God and outpouring of God’s love as we read (Jonah 3:5) (Jonah 3:10):
“When the people of Nineveh believed God;
they proclaimed a fast
and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.
When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way,
he repented of the evil that he had threatened to do to them;
he did not carry it out.”
In conclusion, I would say that the world is a passing reality as we read (1 Corinthians 7:29-31):
“I tell you, brothers and sisters, the time is running out.
From now on, let those having wives act as not having them,
those weeping as not weeping,
those rejoicing as not rejoicing,
those buying as not owning,
those using the world as not using it fully.
For the world in its present form is passing away.”
This is the call today as we face the pandemic and various pains, difficulties and struggles of life on this earth.
The world in its present form is passing away, we are called to create the new world from its present reality through our actions as repented people and loving God, loving the other, loving nature and loving oneself, trusting in Jesus Christ, our Saviour.
May the Heart of Jesus live in the hearts of all. Amen…
