What is most urgent?

Homily

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time B

21 January 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

What has my attention?

Jesus is trying to get it.  His message at the beginning of his public ministry in the Gospel of Mark couldn't be any more straightforward.  Now.  Here.  Repent. Believe.  Does He have your attention?

I'm sure you're no stranger to things vying for your attention.  Because of the nonstop distraction and noise, we can find ourselves living virtually, far apart from reality.  I can get so off track, so out of touch with myself.   We can get stuck regretting the past, or obsessed about worrying about the future, that we miss being present to the reality right in front of us.  

A remedy is the word of God.  The word of God desperately wants your attention, to invite you into a sensitive and responsive mode of being, of engaging with reality.  That's where holiness and new life always is, for those who live in the here and now, with a desire to constantly change my mind and to discover new ways of doing things.

Pope Francis has given the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time to be forever known as Word of God Sunday. It's when we start meditating on a synoptic Gospel for the 30 weeks of Ordinary Time.  What's supposed to happen during ordinary time?  Well, if I dare to let the word of God have my attention above all things, whether that be the internal word of my conscience or meditating on the word Jesus is speaking to me through the Gospel, then a new ability to reorder my way of doing things can emerge!  This is what makes life exciting, a desire and ability to change in response to what I am hearing.

It's perhaps always the best new year's resolution, to let the word of God have my attention.  The Ninevites respond immediately to the preaching of Jonah.  St. Paul urges us to flee from attachments to the way things are now.  The apostles are radical and immediate in their response to the word Jesus speaks to them.  All who hear and respond gain a new and greater capacity to live.

So what has my attention in this new year?  For me, work and sports and my phone will try to dominate, and keep me stuck with the way things have always been.  Yet Jesus is speaking a word to me, inviting me not to be afraid to be an affectively mature spiritual father, one who can truly delight in fishing for Jayhawks, even though Jayhawks aren't fish, and in seeing my children grow spiritually into the fullness of life they are made for.

Jesus desires to speak a word of life to you too.  Can He have your attention?