Come after Me and I will Make you Fishers of Men

01-25-2026Weekly ReflectionFr. Manasseh Iorchir, VC

Since 2019, the Universal Church dedicates the third Sunday of every year to the celebration of the Word of God. This celebration is very apt in Year "A" of the liturgical calendar for two reasons. First, it is at this third weekend of Ordinary Time that the almost serial Gospel Readings from Matthew begin and continue throughout Ordinary Time of the liturgical year. It is also on the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time in Year "A" that Matthew gives us an account of the beginning of the preaching part of the public ministry of Jesus.

In the Gospel passage this weekend, Matthew provides a concise account of Jesus' response to the sudden withdrawal of John the Baptist, His precursor, from the missionary scene as a result of his arrest by Herod to whom John told some hard truth. Prophets of God have always suffered persecution of various kinds for propagating unpopular truth in a world that prefers sin to righteousness. Even John the Baptist was not spared this standard treatment by a vice applauding world. However, his sudden exit from the scene of ministry afforded the Messiah, about whom John preached, the moment to up the ante in the proclamation of the coming of the Kingdom of God, that state of life where the righteous will of God is done. His message was simple: "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." It was not a message of promised prosperity, neither was it a message of promised display of power, the kind that the world knows. It was a message of inner conversion after encountering the Kingdom of God. This ought to remain the standard message of every Christian preacher who really intends to walk in the steps of Christ. This message remains relevant in our time and community and will continue to be so until Christ comes again to make all things right.

Next, Jesus set His heart to the task of recruiting collaborators who would be with Him, learn at His feet and later go out to make disciples of all nations in His name. This task aligned with the first and makes the two first responses of the Divine Redeemer to the exit of His precursor as well as the first two decisions He made at the beginning of His public ministry, decisions that would enhance and ensure continuity for the ministry of preaching repentance. His Apostles would do something similar when they chose Matthias to replace Judas and when they chose the seven deacons to fret about equitable distribution of the temporal goods of the Church, "but we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word." (Acts 6:4). Every Christian community and indeed every Christian should, like the Lord, prioritize the Gospel in its purity above every other consideration. It is instructive that Jesus did not go to Jerusalem where He was sure to find and assemble the aristocrats of His time who perhaps would have been easier to train given their already acquired education, but instead went walking along the sea of Galilee where He found and recruited fishermen into catching men and women for God. Not only did he demonstrate his abhorrence for shortcuts, He also showed that God makes the Kingdom of God from "raw material."

The invitation extended to the first four Apostles was also a command that Christ continues to extend to us. An invitation and a directive to leave daily jettison worldliness and embrace a life of truth and righteousness with Jesus in the Kingdom of God. Like the Apostles, let us set aside the cares of this world as we respond promptly, positively and wholeheartedly to this Divine invitation to proselytize the world with the Gospel of Christ.

Please be kind and may God bless you.