Jesus Preaching

by Niño Martin Pineda

In our Gospel today, Jesus preached to the Galileans the Good News. Amazingly, everyone listening to Him was astonished and followed Him instantaneously. In our present world, we can ask several questions: Is Jesus still calling us? Is He still preaching to us? If He is still preaching to us, why are there so few who follow Him?

Jesus, from the start, wanted for us to have faith in God’s teaching through His proclamation. It must have been very hard for Him, because many of the Galileans also doubted Jesus at first. They ask in today’s Gospel, “What is this?” Even so, some people still followed him. Let us think about this scene for a moment: if we witnessed the cure of the possessed man by Jesus, what would our reaction be? Would we also ask, “What is this?”

Today, we might not hear His call in the way the first apostles did, but in reality, God has been calling us through that medium called the human heart. But what does Jesus call us to do? We are called and sent into the entire world to proclaim the Good News of the Lord.

We are indeed “sent,” but we are not alone; the Lord is working with us. It was true yesterday and so it is today. We are His holy messengers in the third millennium and it is not anymore only by listening but also by preaching that we grow in our call. We see charismatic leaders chosen out of the many who were called not only in the movies; we see them in homes, schools, churches, and even in our daily roads! Everyday! Who knows, you and I could be Jesus’ holy messengers now.

We can say that the Galileans were more “lucky” because they saw Jesus flesh and blood. 2000 years after His death (and resurrection, of course), some of us find it very difficult to listen to Jesus’ call. But we don’t have to be like the Galileans who believed because they saw. For us modern-day Christians, we see precisely by believing first, and so are led to accept God and His teachings.

Jesus truly came, spoke and conquered sin and death!

Niño is currently a senior at St. Peter the Apostle School. He is an altar server at our Parish and is a ministry steward of the Filipino-Chinese Catholic Youth.

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Gospel
01 February 2009
Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Mk 1:21-28

Then they came to Capernaum,
and on the sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and taught.
The people were astonished at his teaching,
for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.
In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit;
he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?
Have you come to destroy us?
I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”
Jesus rebuked him and said,
“Quiet! Come out of him!”
The unclean spirit convulsed him and with a loud cry came out of him.
All were amazed and asked one another,
“What is this?
A new teaching with authority.
He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.”
His fame spread everywhere throughout the whole region of Galilee.