Four weeks ago we celebrated the great Feast Day of Christmas, when through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary conceived and gave birth to Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. It is universally accepted in all of Christianity that God became man in the person of Jesus Christ. It is also universally accepted among all Christians how God became man and came to us as a child, born of a virgin. But not all Christians necessarily agree on why it was necessary that God became man and lived among us, only to suffer and die on the cross.
If you took an informal survey and asked a number of people, presumably Christian, why God became man, you’d probably get any number of answers. “He came to show us how to love one another.” “He came to show us the way to heaven.” Now, of course, these answers aren’t wrong. But they don’t really get to the heart of why God became man. We say in the Creed that we profess each Sunday, “for us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church outlines four reasons for the incarnation—why “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14).
- in order to save us by reconciling us with God
- so that we might know God’s love
- to be our model of holiness
- to make us partakers of the divine nature
(Cf. CCC 457-460)
The Word became flesh first and foremost to save us from our sins, and to reconcile us with God. The angel of the Lord said to Joseph said about Mary: “She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Mt 1:21). Because of Original Sin, we have a fallen human nature, and the gateway to heaven was closed. If you need proof of this, just check out the Book of Genesis, chapter 3. So what is necessary for us to be able to enter the gates of heaven?
Here again, different Christian denominations will offer different answers. Some say “All you have to do is believe in Christ, and profess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and you will be saved.” But is this what Jesus says? The first words that Jesus speaks in the Gospel of Mark are from this Gospel reading. “This is the time of fulfillment. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
After the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost, Peter preached to the thousands of people in Jerusalem about Jesus and how all of salvation history pointed to him as the promised Messiah. They were all cut to the heart and asked Peter and the other Apostles, “What are we to do?” And Peter said, “Accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, and you will be saved.” No. He said, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ
for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38). So God became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ to save us from our sins, and in order to be saved we must first repent.
Now it sounds like I’m making fun of other Christian religions, but I’m not. They have a true love of Jesus and the Bible that are great examples for us. But we cannot water down our faith to simply “accepting Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior.” Because when we do this, we can easily make our faith “between me and Jesus.” And when we do this, then there is no need for the Church. Why, then, did Jesus choose the apostles, and why did he command them to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit?” (Mt 28:19) Why did he choose to suffer and die on the cross?
Why do we need to repent? Because of the Cross.
Because of our sins, and God’s love for us, Jesus took upon himself the entire weight of the sins of all time, and he suffered his passion, died on the cross, rose, and ascended into heaven. Why? So that we might share eternal life with him. This is why we as Catholics love the Crucifix.
But the purpose of the Crucifix isn’t to say to us “This is what you did to me!” No. This is the moment that Jesus weds himself to us, when he gives himself to us completely to show us his unconditional love for us. This is why we love the crucifix. But the purpose of the crucifix is also to let us know that sin brings death, and to avoid eternal death, we need to repent.
Unfortunately, repentance isn’t a term we often like to think of today. It implies that we did something wrong, and we don’t like to admit that. Fundamentally what repentance means is changing your view, opening your eyes, seeing something you didn’t see before. To repent, in the original Greek, is to change your mind, to convert; literally, it means to turn. Not simply turning from something, but, more importantly, turning toward something—toward someone.
The Major Prophets we know and are familiar with—Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah—all had two impressive qualities: they were obedient to the Lord and they preached repentance. Look what happened to Jonah when he first refused to preach repentance. But when he did, the Ninevites repented of their evil ways. But the story of Jonah is not really about Jonah; it is more a story about God. We get a glimpse in this story just how good, how loving and compassionate God is. All men and women in the world are the people he cares for. And so all of us are called to repent, because to repent simply means to turn toward God.
We are asked to remember that in order to welcome the blessing of the Gospel in our lives, we are first to repent, to reform our lives so we may create an atmosphere where faith can grow. This reform or repentance called for by Jesus often requires a radical transformation of our lifestyle. This radical turning to Christ makes a daily demand, a conversion to Christ that is continuous. And as long as we are alive, it never ends. Even ten years after his baptism, Saint Augustine had to confess that he was still wrestling with the lust of the flesh, the lure of the world, and the pride of life. For us as for Augustine, turning to Christ each day is more than turning from temptation and from sin. What was given to us in baptism was life, a sharing in God’s own life. But to stay alive in Christ, we have to grow; because when we cease to grow, we begin to die. And how do grow into Christ? We get to know him—through constant prayer, and reading, studying and meditating on Holy Scripture and the teachings of the Church.
We are called not just once, but each day, at every moment throughout our lives. The saints didn’t become holy by responding to just one moment, but through a lifetime of repentance, recommitment and starting again – and with the constant influence of God’s grace that we receive through the sacraments, especially in the Eucharist and Reconciliation. Today, as at every Mass, we are called to examine our lives, to repent, and turn from our sinful paths, so that we might respond to God’s call.
It takes a great deal of humility to repent in the way Jesus asks of us. Venerable Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, who was a Cardinal imprisoned by the Vietnamese government for thirteen years, wrote “Lord, you are infinitely good. You are humble. You are holy. You are generous in forgiveness. And I am a miserable sinner, proud and full of spite. Only when I truly repent and change will I realize that life with you is truly paradise. …”
But we shouldn’t simply examine ourselves and see only our sin. That would cause us to despair. We are powerless to repent on our own. Without the Lord’s working within us, there is no chance we will overcome ourselves.
Our Gospel passage that we just heard presents us with four men who drop what they are doing and follow Jesus when he tells them to “repent, and believe in the gospel.” They leave their jobs and their families behind because they realize the urgency of the Gospel message. This is not a hobby or a day’s outing on the lake; these men leave behind the very source of their livelihood—everything—to follow Jesus. This wasn’t the first time they met or knew of Jesus. The Gospel passage from John that we heard last week tells us that Andrew, who was a disciple of John the Baptist, came to follow Jesus and then brought his brother Simon Peter to him. This was probably two to three years before Jesus calls them to follow him. But it is at this time that they are the first to recognize that “the kingdom of God is at hand.” And when they do recognize it, their response is immediate.
These apostles are not called to save the world by their own independent heroic deeds but through their submission to Jesus. Their dependence on Jesus as disciples is critical and he states this when he says, “I will make you fishers of men.” And it’s the same way with us. When we respond to Jesus’ call, we are accepting that he will form us; he will change us if we let him. Discipleship is not joining a club; it’s an obedient acceptance to become who Jesus wills us to be. There’s a popular expression in our culture: “a self-made man” or “a self-made woman,” and that reflects our belief that it is up to us to create who we are. By contrast, the faithful disciple recognizes that it is God who makes us who and what we are. May we allow him into our lives, submit to his will, and follow him.