“This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” What does this verse mean? "The "Kingdom of God" is the heart of Jesus' message and the passion that has fueled his whole life. In fact, Jesus is the embodiment of the Kingdom of God. He is the Kingdom of God in flesh.

One interesting fact however is that Jesus never explains what the Kingdom of God is. He only describes it with unforgettable, magnificent and very concrete parables. The content of which was always about how God acts and what life would be like if people acted like God. Perhaps, if we ask Jesus what is His greatest dream for us, it would be the “Kingdom of God”. It is the life that God wants to build to us.

This dream definitively not just happened during Jesus’ time but a longing that remains alive and in full swing until today. He called, calls and will continue to call men and women to be part of His mission, to be His collaborators. It is He who calls, invites, gathers persons to make His great plan materialize.

Our gospel today beautifully captures that reality. It was walking by the sea that He found and chose His first followers, Simon and his brother Andrew and Zebedee’s sons James and John. They were fishermen, men who had a home and family but when Jesus invited them to become His followers, they immediately leave their nets and followed Jesus.

Jesus also today calls us to be fishers of men and also invites us to leave the nets, that is, our worries, our attachments and everything that hinders us to follow Him. He calls us to make a commitment, to become fishers of men.

Are we willing to become God’s collaborators? Are we ready to become fishers of men?

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The theme of repentance looms large in our readings today. The first reading, from the book of Jonah, illustrates how the people of Nineveh, much to the surprise and chagrin of Jonah, repent and are saved from destruction, when he is sent to warn them about their evil ways. In the Gospel we see Jesus beginning his proclamation of the Kingdom with the words: ‘Repent and believe the Good News’. He addressed these words not only to public sinners and those who knew themselves to be nó paragons of virtue, but to everyone listening to him.

It seems a bit strange to us to speak of repentance and good news in the same sentence. We tend to associate repentance with feelings of guilt and doing penances. The good news that Jesus announced was, of course, that the Kingdom or Reign of God was ‘at hand’, that God’s vision of a world where Love, Peace and Joy was about replace a world where hatred, violence and sadness reigned. But before this could happen, people needed to recognize and acknowledge that something was wrong or missing in their lives and create the space within themselves for God’s future to be ushered in. Only transformed hearts can dwell in a world where God reigns. Repentance is about preparing our hearts for such a world. It is not about self-flagellation or wallowing in guilt about the past, but rather about longing for something better, and a willingness to take the first step ón a journey towards the future God wills for us. It is about conversion, opening our hearts to the action of God’s Spirit.

People may long for a better future but still find it hard to let go of the past and embrace a better tomorrow. They fear the change will be too much of them. But repentance is not primarily our own work. It is, first and foremost, the fruit of God’s grace in us. That is why we pray for it. But there is something we can do to facilitate the process. And the first step we can take is to examine our basic attitudes to change, for these can be the biggest obstacles to repentance. Some years I was speaking with a friend about the possibility of changing or turning around one’s life. He said to me :‘Trying to change is a waste of time. Everything I tried has failed. It’s just not possible to change.’ At the root of this attitude is a kind of despair, a loss of confidence in the possibility of change. Fatalism eats away at our energy, and undermines our will to change. It is not just opposed to hope; it is a sin again faith, which means trusting God and in what God can do for us and in us.

Another common attitude which blocks our embrace of change is complacency. The complacent person says ‘I’m all right the way I am.’ There was a lot of that attitude around at the time of Christ and there’s still a lot of it around today. It is really a form of blindness. I fail see the plank in my own eye, though I can probably see very clearly the splinters in the eyes of my brothers and sisters. In the gospels we see that complacency was the attitude Jesus found most irritating. For example, he berated the scribes and Pharisees who prided themselves on their observance of the law. He called them ‘blind guides’ because they thought they knew it all and had nothing more to learn.

The saints who tried to follow Jesus closely didn’t have it too easy. In the gospels, we see fear surfacing quite often among the disciples. And Jesus seems to understand their fears and go out of his way to reassure them. Remember the incident of the disciples out on a boat in the Sea of Galilee and suddenly caught up in a storm. Jesus’ words of reassurance on that occasion ‘Do not be afraid. It is I’ were words he was to repeat over and over again. Fear, especially of what is new and unfamiliar, will probably be a familiar companion in our journey through life. However, our fears need not paralyze us if we acknowledge them and ask the Lord for the courage we need to continue the journey with him. Let us, then, take to heart Christ’s call to repent and open our hearts to the future God has in store for us, trusting his promise to be always with us, especially in our darkest moments.