Third Sunday of Ordinary Time - January 25, 2026

Last week, we changed into our green vestments, and today we celebrate the third Sunday of Ordinary time. This name, “Ordinary Time,” in this usage, does not mean “regular” time, or worse, it does not mean“ho-hum” time. “Ordinary” comes from the fact that the Sundays are numbered in sequence, or “ordered.” We call the counting numbers “ordinal” numbers, because they are in order, so this is where the name derives from, ordinary time. There are 33 or 34 Sundays in ordinary time, depending on the number of Sundays in a given year. The Church uses this “Ordinary Time,” this “ordered time,” to meditate on the public ministry of Jesus. We use this time to tell the many stories of the ministry of Jesus, how he began to call his disciples to follow him, and how he began to spread the Gospel message in the towns and villages, while healing the sick as he preaches. This year we have 33 Sundays in O.T. to mediate on the public ministry of Jesus.

In the four Gospels the public ministry of Jesus begins with the Baptism of the Lord, which we celebrated two Sundays ago. Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell the story of the Baptism of Jesus, while St. John’s Gospel tells of John the Baptist’s testimony of the Holy Spirit coming down on Jesus and remaining with him. All four of the Gospel writers view John the Baptist as the final prophet, as the ultimate prophet who prepares the way and announces the coming of the Messiah. Today in our Gospel, Jesus hears of the imprisonment of John the Baptist, and Jesus knows that John, like all prophets, will not survive this imprisonment. The Baptist has fulfilled the mission he was sent to do: he prepared the path in the desert, and he announced the coming of the Messiah. He baptized Jesus, and he testified publicly to the fact that the Spirit descended onto him and remained, which is the same as saying that Jesus is the Messiah. Now John is in prison, and he will not get out alive. The time has come for Jesus to begin his ministry, so he leaves his home in Nazareth, and makes the 20 mile journey down the hill to the Sea of Galilee to the town of Capernaum.

Jesus has gone down to the sea. This is to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah that we heard in our first reading: “The Lord has glorified the seaward road, the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the land west of the Jordan, the District of the Gentiles.” This is exactly where Capernaum is, in the ancestral land of the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali. Isaiah’s prophecy says that “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone.” This light that shines on the region is the light of Christ, who today is beginning his public life. As he walks along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and begins to choose his disciples. Jesus will begin his ministry with four fishermen, four poor, uneducated men. “Uneducated,” in this sense, is not the same as “not smart.” These poor working men are plenty intelligent. And they are not entirely uneducated, because they are deeply faithful, and they know the Hebrew Scriptures; and they know the Law of Moses and the Prophets. 

These poor men must work all night, every night, except on the Sabbath, to bring in enough fish to sell to take care of their earthly needs for just the next day. “Paycheck to paycheck” we say now. So we can imagine what it means for them, when Jesus calls out to them, “come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 

It is amazing to hear the response of the four fishermen: they drop everything at once, leave the boats and the nets behind and follow Jesus.  We might imagine that there is something about Jesus, let’s say his confidence, or maybe his tone of authority. But we know from other Gospel stories that not everyone reacts to Jesus’s call as these four fishermen do. What could possibly make these men, who are totally dependent on the meager income of fishing, what could interest them in the way that Jesus’s call interests them?

The word “call” in Latin, is “vocare,” and this is the root of our English word Vocation. Vocare, to call, vocation, a calling. The men had been working hard at their job, fishing. But when Jesus came by and called to them to follow him, this became their vocation. Let me give you an example. I knew a guy who worked as an attorney. He was a good attorney, and he made a comfortable living. But he always felt as if something was missing in his life. Then, I suppose you could say that one day Jesus walked by and called to him by name. He left his law books and his law practice, and entered the seminary, and became a priest for this Archdiocese. He is working harder now than he ever did as an attorney, but he also no longer has the feeling that something is missing. The same thing happened to an engineer that I know. A young woman that I met had been a college volleyball player, studying communications, hoping to be a sports announcer someday. Instead, Jesus passed by one day and called her name, and now she is a professed sister, using her communications skills to proclaim the Gospel.

I suppose I could list myself, too. I worked a number of “jobs,” I was a window washer, a church maintenance man, and an administrator for the Chancery, but I heard the call to serve as a permanent deacon. 

Many “jobs” certainly qualify as vocations. Teachers, health care workers, and first responders, to name a few among many, many, others, are all jobs that can be called true vocations, true callings from our Lord to serve others. In fact, any “job” done in order to be of service to others, can be called a vocation. I used to call window cleaning my “ministry of light!”

Extremely important, and often overlooked, are married couples who commit lovingly to each other as a response to their love of our Lord, who dedicate themselves to raising holy, faith-filled families. And, as I have said before, holy, faith-filled children grow up wanting to found their own families.

So we should make it our prayer to ask our Lord what it is that he wants us to do with our lives to serve him. Young people in particular should tune in carefully in prayer to find how Jesus is calling you to serve him. But this prayer never gets old. Many older people who have committed to a long vocation often find themselves being called to augment what they do, or even to hand off what they do to others, and set out to follow our Lord’s call to serve in a new way, a different way. What is important for us to realize is that we too, all of us, we are called by Jesus to follow him, just as Simon and Andrew and James and John and all the others were. We will want to listen carefully for the call in our lives.

And we will want to respond to our Lord’s call in the same manner that the first disciples did, dropping everything to set out on the marvelous adventure that Jesus has planned for us.