RBWords

     When I was a Dominican student brother (seminarian) many years ago, one of my fellow student brothers had a small colorful card on his door that read:  REPENT*!  The asterisk at the end referred to a line at the bottom of the card that said: " If you have already repented, please disregard this message!"  The Gospel of Mark, in a very few lines today, tells us of the beginning of Jesus' ministry.  The colorful stories of Jesus' temptation in the desert that are found in Matthew and Luke are missing and the fundamental message is summed up in the lines quoted above!  There is nothing to distract us from it!

     REPENT!  That is the response expected to the message:  "The kingdom of God is at hand!"  Do we know what those words mean?  Or have we heard them before?  Lent offers us an opportunity to hear them anew!  Is the "kingdom of God" only what we find at the parish church?  Could it mean that WE are expected by virtue of our baptism to preach the kingdom at home and at work and wherever we are?  Maybe the word, "Repent," isn't part of our regular vocabulary, or perhaps we need to rediscover what it means!  Can we change for the better so that other people will witness that Christianity is an attractive and life-saving reality?  Can we "put skin on" the kingdom?  Can we model "repentance?"

     The Letter of Peter (second scripture for today) offers a clue when it speaks of baptism: It is not a removal of dirt from the body but an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  A clear conscience requires continual conversion.  Repentance gets us started, but we have to keep up the effort.  In Genesis, God gives the rainbow as a sign of covenant fidelity.  We can let that inspire us to the long term effort that repentance and the kingdom of God will demand of us.  AMEN