There’s something special about people who live a Christian way of life. I remember a popular song that the children’s choir would often sing in Church “They will know we are Christians by our love”. God is love and through Him anything is possible. This good news is about God at work in Jesus Christ. The public ministry of Jesus began right after John the Baptist’s mission.

After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mark. 1:14-15).

Christianity is, above all, a way of seeing. Everything else in Christian life flows from and circles around the transformation of vision. Christians see differently, and that is why their prayer, their worship, their action, their whole way of being in the world have a distinctive accent and flavor. What united figures as diverse as James Joyce, Caravaggio, John Milton, the architect of Chartres, Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the later Bob Dylan is a peculiar and distinctive take on things, a style, a way, which flow finally from Jesus of Nazareth.

But what is it that Christians see, and how do they come to see it? What is the “mystical” sense that stands stubbornly at the heart of all Christian experience? This passage from the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, can help us answer these questions.

After his baptism and temptation in the desert, Jesus goes into Galilee and begins to preach. The first words out of his mouth, as Mark reports them, serve as a sort of summary statement of his life and work: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Bishop Barron – Page 183 of The Word on Fire Bible: Volume I – The Gospels

Bishop Barron continues on to say: “This is not the time to be asleep, not the time to be languishing in complacency and self-satisfaction, not the time for delaying tactics, for procrastination and second-guessing.” He refers to the Byzantine liturgy and how it repeatedly calls for attentiveness, and the emphasis on wakefulness in Buddhism.

Let us pray that we are able to listen and be aware of the good news, and demonstrate to others how wonderful it is to be Christian through examples of our love.