(Duccio di Boninsegna, The Calling of Peter and Andrew, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1308)

Sunday, 25 January 2026

THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – YEAR A

Commentary on the Sunday Gospel

Mt 4:12-23

We continue our journey in the footsteps of the Word through this Sunday’s Gospel, which presents us with the beginning of Jesus’ mission and the calling of the first apostles. It is a story that can help us understand what kairos is, the opportune moment to accept the call to conversion and action.

We are in the first chapters of Matthew’s Gospel, after the account of the temptations in the desert and before the Sermon on the Mount. Today’s scene is introduced by an editorial passage, which acts as a kind of hinge between the Baptist – the tradition of Israel – and the Beatitudes – the newness of the Gospel. This is not a ‘minor’ passage, but rather one that sheds important light on the meaning of Jesus’ human story, as described in the Gospel of Levi: thirty years in Nazareth, the last weeks in Judea and Jerusalem, and the heart of the story in Capernaum, by the sea.

‘When Jesus heard that John had been arrested’, literally ‘handed over’, just as Jesus himself will be handed over and betrayed at the end of the story. Paradoxically, this is the kairos to begin the mission: Christ begins precisely when he learns that his prophet is in prison. When you are handed over, betrayed, that is the opportune moment for God: man wants to hand him over, and he hands himself over; man wants to sell him, and he makes himself a gift.

Jesus therefore withdraws, flees, because this too is a kairos: it is not a matter of cowardice, opportunism or calculation, but of fulfilling a mission. Just as the flight into Egypt had allowed the family to take its first steps, this flight allows the first steps of Christ’s mission: in Nazareth Jesus had already been expelled from the synagogue, in Jerusalem he risks ending up like John.

So the ‘land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, on the road to the sea’ becomes the ideal place, because ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’ needed light, recalling Isaiah’s prophecy about the oppression of the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III. This is the kairos, the right time and place for each of us. Everyone lives in a ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’ that thirsts for light in its daily life. There is no point in waiting for a different time, an astral conjunction, to begin.

The people ‘lived in darkness’, in a static position, while immediately afterwards it is said that Jesus ‘walked along the sea‘. The link between the mission of Jesus and that of the apostles is given by an attitude of movement. Creation becomes context and opportunity, in the daily routine of work, in its dignity. An opportunity for encounter and salvation. Jesus first preaches, inviting everyone, ‘Repent’, and then calls them by name. The scene seems to repeat itself twice in the same way, but in this redundancy there is a belonging that has been repeated for two thousand years: each of us is called by name, every day.

Each call is similar, but it is not a photocopy: there are slight differences that always make the encounter unique. They are not all ‘fishermen’, they are brothers, they do not all have only ‘nets’: for example, Simon and Andrew do not use trawl nets, but the giacchio, a small net used by poor fishermen; unlike the boat of the sons of Zebedee, with better nets and – as Mark recounts – even with servants. But each one is reached by the same call to action, a call by name. A call to follow Jesus.

The response is in silence, it amazes us: they leave everything. They leave because they find, they find everything, they are found by a gaze that gives life! They are called to do what they already do, to be ‘fishers of men‘. The sea, a sign of death and sin, becomes the place to bring to life, to ‘fish’ for many people in history! In this sense, God comes to dwell in our stories, our talents, our ‘Galilee of the nations’ and fill it with light and meaning. This leads the first apostles to leave everything behind, because they find everything!

Let us pray to the Lord today, on this Sunday, that we may joyfully accept the invitation to conversion proposed by Francis of Assisi, who said in his paraphrase of the Our Father: “Thy kingdom come: that thou mayest reign in us through grace and bring us into thy kingdom, where the vision of thee is unveiled, the love of thee is perfect, the communion of thee is blessed, and the enjoyment of thee is without end” (FF 269).

We wish you a happy Sunday

Laudato si’!