I would think that the last thing in the world Jonah would want to do was to follow God’s command. “Set out for the great city of Nineveh and announce to it the message I will tell you.”

Today’s reading follows immediately on the short accounts of Jesus’ baptism and temptations in the desert that Mark gives. It is the beginning of his public ministry. The reading consists of two main parts – a summary of Jesus’ teaching and the first response to it.

Our call is listening to and following Jesus

Gospel: John 1: 35–42
“Come, and you will see.”

The passage opens again with the words, “The next day…”. John the Baptist is there with two of his own disciples. Just then Jesus walked by. This is a common feature of Jesus in the Gospel and it reminds us that Jesus walks by so many times in our ordinary day.

In the Gospel, two of Jesus’s disciples, one of whom was Andrew, are invited by Jesus to “Come and you will see”. They stayed with Jesus the entire day. What a gift! Andrew used his gift immediately and ran to find his brother, Simon, and brought him to Jesus. We all know the results of what happened to Peter! Rather effective evangelization.