Today’s readings: Isaiah 8, 23 - 9, 3; 1 Corinthians 1, 10-13.17; Matthew 4, 12-23.

There is ample evidence that we are presently in a change of epoch, and that if this is not managed wisely it can put civilisation at risk. C.S. Lewis wrote of two great spiritual revolutions that marked Western civilisation – the first from pre-Christian to Christian and the second from Christian to post-Christian. He considered the second change more radical than the first.

For centuries, civilisation had sure points of reference where values and beliefs are concerned. When we speak of times changing, it should not sound tragic; after all, we ourselves change with time. The trouble with any civilisation is when a vacuum is created and when the feeling of being lost dominates the people’s hearts.

Today’s reading from Isaiah addresses such a scenario in Israel’s history. Isaiah speaks of a “people that walked in darkness”, but with prophetic insight he perceives also a great light coming. His prophecy is an ode to hope in dark times. He saw the light that cancels the darkness, which in biblical language symbolises void and death. He also speaks of the joy at harvest time, seeing a new creation, the dawning of a new era and a new world.

This recalls Charles Peguy’s poem The Porch of the Mystery of the Second Virtue which he wrote in 1911, when the shadows of World War I were gathering over Europe in an atmosphere of increasing political and economic tension. He wrote it also in the midst of a harrowing personal drama. The second virtue he is referring to is hope, which Peguy considers to be the “little sister” of faith and love.

Like the prophets, Peguy discerns God’s presence in concrete human experiences, and without moralising or uttering warnings, he proposes a radical therapy: Hope. At times we need to challenge the modern world’s misplaced hopes. This is what Christian life is all about if we want to take stock of what our faith stands for. It is natural that under so many pressures we misplace our hope without realising that this can lead to delusions.

This light in the darkness that Isaiah perceives for his people in dire circumstances figures prominently in today’s gospel from Matthew. The preaching of Jesus here starts with the message: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand”. This is immediately followed by the calling and response of four fishermen which marks Jesus as a radical turning-point at a time when Judaism and the Greco-Roman civilisation were at loggerheads, with Judaism risking complete irrelevance.

When Jesus speaks of the kingdom which is “close at hand”, he is not referring to a reality just round the corner. “Close at hand” means it is within us. As Richard Rohr writes, it is a question of finding what is already there. The Judaic religion at the time of Jesus had completely lost sight of this and Jesus was putting religion back on the right track.

The narrative of a personalised call of four fishermen who were ready to let go of everything that gave them identity puts faith in a radically different perspective. We tend to interpret this ‘leaving everything’ in terms of totally renouncing all that constitutes and shapes one’s life. This took us to extremes, restricting the concept itself of ‘vocation’ very specifically to a form of monastic or religious life.

What the gospel text mostly highlights is the encounter with Jesus, which overshadows the routine lives of these four fishermen. Their encounter with Jesus was, in Isaiah’s words, like the great light in the darkness. As the gospel puts it, it was so obvious they almost had no choice: “they left their nets at once and followed him”.

Christian discipleship is a call to move beyond a superficial grasp of our faith to discover its depth and riches. It is a process of growth in wisdom, it provides the right vision of reality and shapes our living. Jesus calls us to learn how to embrace life, to live fully and sensibly, to find meaning in what we do and how we live.

In an age defined as post-Christian, we again discover ourselves at the exact point where Jesus took off, with our religion risking irrelevance and our civilisation at risk, and being challenged to let go of the pettiness of daily life in exchange for a call to dig deeper and being wiser in our personal life journey.