Jesus began his mission in the lakeside town of Capernaum. He was wildly successful. You can imagine him setting up shop there and building a mega-Church there. That certainly seems to be what his first followers expected. But Jesus thought otherwise. “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also.” The good thing we are doing can blind us to what more we should be doing. One of my spiritual directors used to tell me that “the good is the enemy of the better.” Jesus could have been content and done a great job, no doubt, doing good work in Capernaum. Instead he sought to do the better thing of bringing his message “to the whole of Galilee,” and eventually to Jerusalem from whence it would spread to the whole world. This happened, St. Mark is careful to point out, after Jesus prayed, after he sought the will of God. This lesson is an important one for St. James. We feel, rightly, that we have a pretty good parish. But we can’t rest content there. We are called to be better. Sometime this Spring we will enter into the Renew My Church process. I would ask that we all pray to see where God is calling us to be better as we seek a more conversion.
