First Week of the Year – Monday 12.1.2026

By: Rev. Fr. Fredrick Kiwanuka

Mark 1:14-20

As we begin the Ordinary time of the Church Year, we read Marks’ Gospel first. It is the shortest and most concise. Our passage opens just as Jesus comes out of the desert and begins His public life. He proclaims that the reign of God is at hand and urges us to repent and believe the good news.

Good News? Where is the good news? All that one seems to see in the news media is bad news: Wars, bombings, terrorism, riots, abductions and such like. Is there no good news to be reported? Jesus came to bring good news. That is what the very word “Gospel” means in old English. When Jesus was born, it was announced as “Tidings of great joy” After His resurrection those who wrote about Him, His life, death and resurrection called it gospel or simply “Good News”

What is this good news that Jesus brings? Is it hope of great wealth and prosperity? What is this reign of God that Jesus says is at hand? It is a promise of love, a promise of forgiveness, of healing and new life. Jesus came to bring the love of the father to His children on earth. He showed this love in all His works, in his healings, His forgiveness, His compassion for the crowds.

How should we respond to that good news? Do TV, social media, daily newspapers? All this including secular magazines and novels take up so much of our time that we have none left for the good news, God’s own Word? Jesus says, “Reform your lives” Get your priorities straight. Look around, see the good news. Become aware of God’s love, share it with others. Be a messenger of the good news. Then you will see that the reign of God is already in our midst.

“Believe in the good news” that is Jesus’s call to all of us. He calls us to take Him at His Word, to believe that God so loves the world that he will make any sacrifice to bring us back to himself, to believe that what sounds too good to be true is really true.

@ Christ the King Parish, Kampala