FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
4 FEBRUARY 2018
Last
Sunday, we heard that the people in the synagogue at Capernaum were amazed,
because they heard Jesus teaching with authority. Unlike other Rabbis, Jesus did not base his
teaching on the authority of others. The
demon expelled by Jesus knew exactly why Jesus taught in this way. He knew that Jesus was the Son of God who had
come to destroy what demons love best:
sin and death. Today, Jesus
expresses that authority again by grasping the hand of Peter’s mother-in-law.
During this flu season, many of us know how a fever can turn us into
ourselves. So Jesus helps her up. Saint Mark uses the same Greek verb to
describe the Father raising Jesus from the dead. Peter’s mother-in-law has already experienced
a foretaste of the mystery of the Lord’s dying and rising in her healing. His healing power frees her from concern for
her welfare to the welfare of others.
Saint Mark will use that same word two more times to speak of the humble
service embraced by followers of Jesus, who came not to be served, but to
serve.
When the
risen Christ reached out to Saul on the road to Damascus, he helped him up from
his narrow focus on the Law and himself.
Completely changed by that experience, the Apostle Paul did the same
thing that Peter’s mother-in-law did. He
died to himself and gave himself in humble service to proclaim the Good News to
anyone who would listen. In a culture
where a majority of its citizens found themselves as slaves, Saint Paul proudly
announces that he has made himself a slave to all. He did not become a slave by having his home
town invaded. Nor did he become a slave
because his parents could not pay their bills.
He freely enslaved himself to the mission of telling the Gospel to as many
people as possible. His Jewish brothers
and sisters had heard stories of people speaking for God and bringing glad
tidings. His glad tidings centered on
Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of glad tidings.
The Gentiles had often heard the glad tidings of a military victory won
by the armies of the emperor. Paul gives
them the glad tidings that Jesus Christ has won the ultimate victory over sin
and death.
In just a
couple of weeks, we will enter into Lent and spend forty days preparing to
renew our faith in the Mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in
a special way at the Sacred Paschal Triduum.
We celebrate that Mystery at this Mass and we are sent out to live the
Mystery we have encountered in our daily lives.
Saint Mark
is one of the four Evangelists who proclaimed the glad tidings some forty years
after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But evangelizing did not stop with the
writing of the Gospels. We too are
called to evangelize, to tell everyone about the glad tidings which we have
received and experienced. We do that by
our example – by the way we welcome strangers, or forgive those who have hurt us,
or respond to the needs of the poor, dying to ourselves out of love for those
who depend on us. We also need to talk
about our faith. That is exactly what is
happening this weekend with the men who are participating in the Christ Renews
His Parish Retreat. They are learning to
talk about their faith in the ways that Saint Paul talks about. In becoming all things to all, he entered
into the lives of those who listened to him.
He did not beat them over the head with the truth, but spoke boldly and
kindly to anyone who would listen. All
of us need to learn how to speak boldly and kindly about our faith.
We live in a world that knows the
pain and suffering described in the first reading from the Book of Job. Jesus Christ did not take away that pain or
explain that suffering. He entered into
it and gave us hope. That is certainly
glad tidings, and we cannot keep those tidings to ourselves!
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