Thursday of the First Week in Ordinary Time
(I Samuel 4:1-11; Mark 1:40-45)
The first reading and the gospel today converge to give an
important lesson for the spiritual life.
The reading from the I Samuel shows the Israelis using the Ark of the
covenant as a weapon to defeat the Philistines.
It is a fool’s strategy. Not holy
things but holiness incarnate in people will reap great rewards.
The gospel tells Jesus curing a leper. He specifically tells the man not to say
anything about his healing. But the man does not obey. Jesus demands silence so that people will not
think that he came simply to cure their illnesses. He wants people to know that he came to call them
to repentance and trust in God’s mercy. His
death on the cross will indicate the kind of self-surrender that Jesus expects
of his followers.
We should expect good things to happen when we give
ourselves over to Jesus. But we should
not be so presumptuous as to name what those good things will be. Rather we want to follow Jesus amidst our trials
and look forward to the mystery of his resurrection.
