Friday, January 16, 2015

Friday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

(Hebrews 4:1-5.11; Mark 2:1-12)

When Martin Luther King and companions called the bus strike in Montgomery, Alabama, many African-Americans walked to work.  It was no small sacrifice since the walkers often stood on their feet all day at their jobs.  Yet they were willing to do it because they knew the bus strike was a giant step forward in their quest of human dignity.  One elderly lady who had participated in the strike expressed her satisfaction at day’s end. “My feet are tired,” she said, “but my soul’s at rest.”  The author of the Letter to the Hebrews expresses hope for such rest in today’s first reading.

The Letter to the Hebrews is probably written for Jewish converts to Christianity under the threat of persecution.  Their trial is compared to the testing that the Israelites experienced as they wandered through the desert for forty years.  Their rest of unification with the risen Christ in glory is taken as the completion of the promise made to their ancestors of entry into the Promised Land. 

Rest is always more than inaction.  Full rest includes the satisfaction of knowing that we have done our very best.  When a teacher returns home after of a full day of instructing, disciplining, and encouraging her students, she can rest easy.  When we bear with difficulties to announce the good news of God’s love, we can also sleep easy.  The rest that we take is a foreshadowing of the eternal rest of the dead for which we pray on behalf of our loved ones and to which we look forward for ourselves.

Thursday, January 15, 2014

Thursday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

(Hebrews 3:7-14; Mark 1:40-45)

A retired preacher of boys’ retreat was asked why he gave up the practice.  He answered that the fire and brimstone that he used to scare the boys no longer had a positive effect.  He said that once boys were visibly shaken by exaggerated descriptions of eternal punishment, but they had come to dismiss the possibility.  Perhaps the author of the Letter to the Hebrews is aware of this tendency in the second reading today.

The reading quotes the Old Testament in describing the effect of sin.  It does not say that sinners will be tortured but, much more simply, that they not enter into God’s rest.  Then it encourages readers to become allergic to sin so that they do not surrender to its promptings.

Sin is allowing selfish desires to take precedence over doing God’s will.  In a sexual temptation sin is  saying that one’s desire for pleasure is more important than the personal integrity of that person’s partner or, indeed, of the person’s own integrity.  We never want to become comfortable with this kind of thought.  Indeed, we want to resist it from the beginning.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Tuesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

(I Samuel 1:9-20; Mark 1:21-28)

As American parents shudder when their high school children go to the prom, parents in Australia worry as their children finish secondary school.  Graduation there is typically followed by a week with classmates at the beach.  Un-chaperoned, the teens are likely to turn the rite of passage into a seven-day orgy.  Some families are willing to give their graduates a trip to Hong Kong if they forgo the week-long partying.  In today's gospel Jesus presents himself as the rescuer of people given to drink, drugs, and sex.

The passage speaks of "unclean spirits" which are normally considered devils possessing the innocent.  However, the term may be profitably read today as hedonists obsessed by lust and craving stupor.  Jesus addresses this condition with authority.  He is not concerned with how pitiful the situation appears but with the well-being of the people involved.  He commands the spirits to leave the infected; that is, in a contemporary interpretation, his care engenders a genuine love of self that jars hedonists out of self-abuse. 

In a society that condones libertine sex and blinks at drunkenness we should see Jesus as a champion of spiritual integrity.  His love for us suppresses bodily urges for illegitimate pleasure.  He provides us with peace of mind and the tranquility of self-control.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Wednesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

(Hebrews 2:14-18; Mark 1:29-39)

The world needs healers.  People are wounded from the battlefield of life.  Pope Francis famously said that he envisions the Church as a field hospital taking care of life’s victims.  Yet Jesus in today’s gospel resists the call to become solely a physician.

Having the power to heal the sick, Jesus may find a permanent practice in any town.  But that is not his deepest calling.  First and foremost, he is commissioned to preach good news to the poor.  So he moves on to share the good news of the Father’s love with the whole world.

We have similar vocations.  Taking up Jesus’ call to spread the Gospel, parents will raise their children in both faith and love.  Indeed, all workers will discern in their labor ways that to extend God’s love in the world.  Doing so, we become—again like Jesus -- healers of the soul if not of the body.

Monday, January 12, 2015

Monday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

(Hebrews 1:1-6; Mark 1:14-20)

Today’s gospel makes an interesting study of comparison and contrast with next Sunday’s.  It gives the account of Jesus’ call of his first disciples in the Gospel of Mark.  Sunday’s gospel will proclaim the story of the call in the Gospel according to John.

In Mark, John the Baptist has been arrested when Jesus goes to Galilee to proclaim the Good News.  Finding Peter and Andrew fishing, he calls them to follow him.  In John, the Baptist himself tells his disciple Andrew that Jesus is the “lamb of God.”  In both Mark and John Jesus takes the initiative by inviting his future disciples to “come.”  Again, in both cases again the men assuming the role of disciples explicitly “follow” Jesus.  Finally, in Mark Jesus tells Peter and Andrew that they will be fishers of men while in John, Andrew goes out fishing for his brother Simon to become Jesus’ follower.

Many begin to doubt the truth claim of the gospels when they hear of inconsistencies like the ones mentioned above.  But when we think about it, don’t the inconsistencies while still delivering the same basic message support their being true?  The evangelists Mark and John wrote at least one and perhaps two generations after Jesus died.  There is no sure evidence that they knew one another or that one knew of the other’s writing. Both received Jesus’ story largely by word of mouth as it was preached first by the Twelve and then by other apostles.  Naturally some deviation occurred.  But the similarities are so strong that we can say with confidence that, yes, Jesus did call his disciples and, yes, they did “follow” or learn from him.