| |
 |
| |
Homilies are posted no later than during the week
prior to the Sunday they are needed |
| |
6 Ordinary Time
|
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle B - Mark 1:40-45
President John F Kennedy invited a bishop to give an
invocation. The prayer was endless. Later, a smiling President Kennedy
asked a guest, "Did you hear that bishop's speech to God?"
There is irony in today's Gospel. Jesus tells the
cured man to tell no one of the miracle. The fellow cannot contain
himself. He tells everyone. Yet in Matthew 28,19, Jesus tells us to
tell everyone about Him. What do we do? That's right. We tell no one.
We should bring back the former leper. He was a better public relations
person than we. Or we should become like the bishop.
As the scene opens, Jesus is walking out of
the Galilean
mountains. He has delivered His famous sermon on the Beatitudes. He is
about to take off the academic gown and hood of the scholar and put on
the mantle of the miracle worker. Though Mark's Gospel is the shortest,
it contains the most miracles.
Christ was being followed by a huge mob. As He
approached a
town, a desperate man broke through the crowd and painfully got to his
knees before Jesus. The crowd ran away in horror. The fellow was our
unnamed leper.
Leprosy was a common disease in Palestine. In
its late stages, the illness is a bad scene. Substitute foul smelling
sores for nose, lips, toes, etc, and one has the picture. The
Jews looked upon leprosy not so much as a physical disease but a
spiritual uncleanness. The leper carried both physical wounds and the
conviction that God hated him. Talk about poor self-image!
Jewish law was harsh to lepers. They had to
live outside towns. If they came upon a clean person, they had to ring
a bell and shout, "Leper, leper." The historian Josephus wrote they
"were, in effect, dead men."
Imagine the courage of this fellow! The law
stated if a leper exposed others to his disease, he was to be stoned to
death. Lucky for him that the people around the Teacher were so anxious
to get away from the scene. Otherwise they might have well stoned him
to death. Would Jesus have put Himself between them and the stones?
With you, I answer yes.
A question rises. How did the leper sense that
the Christ would not flee in revulsion with everyone else? What quality
did he discern in Him that told him Jesus would hold His ground?
Mark here is telling us much about Jesus. He
signals us He was most approachable. We discover He has time for those
whom others consider human garbage. One hears people say, "My sin is so
horrible not even God could forgive it." This Gospel gives the lie to
such a statement. The mystics tell us God will forgive us not because
of who we are but because of who He is.
"If you want to, you can cure me." The leper's
gut plea is
couched in just eight words. People in pain do not speak in
pages. They have time only for the essentials.
Today's account tells us that the Teacher cured the
fellow before Him and touched his running sores. Can anyone here
imagine what that stroking must have felt like to the leper? Probably
it was the first time in years that someone who was clean placed a hand
upon him. If one picture is worth a thousand words, one touch must be
worth ten thousand to a leper. Is there anyone here who is still
frightened of Jesus the Christ?
This miracle is called by scholars an action
miracle. It happened in a nanosecond. This is unlike other miracles in
Mark. There the Teacher takes the man aside, looks to the heavens,
sighs, puts spittle on the man's ear, etc. But here the Nazarene felt
there was no time for preliminaries. This fellow's misery had to be
terminated immediately. What does that tell you about the Person whom
you worship? Would that we could teach ourselves to have just a
fraction of that compassion. Though we may not have a healing ministry,
each of us can practice a hearing ministry. Suffering people need to
talk.
Walt Whitman wrote, "Seeing a wounded soldier on the
battlefield, I do not ask who he is. I become the wounded man."
So should it be with us.
One who is Christ-centered instead of self-centered,
said GK Chesterton, is a sane person in an insane world.
One final note! The cured man taught us how to
pray. His prayer needed only eight words. Jesus showed fondness for
short prayers. Check Matthew 6:7, "In your prayers do not use a lot of
meaningless words..." Jesus is e-mailing us the information that brief
prayers bring quick answers.
|
|
http://www.st.ignatius.net/pastor.html
6 Ordinary Time
|
Unclean!!
This
Sunday’s first reading from the Book of Leviticus gives just a few of
the horrible rules established by the Mosaic community to protect
itself from leprosy. In the ancient times leprosy was believed to
be deforming, incurable and contagious. Leprosy included most
skin disorders: Hanson’s disease which is leprosy proper, psoriasis,
skin cancer, impetigo, boils and even serious acne. Lepers were
ostracized by their families and neighbors, and forced to live outside
the villages and towns. They were referred to as the Living
Dead. To the ancients they were obviously cursed by God for some
sin or other. Lepers had to wear ragged clothes. They had
to let their hair go uncombed and uncut. As today’s reading says,
they had to cover their mouths with one hand and call out “Unclean,
unclean” as they walked. Anyone who came into any contact
whatsoever with a leper was considered to be unclean like the leper.
And
Jesus, moved with pity, stretched out his hand, touched the leper, and
said to him, “Be made clean.” Jesus did not see the unclean leper, or
his disease. He was not concerned with the strict prohibitions of
Jewish society. Jesus did not see a leper at all; he saw a human
soul in desperate need.
He
stretched out his hand and touched him. He healed him with his
touch.
Jesus gave this power to his disciples. At the conclusion of the
Gospel of Mark, Jesus proclaims the signs of the members of his
people. Among these signs is this one: they will lay their hands
on the sick and they will recover.
We
possess the wonderful capacity to be instruments of the healing power
of Christ. Therefore, we have the duty not only to pray for the
sick and to help them get effective medical help, but also to pray over
them and extend the touch of Christ to them with our hands. In
the second reading for today Paul challenges us to imitate
Christ. We are to be ministers of healing. We are to touch
not just the physically sick, but all those whose lives are hurting and
need healing in any way possible.
It
is simply not Christian to ostracize anyone for any reason
whatsoever. In the Christian society, even those with the most
contagious diseases are cared for in a way that gives them dignity and
love. Even those who have left Christian society are always
welcomed back into the society when they seek to return. For
example, even in the extremely rare cases of excommunication, such as
when someone performs or assists in abortions, that person can always
seek forgiveness and re-entry into the community.
And
yet, many people throw children or relatives out of their lives.
“You are no longer my son, my daughter,” a parent hisses. Is
there ever a situation where there is no longer any possibility of
healing, of mercy, of extending the hand of Christ to those he seek
reconciliation? Not in Christianity. The Forgiving Father
may not have been able to give his Prodigal Son the remainder of the
farm. That belonged to the Elder Brother. But he was able
to welcome the prodigal back into the family. The person who has
hurt his or her spouse and children may not be able to resume his or
her place in the marriage, but that person still can receive the
forgiveness, the healing, he or she longs for. The convicted
murderer may never be able to re-assume a place in free society, but he
can be forgiven and given an opportunity to correct his sins while
incarcerated.
When
we allow ourselves to be so overcome by hurt and hatred that we refuse
to extend the healing hand of the Lord to others, we take upon
ourselves the sickness of the other person. Hatred kills.
When we allow hatred to be part of our lives, we commit suicide.
We cannot allow hatred to destroy us. Even in the wake of the
Moslem terrorism, even faced with the probability that there are many
people in the world who hate us and who want us dead simply because we
are Americans, we cannot allow hatred to destroy our humanity.
Perhaps we have to take measures to protect ourselves from those who
would destroy us. Still, we do not have the right to hate anyone
or any people and at the same time call ourselves Christian.
The
Gospels often note that Jesus was moved with pity for the people as he
preached the Kingdom of God. When he faced the troubled, the
abandoned, the sick, when stirred by two blind men, when crossing paths
with the widow of Nain, and today, when face to face with a leper,
Jesus was moved not by disgust, not by antagonism, but by pity.
Feeling pity and showing mercy are ideal Christian qualities of great
minds and large hearts.
Today we are called to follow Christ and allow our hearts to be
enlarged by Christianity.
|
|
http://www.geocities.com/seapadre_1999/
* available in Spanish - see
Spanish homilies
6 Ordinary Time
|
The
Power of Compassion
(February 15, 2009)
Bottom line: Doubt sometimes tempts us, but there is one thing we
cannot doubt: Jesus' compassion.
I am sure you have heard of the Scottish novelist, Robert Louis
Stevenson. He not only wrote wonderful adventure stories, like
"Treasure Island," but more serious works such as "The Strange Case of
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde." In that novel, he explored the odd combination
of good and evil in one person.
As Stevenson observed dramatically, a human being can have high
aspirations and at the same time do horrendous things. The existence of
so much evil and cruelty made Stevenson wonder if God really exists.
All of his doubts came together when he first met a leper. Lepers not
only suffered a painful physical condition; they often faced harsh,
even cruel treatment. How can a good God allow such suffering and
cruelty? Before I tell you about Stevenson's encounter with a leper, I
would like to give a short description of the disease:
"Leprosy is a slowly progressing bacterial infection that affects the
skin, peripheral nerves in the hands and feet, and mucous membranes of
the nose, throat, and eyes. Destruction of the nerve endings causes the
the affected areas to lose sensation. Occasionally, because of the loss
of feeling, the fingers and toes become mutilated and fall off, causing
the deformities that are typically associated with the disease."
The medical description gives some idea of the horror of leprosy. The
horror was heightened because Robert Louis Stevenson first met a leper
in a beautiful setting - the Hawaiian Island of Molokai. In the
nineteenth century - before they had any cure for leprosy - they simply
banished them to remote places. When Stevenson visited the lepers'
colony on Molokai, it shocked him and made him question God's
existence. Stevenson wrote that he saw "abominable deformations of our
common manhood ... a population as only now and then surrounds us in
the horror of a nightmare ... the butt-ends of human beings lying there
almost unrecognizable but still breathing, still thinking, still
remembering ... a pitiful place to visit, a hell to dwell in."
Stevenson probably would have given in to depression, even despair, if
he had not seen something else. On that same island, a group of
Christians had established a clinic to care for the lepers. Among those
Christians was a priest from Belgium, Fr. Damien Joseph de Veuster. The
life of Fr. Damien inspired Stevenson so much that wrote a lengthy
letter defending him against accusations and predicting his
canonization. His predictions were accurate: In 1995 Pope John Paul
beatified Fr. Damien. He is now known as Blessed Damien of Molokai. The
compassion of Blessed Damien deeply impressed Stevenson.
Today we see the greatest example of compassion. Remember that, at the
time of Jesus, leprosy was more than a hideous physical disease. It
also brought painful social and religious consequences: The leper had
to keep his distance from others, wear a bell and cry out, "unclean,
unclean." Perhaps most cruel, he was cut off from the consolation of
religious rites. Jesus did something extraordinary, really unthinkable.
He reached across that social division and touched the leper. By
touching the man, Jesus contaminated himself. St. Matthew says, "he
took our infirmities upon himself." Jesus did this because he saw
beyond the disfigurement of leprosy. He saw the worth of the person -
in spite of external deformity and internal decay.
Jesus' compassion challenges us. Not that leprosy holds terror today.
Thanks be to God, we now have medicines that effectively treat the
disease. We do, nevertheless, meet people who suffer from a deeper form
of leprosy - an internal disfigurement. I can think of people I shy
away from. No one in this congregation, of course - but, then, this
homily is not a public confession. :)
I would like to mention one person whom we shy away from. His
disfigurements make us unwilling to look at him. We have, in fact,
lived with him all our lives. I think you know who I mean. Robert Louis
Stevenson wrote about him in "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde." Like the noble Dr. Jekyll, an ignoble being lurks inside. We
keep that part hidden - maybe even from our own selves. That's
understandable, but it could be a fatal mistake.
Today's Gospel contains a simple, powerful prayer: "If you wish, you
can make me clean." Doubt sometimes tempts us, but there is one thing
we cannot doubt: Jesus' compassion. He is willing to take our illness,
our infirmity upon himself. In doing so, he can help us show compassion
to others. Robert Louis Stevenson glimpsed that compassion when he
visited the island of Molokai. It enabled him to overcome his doubts
and express his faith in God.
I would like to conclude this homily by reading what Stevenson wrote in
the guest book at Molokai. He composed a spontaneous poem, where he
admits that he was tempted to deny God. The beauty of compassion,
however, caused him to fall silent and adore God. Here is the poem:
To see the infinite pity of this place
The mangled limb, the devastated face,
The innocent sufferer smiling at the rod
A fool was tempted to deny his God.
He sees, he shrinks. But if he gazes again.
Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain!
He marks the cisterns on the mournful shores;
And even a fool is silent and adores."
**********
General Intercessions for Sixth Ordinary Sunday (from Priests for Life)
Spanish Version
|
|
http://www.agreeley.com/homilies.html
6 Ordinary Time
|
February 15th 2009 A.D.
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Mk 1/40-55
Background:
Scripture: Mark 1:40-45
This story may me an early version of the story of the ten
lepers. However the point is quite different. In this version the
leper, far from not thanking Jesus, goes about the land and expresses
his gratitude to all who would listen. The passage is made even more
opaque by Mark’s literary device of the “Messianic Secret” –he builds
his gospel around the structure that Jesus was trying to keep who he
was a secret, which doesn’t seem to be any more than a narrative form.
Surely, however, Jesus did not want to be known as the kind of military
messiah that so many people in his time wanted and expected.
Story:
Once a senior in high school helped a freshman study for a test.
Can you imagine anything more weird? A senior wasting time on a
freshman? But the help worked and the freshman earned an A, a badly
needed A, in the test. Now don’t tell anyone, please, the senior said.
They’ll think I’m like totally weird for helping a punk like you and
then every punk in school will want me to help them. Well, the freshman
shot off his big mouth, like freshman always do. The other seniors
laughed at the one who had helped him, but secretly thought it was kind
of cool. And sure enough mobs of freshmen descended on our poor hero
demanding help. Well, she said, I guess I have myself to blame. I knew
this would happen. Now I have to help tons of them. They ought to put
be on the faculty payroll. To tell the truth, however, she liked to
help.
|
|
http://www.saintvincentarchabbey.org/homilies/index.lasso
6 Ordinary Time
|
Gospel Summary Return to All Homilies
Feb, 15, 2009
Mark 1:40-45
Campion P. Gavaler, O.S.B.
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Gospel Summary
This passage continues the narrative of Jesus' mission immediately
following his baptism in the Jordan and the call of the first
disciples. As beloved Son and Messiah, his mission is to proclaim the
good news of the coming of God's kingdom. God's rule over all creation
would bring to an end the domination of Satan, characterized by all
forms of untruth, violence, sickness and death. That the power of God's
rule is present in Jesus becomes evident to the amazement of the people
by his teaching with authority, his healing and his casting out demons.
This Sunday's gospel tells us of Jesus' cure of a man afflicted with
leprosy (a term referring to any repulsive skin disease). A leper comes
to Jesus and begs to be cured. Moved with compassion, Jesus touches the
"untouchable" and cures him. He then sends him to a priest so that he
can be reinstated into the community
After curing the leper, Jesus had admonished him not to publicize what
had happened. Mark here anticipates a major theme he will develop more
explicitly in his gospel: namely, that people, even Peter and the rest
of his disciples, will misunderstand Jesus' mission. The theme reflects
an aspect of Satan's attempt to entice Jesus to redefine his mission
solely to the satisfaction of people's temporal needs, and thereby to
become the messiah of his own earthly, political kingdom. The kingdom
of Satan would remain essentially in tact had Jesus succumbed to that
temptation. John's gospel also alludes to Jesus' concern about the
mistaken notion people had of his mission: "Since Jesus knew that they
were going to come and carry him off to make him king, he withdrew
again to the mountain alone...you are looking for me not because you
saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled" (6:15-26).
Jesus, however, is faithful to his Father's will to the end. Filled
with divine compassion, he responds to the temporal needs of people for
healing and for food; but ultimately he wants to give the gift of
eternal life with God, the only gift that will satisfy the restlessness
and the hunger of the human heart
Life Implications
Since the Church is the means by which Christ extends his mission for
the sake of God's kingdom through history, healing will be an essential
characteristic of its service. Christians, through the urging of
Christ's compassion, must bring healing to the world's sickness, making
possible medical care even for the "untouchables" of our own society.
In the Catholic tradition, Christ's compassionate hand touches the sick
in a special way through the sacrament of anointing. The Church like
Christ will be tempted to reduce the meaning of God's kingdom to the
relief of people's obvious and pressing temporal needs. Christ's
compassion, however, continues to extend beyond these needs to the
deepest human need for personal transformation through communion in
eternal, divine life. We can see how Christ's compassionate hand
touches the sick in both aspects in the prayers appointed for the
administration of the sacrament of anointing.
Like Jesus each of us will endure a trial of faith when beset by
suffering and approaching death. Am I really God's beloved daughter? Am
I really God's beloved son? Is it death that defines the meaning of
human existence? The source of our hope is that we share Christ's own
unconquerable hope through the gift of his Spirit. Jesus prayed to be
delivered from suffering and death; nevertheless, as things worked out,
he trusted in God's love through the experience of his suffering,
abandonment, and dying. In our time of trial, as the Letter to the
Hebrews tells, we must keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and
perfecter of faith. "For the sake of the joy that lay before him he
endured the cross, despising its shame, and has taken his seat at the
right hand of the throne of God" (Heb 12-2).
Campion P. Gavaler, OSB
|
|
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/mcitl/lowhome.html Meeting Christ in the Liturgy
6 Ordinary Time
|
SIXTH
Sunday
Leviticus 13, 1-2. 44-46; Psalm 32; 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1; Mark
1:40-45
"Go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what
Moses commanded." (Mark 1, 44)
Some say that priesthood is a creation of the Church and that Christ
did not intend to make a priesthood. Here he acknowledges the Levitical
priesthood, which he raised up and made perfect by his own sacrifice,
creating an eternal priesthood which shall not pass away. The bodily
healing of the stain of leprosy is a sign of the perfect healing of
redemption made once for all by Christ the High Priest.
The one priesthood of Christ
Everything that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its
fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the "one mediator between God and men." (1
Tim 2:5) The Christian tradition considers Melchizedek, "priest of God
Most High," as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique
"high priest after the order of Melchizedek'; (Heb 5:10; cf. 6:20; Gen
14:18) "holy, blameless, unstained," (Heb 7:26) "by a single offering
he has forever perfected for all time those who are sanctified," (Heb
10:14) that is, by the unique sacrifice of the cross. (CCC 1544)
The redemptive sacrifice of Christ is unique, accomplished once for
all; yet it is made present in the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Church.
The same is true of the one priesthood of Christ; it is made present
through the ministerial priesthood without diminishing the uniqueness
of Christ's priesthood: "Only Christ is the true priest, the others
being only his ministers." (St. Thomas Aquinas, Hebr. 8, 4) (CCC 1545)
(Paragraph numbers indicate reference to the Catechism of the Catholic
Church.)
I look forward to meeting you here again next week as, together, we
"meet Christ in the liturgy", Father Cusick (Publish with permission.)
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/mcitl/
For further reading on today' Gospel, see also these paragraphs in the
CCC: 1546 and following.)
|
|
http://www.ctk-thornbury.org.uk/
6 Ordinary Time
|
Sermon
by Father Alex McAllister SDS Index
Sixth Sunday of Year B
The disease most dreaded by the Jews of old was leprosy. It was an
infectious plague which struck fear and horror into its victims because
there was no hope of a cure.
The fate of the leper was truly pathetic. As soon as the first
signs of the disease appeared, the afflicted person was debarred from
all social life and forced to withdraw from society. This meant bidding
farewell to his family, leaving behind his way of life, his trade,
everything and everybody he had ever known and loved.
It was a farewell as final as death. In theory anyone could live alone
by hunting or cultivating some small patch of ground away from everyone
else. That’s the theory, but the loneliness must have been crushing.
Not only that but the effects of leprosy meant that they could not
manage to use even simple farm implements or weapons for hunting. It
meant that they often died from starvation besides the dreadful effects
of depression.
The mental anguish and heartbreak of being completely banished from the
local community, was utterly devastating. In every sense the leper was
an outcast, with no hope of enjoying human companionship or
receiving love. The victim was reduced to the status of a non-person,
scavenging for food on the town dump, with a warning bell slung around
his neck.
Leprosy is a good analogy for sin because it is a dreadful disease that
causes separation from the community. However, sin is even more
dreadful because it not just causes separation from the community but,
even worse, it causes separation from God. However, it is not God or
the community that pushes the sinner away, it is the sinner who does
this to himself by his sin.
There was a flurry in the newspapers a month or so ago when Pope John
Paul gave a series of sermons on hell. The newspapers sensationalised
the fact that the Pope didn’t speak about the fires of hell and asked
if he had abolished them. But what the Pope strongly underlined was
that hell was quite simply nothing other than a state of separation
from God—exactly what today’s readings tell us.
Through sin we voluntarily withdraw ourselves from God. Through sin we
do violence to the bonds of community. Through sin we destroy our own
integrity as human beings.
Hell is definitely still there; but I’m not sure that thinking of it as
a burning fire is very helpful; it is a state of being but without God.
It is the opposite of heaven, which is the state of blessed union with
God for all eternity.
However, there is sin and sin. Not all sin is at the same level.
Although all sin causes hurt not all sin has the same degree of
seriousness.
That sounds like good news and so it is up to a point; but it isn’t
real Good News with a capital G and a capital N. Just because there are
big sins and small sins it doesn’t mean that we can do whatever we like
as long as the sins we indulge in don’t fall into the major category.
Sin is a slippery slope, and it is easy to get drawn in. It is easy to
enjoy its transitory pleasures and then wake up to find that you have
become habituated to a sinful way of life.
The real good news is that there is always a way back. Just as the
leper was cured of his sickness through his encounter with Jesus, we
too can become cured from our sinfulness through turning back to him.
Like the leper on his knees pleading with Jesus to heal him we too from
time to time need to get down on our knees before the living God and
ask for forgiveness of our sins. We then will experience the healing
touch of our Saviour and be lifted up whole again.
Through the sacrament of reconciliation we can experience this powerful
action of God; we can receive forgiveness and be restored to the state
of union with him and our brothers and sisters in the Christian
community.
To go back to the Gospel, it is worth looking at this leper. He says to
Jesus, ‘You can cure me if you want to.’ That’s an odd thing to say.
Not, ‘You can cure me,’ but, ‘You can cure me if you want to.’ The
inference is that Jesus might not want to cure him. He sounds like one
of those nasty persistent kind of beggars that you occasionally come
across who are ungrateful no matter how much you do for them.
Jesus says, ‘Of course, I want to’ and reaches out to heal him. But
then he sternly tells the beggar not to tell anyone about it. One can
only suppose that Jesus told him not to tell anyone because he knew
that he would be swamped with others wanting healing and indeed as you
will see in next Sunday’s Gospel that’s exactly what happened.
But we can hardly ascribe a base motive to Jesus. We do know that these
healings weren’t the most important part of his ministry; he also came
to teach and he surely knew that the most important thing of all would
be his death and resurrection.
But I wonder if here we can uncover a case of Jesus’ sense of humour
which is so often hidden under the dusty layers of history.
Here is this loquacious and awkward leper who asks for healing in a
rather barbed sort of way. Jesus goes ahead and heals him but then very
deliberately tells him to keep quiet about it knowing full well that
this was something quite impossible for him to do. Then this awkward
character, who had probably been sour enough before he became a leper,
runs around waving his hands proclaiming his healing. Jesus must surely
have had a broad smile across his face.
I’m also pretty certain that those who heard him complaining bitterly
over the years were laughing behind their hands at this change of tune.
But they would also have stopped to think about this Jesus who had
reached out to heal this man who so little deserved it.
Of course, everything I am saying is pure conjecture and I haven’t a
shred of evidence for any of it. Only to say that I think that when we
read the Gospels we often fail to take into account Jesus’ sense of
humour. But more importantly, I think that we need to look below the
surface more frequently and use our intuition to work out what it is
that Jesus would actually do in any given set of circumstances.
Most importantly of all, of course, we have to work out what he is
saying to us in our particular circumstances right this minute.
|
|
Father Bonar will not be posting homilies for Cycle B to allow himself
time for other projects. His collection of homilies (including homilies
for Cycle B) is available at www.clydebonar.com.
6 Ordinary Time |
|
|
These
homilies may be copied and adapted for your own use;
however, they may not be commercially published without permission of
the author. |
|
|
 |
|
|
| |
|
