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Homilies are posted no later than during the week
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5 Ordinary Time
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Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle B - Mark 1:29-39
Michael Deacy was famous for giving away much money to the poor over fifty
years as a priest. Any tale would touch him. He was the easiest mark in
Manhattan. He had holes in his pockets. You always needed his money more. Jesus
for him was the inhale and giving the exhale. Mike was Jesus' kind of guy. Are
we?
Today's miracle occurred on a Saturday. Since Jesus was a Jew, He had spent the
whole morning in the synagogue at worship. Do you worship weekly? If no, Christ
says to you, "Gimmeabreak."
The miracle site was Caphernaum. It is near the Lake of Galilee. The ruins
still exist. You may walk among them and imagine the house where Christ slept
and ate. The Teacher loved Caphernaum more than Nazareth. One should not be
surprised. His home boys tried to kill Him. Neighbors like those no one needs.
Since Caphernaum was Peter's hometown, he wisely invited his new Employer home
for brunch - Bloody Marys, ziti, fresh lobster a la Caphernaum, etc. "Some of
Christ's closest moments with His disciples were spent over food." (AU)
Incidentally, one suspects Peter's house was a welcoming home. Is ours?
Even before the Master finishes His cappucino, cheeky Peter presents the bill.
"My mother-in-law is ill." This was the first time in the five thousand years
of recorded history that a son-in-law wished his wife's mother long life. And
Jesus was the first to quip, "There is no such thing as a free lunch."
Notice Peter had no hesitation in asking Jesus for a cure.
He knew He was an easy mark. Why then do we drag our feet in bringing our needs
to the Christ?
The sickness was probably malaria. The Gospel speaks of a fever. Caphernaum was
near swamps. Mosquitoes flying into town for a meal carried the virus as so
much extra baggage.
The Nazarene put down His cup and went over to the hammock. The rest is
history. The cure was immediate. The woman leaped out of the hammock like a
young girl. She served the dessert - creamy cheese cake and freshly brewed
cappucino. She was the first mother-in-law in history who felt she owed her
son-in-law something. Never would she say, "Behind every successful husband
stands a surprised mother-in-law."
If bad new travels fast, so also happily does good. Mark sums up the case
succinctly, "The whole town came crowding round the door." The cool-hand Jesus
moved among them and cured their sick. The Teacher was big at touching people,
especially the ill. Mark's word picture allows us to see the running sores,
smell the foul odors of the ill, and hear their horrible groans.
This was a scene made for the genius of Rembrandt. His sick are painted in dark
colors and Jesus the barefoot physician is bathed in bright light. Check his
famous 100 Guilders sketch.
Jesus got to bed late. He had to be exhausted. To catch a breeze He slept on
Peter's roof covered with makeshift mosquito netting. As He fell asleep, He
wondered why He and the Father had created bothersome mosquitoes in the first
place.
Sunday AM mobs were all over Peter's freshly sown lawn. His wife's roses were
history. The crowd wanted more miracles. But the Master had left before dawn.
He was not into show business. In the divine economy, the cures of yesterday
were not to be repeated the next day for reasons best known to Himself.
Prodded by his mother-in-law, Peter formed a posse and gave chase. They found
Him in a lonely place praying. Somebody has said, "Through prayer Jesus gained
what people sought from Him." Should we pray more? Peter rudely shouted,
"Everybody is looking for you. Time Magazine wants to make you Man of the Year.
60 Minutes called. The New York Times wants to interview you."
But such was not His plan. Like Robert Frost, Christ had miles to go and
promises to keep before He would sleep. He got off His knees, brushed the grass
from that famous seamless garment, and moved out to the next town. Peter
followed.
There are lessons one can draw from this account. Perhaps the paramount one is
the willingness of the Christ to give to the needy. Father Michael Deacy was an
authentic imitator. Will anyone say that of us? Deacy had learned well the
insight of CH Lorimar. "It's good to have money and the things that money can
buy, but it's good to check up once in awhile and make sure you haven't lost
the things money can't buy."
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5 Ordinary Time
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Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Jesus Heals
The gospel reading for today is presented as a contrast to the first
reading. The first reading is Job's lament. The Book of Job is a
long book in the bible. It has 42 chapters. The first two chapters
of this book and the last ten verses of chapter 42 are the story framework most
of us are acquainted with when we think about Job. This is where we hear
about Job being a just man who is beset by all sorts of horrible
suffering. He says, "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be
the name of the Lord." At the end of the book, God rewards Job for his
faithfulness to him. But this is just the framework. There are a
little over 39 chapters in between which are the heart and meat of the
book. In these chapters Jobs friends come and end up accusing him.
Job himself questions God. Job is suffering and he calls out to God
to explain himself. This is not the Job who says, "The Lord has
given, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord." This is
the Job who says, "My pain is more than I can bear. I can't sleep at
night. I shall not see happiness again." Job questions God, his
goodness, why he has allowed pain to exist. God finally appears to Job in
chapter 38 and asks him: If you know so much as to question me, then where were
you when I created the world. How is it that the heavens work, the sun
and the moon. Were you there helping me when I created the whale? And so
forth. Job realizes that he has spoken foolishly and submits to God's wisdom.
Job's lament is the cry we all feel within ourselves when we become seriously
ill, or, perhaps, even more, when someone we love, a spouse, a child or a
parent become ill or even die. Perhaps our hurt is not physical.
Perhaps it is emotional. A marriage breaks up, a child runs away, a
friend is publicly discredited. When we feel pain, regardless of its
source, we want to join Job and say, "I shall never see happiness again."
It is to prove this lament wrong that Jesus comes as the Divine Healer.
In the Gospel for today he heals Simon's mother-in-law of a fever. He
heals people with all sorts of illnesses including possession which refers both
to diabolic possession and psychological, or psychiatric illnesses. Jesus
heals so many people that he has to find a solitary place in the desert for a
few moments of union with his Father. But even then, Simon Peter and the
others find him and make him go back to work.
Jesus heals. He heals the pain not just of the people of the past, but
the pain of the people of today. Some receive physical healing
immediately. Others receive healing in stages. Some receive a clear
miracle. Others who have dedicated their lives to continuing the healing
ministry of the Lord, have developed their own skills and intelligent to be
vehicles of the Lord's healing. The union with the Divine Healer is the
reason why our doctors, and our nurses, and all care givers deserve our
respect.
All who call out to the Lord are healed. Some are healed
physically. Some are healed emotionally, able to accept their condition
in life. All receive spiritual healing as they unite their pain to the
Cross of Christ.
We who carry Christ within us, carry within us the one who heals. If we
believe in him, if we trust in him, then we refuse to join Job's cry of
despair. We recognize that Christ is present when we need him the most,
healing our internal and our external turmoil.
It is in this context that w can best understand the Sacrament of Healing, the
Sacrament of the Sick. This is Christ being really present in a sacrament
at a particular time in our lives when we need his healing power. When we
are our loved ones are seriously ill, we are challenged in our faith. The
sacrament of the sick gives us the courage to hold on to our faith in the face
of this challenge. This sacrament provides healing, sometimes physical,
sometimes emotional, always spiritual. When we feel that no one could
possibly understand what we are going through, the one who St. Paul tells us in
the second reading, became all things to all people, joins us in our suffering.
The administration of the sacrament of the sick is the reason why your priests
visit the hospital three times a week. It is the reason why one of us is
always on call to care for Helen Ellis hospital and parishioners who may become
seriously ill at home. Now, the sacrament of the sick is a sacrament for
the living, not the dead. Do not wait until a loved one is expiring to
call a priest. Do not look for this sacrament hours after a person has
died. The sacrament is ineffective unless it has a live subject who is
seeking healing, physical, emotional or spiritual. When a loved one has
died, we priests will often go to the hospital and say the prayers for the
dead, but it is too late for the anointing to have any effect. Call us
when you know that there is a serious situation, and that a person has not
received this sacrament in the last number of months.
When we administer the Sacrament of the Sick, the priest uses some of the Oil
of the Sick that is blessed at the Chrism Mass during Holy Week. He puts some
oil on the person's head and hands and says, "through this Holy Anointing may
the Lord in his love and his mercy help you with the grace of the Holy
Spirit. may the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you
up." In this sacrament the Lord is present as he was to Simon Peter's
mother, to the possessed, to the sick, to the crippled, to all who are
hurting.
When a loved one does die, have a funeral Mass or a memorial Mass for him or
her. To me, it is one of the saddest things to see a person denied a Mass
who had come to Mass every week of their lives. Don't let funeral
directors talk you into taking the cheapest route possible and therefore cut
our the Church. Cut the fancy coffin or the number of limos, or just have
a Memorial Mass after a cremation, but don't deny the loved one the special
intercession of Christ on the Cross that is the Mass. Money is not an issue
here at St. Ignatius. We have money set aside in case someone cannot afford to
have a funeral Mass, with music and all the stops.
Heavy stuff today. Well, that is what you get when you start with
Job. We have to be realistic, though. Everyone of us will
die. But that is not the end. Once fully united to the Lord we will
love feel love more than we could ever imagine. And for the
transition. Yes, it can be frightening. But we are not alone.
Jesus is always with us. He is there to protect us from the doubts and
despair that plagued Job. He is there to give us the courage to walk with
him to the threshold of a new life. Jesus heals.
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* available in Spanish - see Spanish homilies
5 Ordinary Time
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I Do So willingly
(February 5, 2012)
Bottom line: We do not give time and money grudgingly; we are building the Body
of Christ. With St. Paul we say, "I do so willingly...I have been entrusted
with a stewardship."
Many years ago, in England, three men were pouring into a trough a mixture of
water, sand, lime and other ingredients. A passer-by asked them what they were
doing. The first said, "I am making mortar." The second: "I am laying bricks."
But the third said, "I am building a cathedral." They were doing the same
thing, but each looked at it differently. And what a difference that made!
We can see something similar in the way people relate to their parish, why they
give. One person says, "Oh! All they do down there is ask for money." The
second person replies, "Well, you have to pay the bills." But the third person
says, "I am building the Body of Christ." The three are doing the same thing,
but what a difference in their attitudes!
Today's Scripture readings reflect those differences. Poor Job says that life
is nothing but drudgery: When I lie down at night, I toss and turn - and wonder
when morning will come. But when I get up, I am tired and I ask how long until
I can get back to bed!
For sure, most of us can identify with Job. But St. Paul takes a different
approach. Few worked as hard as he did - or went through so many trials. Yet he
says: "I do so willingly...I have been entrusted with a stewardship."
Today's Gospel presents a fascinating example of stewardship: St. Peter's
mother-in-law. She was in bed, sick, when her son-in-law brought unexpected
guests. One of them, Jesus, went to her bedside, took her hand - and she sat
up. The fever subsided and, quote, "she waited on them."
Now, some think she would have preferred to stay in bed. That viewpoint,
however, says more about us that it does about that wonderful woman. For people
in ancient times, hospitality was their top value.* It was the glue that held
their society together. For Peter's mother-in-law, hospitality was a sacred
duty. But there is something more. The text says, "She waited on them." The
word for "wait on them" is "diaconia" - the root of our word "deacon." Jesus
had touched her and healed her. To be his "deaconess" would be pure joy, a
beautiful honor.
When I was a seminarian, I remember an elderly priest saying, "Since this
'servant' concept came into the Church, I have taken a terrible beating." But
he said it with a smile. To serve is hard work - and often, humbling - but
being a servant of Christ is joy.
St. Paul illustrates the joy of service. With no fanfare, he says that he is
free - and few have greater inner freedom than Paul. Nevertheless, says Paul, I
have become a slave to all. He knew that freedom is not license, doing whatever
strikes a person's fancy. Real freedom means service, self-giving.
We are in an election season in the United States. Different candidates will be
telling us they have the solution to our problems, but there is one word we are
not likely to hear – the "S" word. The "S" word that we avoid
is…sacrifice. As Christians, however, we cannot avoid that word; we have
to embrace it. Jesus and St. Paul tell us that our time, our abilities, our
financial resources do not belong to us. They come from God – and he will
require an accounting – a stewardship. For that reason, we do not give
time and money grudgingly; we are building the Body of Christ. With St. Paul we
say, "I do so willingly...I have been entrusted with a stewardship."
**********
*Hospitality was a basic virtue in the Bible. You can see also the supreme
importance of hospitality in the Odyssey, a foundational work of Western
civilization.
General Intercessions for Fifth Ordinary Sunday (from Priests for Life)
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5 Ordinary Time
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http://www.saintvincentarchabbey.org/sunday_homily
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http://www.christusrex.org/www1/mcitl/lowhome.html
Meeting Christ in the Liturgy
5 Ordinary Time
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FIFTH Sunday
Job 7:1-4. 6-7; Psalm 147;
1 Corinthians 9:16-19.22-23; Mark 1:29-39
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
"And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose and went out to a lonely
place, and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him followed him,
and they found him and said to him, 'Every one is searching for you.' "(Mark
1:35-37)
All of mankind is searching for Christ. Our destiny from the beginning of time
is God our Creator, and we do find him if, like Simon Peter and those who were
with him, we stand ready to abandon our comforts, our plans and dreams, to
follow him.
The great witness of Peter and the other Apostles, the first priests of Jesus
Christ, is that they followed the Lord heroically, going even with him into the
"lonely place" of celibate life, and abandoning mother and father, sisters and
brothers, wife and children, to follow the vocation to which Christ called
them. Sacrificing the human companionship of marriage and family life is not a
cold and empty place if there is found in it a marriage to Christ's beautiful
and radiant bride, the Church. Celibacy in Christ is a sign and a motive of
charity, a powerful witness of the command to "seek ye first the kingdom of
God". For two millennia men have followed Christ in the heroic life of the
ministerial priesthood, not to reject the joys and consolations of human
marriage, but to marry the Church and to be fathers, raising up sons and
daughters who will live forever in the true marriage feast of the Lamb in
heaven. The Faith has been preached to the remotest corners of the earth, from
the Apostles to the missionaries of today, because of joyful and confident
acceptance on the part of men and women religious, as well as priests, to share
in Christ's all-consuming mission to die to self in accomplishing the Father's
will.
The unchaste cannot comprehend or appreciate the jewel of celibacy, which
radiates within the Church of Christ. For countless souls it is a magnificent
source of attraction to Christ and his Gospel. Celibacy is holy because made
holy by the example of the God-Man, and a gift which the Church preserves and
protects as a grace which gives fruitfulness to the Bride of Christ in raising
up new members. The gift of celibacy is an irreplaceable sign of God's love,
for by it the priest is freed to be radically available and open to every man
and woman in generous service. The man or woman religious is prepared each day
to follow Christ wholeheartedly, instruments of God's compassion through free
service of mankind.
"All the ordained ministers of the Latin Church, with the exception of
permanent deacons, are normally chosen from among men of faith who live a
celibate life and who intend to remain celibate 'for the sake of the kingdom of
heaven.' (Mt 19:12) Called to consecrate themselves with undivided heart to the
Lord and to 'the affairs of the Lord,' (1 Cor 7:32) they give themselves
entirely to God and to men. Celibacy is a sign of this new life to the service
of which the Church's minister is consecrated; accepted with a joyous heart
celibacy radiantly proclaims the Reign of God." (CCC 1579)
The priest of Jesus Christ is a man of God whose whole way of life proclaims
that the Lord is his portion and his inheritance. The priest is an undeniable
sign to the world of the calling of every creature to the eternal life with God
that is threatened by man's sinful rejection of God.
In accepting the gift of celibacy the priest is better equipped to act in
persona Christi, for by it he is freed, as was Christ, to dedicate himself more
generously to the preaching of the Gospel, the forgiveness of sins and the
worthy celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
St. Augustine describes a conflict we all face in The City of God between two
loves: the love of God to the point of disregarding self, and the love of self
to the point of disregarding God. Mankind is in constant danger of forgetting
that this life and its joys, such as marriage, will end, and that we cannot be
happy or fulfilled unless we look to the kingdom for the fullness of joy where
we will behold the source of all beatitude, our heavenly Father, face to face.
The celibate priest, and any man or woman who foregoes the earthly joys of
marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, disregards himself for more
perfect love of God. He is a help to men as he walks the paths of this earth in
solidarity with every child of God, married or single, religious or lay, young
or old. His celibacy is not sterile but rather most fruitful. The priest is
ordained to give the grace of the sacraments, but his celibacy plays a role as
well. Radically available to everyone who calls upon him, the priest is an
effective and credible witness who shows by his life that the aching for love
in every restless human heart is satisfied when the heart rests in God.
I look forward to meeting you here again next week as, together, we "meet
Christ in the liturgy", Father Cusick ( Publish with permission.)
www.christusrex.org/www1.mcitl/
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5 Ordinary Time
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These homilies may be copied and
adapted for your own use;
however, they may not be commercially published without permission of the
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