Jesus heals Job

Readings: Job 7:1-4.6-7; Psalm 147:1-6; 1 Corinthians 9:16-19.22-23; Mark 1:29-39

I actually think the title of this post could easily serve as my reflection on the readings for this Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B of the Sunday lectionary cycle.

Following on the heels of last week, our Gospel for this Sunday starts with the very next verse of the first chapter of Mark. It bears noting, yet again, how dense this chapter is. Also worth noting, is that today's Gospel, narratively speaking, also takes place during the first day of Jesus' public ministry. It is an action-packed day that sees God's kingdom breaking into the world in a dramatic way. One hallmark of the Kingdom is healing and wholeness.

While our Gospel today conveys the Lord's healing activity in the aggregate, it's important to understand that for each person healed of an affliction, be it physical, psychological, or spiritual this is huge! No doubt, many people whom Jesus healed felt like Job: hopeless to the point of despair. Like Job, many were probably resigned to never seeing happiness again.

Jesus doesn't just bring hope to those in despair. He is hope personified. For those who, like Paul, have the hope that is Christ Jesus, we can't help sharing our hope, sharing Jesus. We do this after the manner of the apostle by serving others and becoming weak in the understanding that "when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor 12:10). Hope is healing.

Like the demon-possessed man in our Gospel for this past Monday, you share Jesus not merely or sometimes not even by telling those in despair "all that the Lord in his pity has done for you" (Mark 5:19 see also ). Rather, you must take pity, or, to put it more palatably, have compassion for, someone you encounter for whom things seem hopeless and who feel helpless. Thus, you show, not just say, "all that the Lord in his pity has done for you."

Healing, especially spiritual healing, can happen in a sudden, unmistakable way, or, as is often the case, slowly over time. Along with the anointing of the sick, penance is a sacrament of healing. The Eucharist, which Saint Ignatius of Antioch, in his Letter to the Ephesians, called "the medicine of immortality" and "the antidote to prevent us from dying," has healing properties as well. As the sacrament of sacraments, the Blessed Sacrament, the Eucharist is a sacrament of initiation, a sacrament of healing, and a sacrament at the service of communion.

Let's not forget the basic fact that the Eucharist began to be reserved in order to take it to those who were ill. When you bring communion to the sick, you bring Christ in the fourfold way he is present in the Eucharistic celebration. The minister or extraordinary minister represents the assembly and the priest, at whose hands the Lord accepted our sacrifice, you share God's word, and then give Holy Communion.

It is precisely in these seemingly mundane, ordinary ways that we share Christ. It is by sharing him that the sharer also receives. For someone who may be thinking they've never had the experience with Jesus about which I am writing, service to others in Jesus' name for the sake of God's kingdom is the best way faciliate such encounters.

In light of this important and often underemphasized healing aspect of the Eucharist, we don't so much need a Eucharistic Revival as we need to let the Eucharist, with assitance from the sacraments of anointing and penance, revive us!

Monday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Sam 15:13-14.30; 16:5-13; Ps 3:2-7; Mark 5:1-20

Our readings today are well summed up in an unrelated verse of scripture, one from Job: “the LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.”¹​ Another thought that arises from our first reading is how difficult and, therefore, how rare it is to bear wrongs patiently. How much more difficult it is even still to, like David, see God’s will in those things that require patience and forbearance.

Let’s not forget that, despite his major failings, David is a Christ-like figure. This only shows how short we all fall when compared to the Lord. This is why the Gospel is good news!

In our Gospel, Jesus receives much the same treatment from the unclean spirits tormenting the man to the point he was forced to live in the graveyard. Graveyards in the ancient world were not inside cities, towns, and villages. Instead, they were outside due to the potential for contagion from decaying corpses.

Like David, Jesus turns the taunting, the reviling, the abuse doled by “Legion” to God’s purpose. With his demonstration of power over “Legion,” Jesus leaves the Gentile Gerasenes more than a little uneasy. In fact, in the wake of this demonstration of divine power, they want him to leave.

Their wanting him to leave isn’t so different from the ancient Israelites, who, after beholding God’s awesome power, wanted Moses to intercede for them with God instead of God dealing with them directly. We live in a time when many seek to domesticate God, reducing him to our measure. But the Gerasenes, having experienced God’s might, react in an understandable way.

Yet, the man from whom Jesus cast out the unclean spirits very much wants to go with Jesus, to remain with him. This, too, is understandable. Who wouldn’t want to be with their Savior, the one who delivers from evil and certain death?

"Jesus and the Demoniac"- Woodcutting

Rather than consenting to the man accompanying him back across the Sea of Galilee, Jesus sends him on a mission, commissions him as an evangelist, urging him to tell others “all that the Lord in his pity has done for you.”²

There was a man in Scotland who regularly spent all his wages on drinking, leaving his wife and children destitute. His wife had to beg to support their family. Then, one day, he went to church with his wife. What he heard caused him to repent, to change his ways, to quit drinking.

Several months later, now in his right mind like the man in our Gospel- though this guy was plagued by different spirits- on payday, his buddies urged him to go drinking with them. He informed his friends that he no longer drank and that he had had a life-changing encounter with Christ.

The man's workmates chided him, asking him if really believed all the stuff in the Bible, like healing the sick and casting out demons, and if he believed Jesus turned water into wine. He replied, “I can’t speak to any of that firsthand, but if you come to my house, I can show you how he turned beer into furniture.”

Evangelization, my friends, is not apologetics. You will never argue anyone into God’s kingdom. A lot of apologetics consists of answering questions no one is asking. First and foremost, evangelizing is telling others “all that the Lord in his pity has done for you.”

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1 Job 1:21.^↩
2 Mark 5:19.^↩

Year B Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Deut 18:15-20; Ps 95:1-2.6-9; 1 Cor 7:32-35; Mark 1:21-28

It seems clear from our Gospel reading that Jesus is the prophet about whom Moses spoke in our first reading, taken from Deuteronomy. As the Son of God and as Messiah, Jesus is priest, prophet, and king. As such, he doesn’t just speak the words of God, he is himself the Word of God eternally spoken by the Father.

As the Word of God, Jesus doesn’t do anything but speak God’s words. As the founder of the French Oratorians, Pierre de Berulle observed: in and through Jesus,

God incomprehensible makes Himself comprehended…God ineffable makes Himself heard in the voice of His Word incarnate, and God invisible makes Himself seen in the flesh that he has united with the essence of eternity, and” above all, through Christ, “God terrible in the magnificence of his grandeur makes Himself felt in His gentleness, in His kindness and in his humanity¹

In Jesus Christ, one might say, referencing our reading from 1 Corinthians, divinity and humanity are married, not only becoming flesh of one’s flesh and bone of one’s bone but united in the single person of Jesus, as we pray in one the Eucharistic Prayers, "become one body" and "one spirit.”²

What is interesting in our Gospel reading is that the inspired author of Mark does not describe what Jesus taught, only that “he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.”³ His teaching did provoke an unclean spirit. This provocation allowed Jesus to cast this spirit from the man through whom it spoke. Hence, his authority and the power derived from it is manifested by what he does and not just by what he says- though the latter (speaking) preceded the former (casting out the unclean spirit) and flows from it.

According to Saint Mark’s chronology, our passage today is the first day of Jesus’ public ministry. Looking back a few verses, the Lord’s public ministry began when he emerged from forty days in the wilderness after his baptism by John. His message, as Mark hands it on is: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”⁴

In the section of the very dense first chapter of Saint Mark’s Gospel from which our reading is taken, we are familiarized with the kind of things that the proclamation of God’s kingdom consists of- teaching with authority, demonstrations of the power of this authority, which is “opposition to Satan,” a bit further on, physical healing, and fervent prayer.⁵

Because the world is complex and complicated, the coming of God’s kingdom is similarly so. How else can it be established? What this means for us, those who claim Christ’s name, is the recognition of our ongoing need to repent and believe the Gospel. By “repent,” I mean believing it to the point that it shapes, forms, and continually reforms how you live your life.

Though it is often reduced to contrition (i.e., being sorry for one’s sins), to repent is to change, to commit to changing or at least be open to change. Saint John Henry Newman, in his essay on how Christian doctrine develops, wrote: “In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”⁶ Commenting on this, Pope Francis accurately noted: “For Newman change was conversion, in other words, interior transformation. Christian life is a journey, a pilgrimage.”⁷

What is interesting in Mark’s Gospel is that this spirit who opposes Jesus recognizes him as “the Holy One of God,” while, despite his “new teaching with authority” accompanied by powerful deeds, his disciples do not, at least fully or finally.⁸

Companion is a compound word derived from two Latin words: com=with + panis= bread. Companions are, literally, those who share bread. By our gathering here together week after week, we are companions, fellow pilgrims, making our way together to what the Letter to the Hebrews calls our sabbath rest.⁹ At least during her earthly sojourn, a Christian is one who never completely arrives. Like the Israelites of old, she, too, is a pilgrim, a member of the pilgrim people of God.

The Eucharist is both our cloud by day and our pillar of fire by night.¹⁰ As the fathers of the Second Vatican Council put it:

On earth, still as pilgrims in a strange land, tracing in trial and in oppression the paths He trod, we are made one with His sufferings like the body is one with the Head, suffering with Him, that with Him we may be glorified¹¹

Jesus invites us to journey with him. Following Christ does not mean nothing bad will ever happen to you. How could it? Following him means he is with you, accomanying you through life’s difficulties, hardships, and heartbreaks. To follow Jesus is not just to follow him to the cross (though it is that) but beyond the cross, from death into life, as the hymn goes. But the only way beyond is through.

“If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

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1 From Works of Berulle cited Hans Urs Von Balthasar in The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Vol V, “The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age.” Trans. Oliver Davies, Andrew Louth, Brian McNeil, CRV, John Saward, & Rowan Williams. 120-121.^↩
2 Roman Missal. The Order of Mass. Eucharistic Prayer III, sec. 113.^↩
3 Mark 1:22.^↩
4 Mark 1:15.^↩
5 Raymond E. Brown. An Introduction to the New Testament, 129.^↩
6 John Henry Newman, “Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine,” Chapter 1, Section 1, Part 7.^↩
7 Pope Francis. Christmas Greetings to the Roman Curia. 21 December 2019.^↩
8 Mark 1:24.27.^↩
9 See Hebrews 4:1-13.^↩
10 Exodus 13:21-22.^↩
11 Second Vatican Council. Dogmatic Constitution on the Church [Lumen Gentium], sec. 7.^↩

Responding to the word of God

Readings: Jonah 3:1-5.10; Ps 25:4-9; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20

Today is Word of God Sunday. So, as you might expect, our readings are about God's word.

What's funny, well one funny thing among many funny things in the Book of Jonah, from which our first reading is taken, is that the only one not to receive God's word was the one who was sent to proclaim it: Jonah. In this biblical novella, the reluctant prophet didn't like Ninevites. Their potential destruction sounded good to him but not good enough to go to Nineveh, at least not at first.

Once he was there, after trying to flee, he dutifully called Nineveh to repentance, no doubt hoping he would be ignored and they would be destroyed. Lo and behold! The people of Nineveh repented, thus avoiding God's wrath. This led Jonah to sit on a hill outside the city sulking.

Jonah did not receive the saving word that he himself proclaimed!

Contrast this with Andrew and Peter and James and John. Like the people of Nineveh, upon hearing the saving word, they responded immediately, dropping everything to Jesus, who is the Word.

One's response depends on one's heart. Is your heart open to God and to others? Or, like Jonah's, is your heart hard and closed either to God (and/)or to others?

A few resources for fasting

Here are a few helpful resources for fasting:

The Spirituality of Fasting: Rediscovering a Christian Practice

5 Benefits of Spiritual Fasting (With Examples From the Bible)

How to Prepare for Your Spiritual Fast

While it can certainly be beneficial to our physical health when practiced well, spiritual fasting is qualitatively different from dieting. Healthy fasting in some form done on a regular basis is certainly a holistic practice. This is a good thing.

Year II Monday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Sam 15:16-23; Ps 50:8-9.16-17.21.23; Mark 2:18-22

Setting aside the terrible thing the prophet Samuel admonished King Saul for not doing in our first reading, the message of our readings today can nonetheless be found in Samuel’s words: “Obedience is better than sacrifice.”¹ It’s often easier to do anything than the what the Lord asks.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola identified three approaches to following Christ: postponement, compromise, and freedom. What we have in King Saul is a compromiser. I will do God’s will insofar as it conforms to my own will and desires. This may be a worse disobedience than putting off God’s will altogether.

This brings us to our Gospel passage, taken from Mark. It is important to recognize that we are those from whom the bridegroom, Christ, has been taken. Of course, not only is he not absent but he’s powerfully present through the Holy Spirit, who is the mode of his presence until he returns. But Jesus is not with us in the same way he was with his companions during his earthly ministry.

Therefore, as Jesus’ disciples, we are to fast as well as pray and give alms. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are three fundamental spiritual disciplines of a Christian life. These are taught by our Lord himself. Fasting is what links prayers to almsgiving just as hope joins faith to love.

Of course, there are those for whom fasting is not recommended and may even be dangerous for serious physical reasons or due to age. We are not asked to compromise our physical health. In fact, Saint Ignatius who, in the immediate aftermath of his conversion observed a very strict regimen of fasting for a long time, later warned others and forbade his Jesuits from taking fasting to an extreme.

Fasting can be done either for a whole day, drinking only water and other light beverages or by skipping a meal or not eating between meals. Historically, what you don’t eat or, in our society, what you save by not eating, is given to the poor. Abstinence, which, in our Roman Catholic context, means not eating the meat of warm-blooded animals, has a hand-in-glove relationship with fasting.

For those of us who can fast (I think virtually all of us can do this in some small way), it is an important discipline, one to be practiced at a minimum twice a year: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. We should also undertake to fast when the pope or our bishop calls for a day of fasting. Like any spiritual discipline, fasting in some form should be practiced regularly enough that it bears fruit.

Each Friday that is not a solemnity or in the octave of Christmas or Easter is still to be observed as a day of penance. Even now, the primary way we are supposed to observe Fridays as days of penance is by abstaining from meat. We do this not because eating meat is bad. Rather, it is because it is good, that is, enjoyable and permissible. Hence, we make a small sacrifice.

In his recent Wednesday catechesis series on vices and virtues, Pope Francis identified gluttony as the worst of the seven deadly sins. The Holy Father said, “Tell me how you eat, and I will tell you what kind of soul you possess. In the way we eat, we reveal our inner selves, our habits, our psychological attitudes.”² Each of the seven deadly sins has a contrary virtue. Fasting is a practice that helps us to realize the virtue than runs contrary to gluttony- temperance, that is, moderation.

The practice of the spiritual disciplines is how we allow ourselves, open ourselves, to be conformed to the image of Christ. Yet, as James Kushiner, an Orthodox Christian noted: "A discipline won’t bring you closer to God. Only God can bring you closer to Himself. What the discipline is meant to do is to help you get yourself, your ego, out of the way so you are open to His grace."³ Getting back to Saint Ignatius' three approaches to doing God's will, the truly free person is the one who discerns God's will and does it.

Fasting amplifies prayer, thus enhancing our love of God, and, when practiced properly, results in almsgiving, which is love of neighbor.

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1 1 Samuel 15:22.^↩
2 Pope Francis. Wednesday General Audience, 10 January 2024.^↩
3 James Kushiner. Mere Orthodoxy blog post during Lent many years ago.^↩

Year B Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Sam 3:3b-10.19; Ps 40:2.4.7-10; 1 Cor 6:13c-15a.17-20; John 1:35-42

Where does Jesus stay? Our Gospel today, taken from the first chapter of John’s Gospel, prompts this question. It is the same question asked by two of John the Baptist’s disciples: presumably John and certainly Andrew. It is the question they ask in response to the question Jesus asked them when he said, “What are you looking for?”

Could it be that these two men were looking for a place to stay, somewhere to live? Or, rather, was it the case they were seeking how to live and with whom to live the life they were longing for? After all, how you live is very much shaped by those with whom you live.

Where does Jesus stay, where does he live? By the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus desires to live in you, to dwell in your heart. From your heart, which governs your actions and words, the Lord longs to be made known to others, to say to them too “Come, and you will see.”

Believe it or not, Jesus stays with and in his Church, which is the sacrament of salvation in and for the world. In its simplest formulation, a sacrament is a visible and tangible sign of Christ’s presence in and for the world. We even go so far as to say that one of the four “marks” of the Church, in addition to being one, catholic, and apostolic, is that it is “holy.”

In recent decades it seems to many almost a joke to insist that the Church is holy. Far from being hardhearted or ignorant, many who scoff at such a seemingly outlandish claim do so in light of the Church’s manifest unholiness. It is important, very important, that we understand the Church’s holiness, like any personal holiness we may attain, flows from Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

In the Mass, the Offertory ends with the celebrant inviting those assisting to pray that our meager offerings of bread and wine be accepted by God. In response, all say:

May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands for the praise and glory of his name, for our good and the good of all his holy Church¹

Collectively, it is by, in, and through our participation in the Eucharist that we are made the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit. Our reception of this sacrament, especially when received intentionally and with preparation, is an outpouring of God’s grace. Christ is holy. He desires to make us holy. The main and most effective means for imbuing us with grace are the sacraments, especially the Eucharist.

It has been noted, perhaps ad nauseam: the Eucharist makes the Church, and the Church makes the Eucharist. In his first letter to the Church in ancient Corinth, before writing what we call the “Institution Narrative,” Saint Paul tells these Christians- “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you.”²

Instituted by Christ himself, the Eucharist makes the Church. The Church’s perpetual observance of what Christ instituted is the Church making the Eucharist. “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,” the apostle continues, “you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.”³

This brings us to the very last part of our Gospel today, where Jesus tells Simon, son of Jonah, that henceforth he would be called “Cephas,” which is Aramaic for rock or stone. The inspired author translates that into the Greek “Petros,” which translates into Peter.

We know that Peter did not become perfect, that is, all holy in that moment when Jesus renamed him, thus choosing him. In fact, it is toward the end of John’s Gospel that the resurrected Jesus asks a dejected Peter three times with increasing intensity if he loves him. Why three times? Probably because during his Passion, Peter denied him three times.⁴ We can see this episode as something akin to the Sacrament of Penance, of confession.

This, my friends, is the pattern of holiness. The late Eugene Peterson beautifully described Christian discipleship by borrowing and baptizing something first written by Frederich Nietzsche: “a long obedience in the same direction.”⁵ Our direction is where the Lord is staying. Jesus doesn’t just point in that direction, he accompanies us on our journey, just as we are to be companions to one another. Etymologically, “companions” refers to those with whom we share bread. There is a reason we call the Eucharist "food for the journey."

Where and what the Lord wants each one of us to be is the kingdom of God. Our path is uneven, most of us at times waver, some wander off, and at times we regress or simply stop tired of the journey, which can sometimes seem futile. It is fashionable to quote Tolkein’s line “not all who wander are lost.”⁶

Citing this phrase strikes me as the new version of “My karma ran over your dogma.” I don’t know about you, but I’ll take grace over karma any day. Tolkien’s phrase contains an implication: some who wander do, indeed, get lost, while others remain content to merely wander. Being a Christian means being a pilgrim and a member of a pilgrim people. Being on pilgrimage is not to wander but to have a destination, a destiny.

Discouragement is not despair. We all get discouraged at times, discouraged with ourselves, with others, with “the Church,” by which we mean the hierarchy. There is a fundamental error in reducing the Church to the hierarchy. The Church of Christ is all of us. This is why it is good news to hear talk these days of “co-responsibility” in and for the Church. Besides, like Peter, our leaders, too, sometimes fail, just as we sometimes fail.

It is even the case that we can become discouraged with God. This is why we must bear in mind that God’s ways are not our ways. I realize that can be cold comfort at times. But why else would God allow his chosen people not once, but twice, to be conquered and led into exile? Why do the scriptures teach from beginning to end that it was “necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory.”⁷

That all have sinned is a fundamental statement of Christian belief, a dogma, a matter of divine revelation (and also of human and personal experience).⁸ Is there something, someone greater than our sins? The good news is the answer to this question is an emphatic “Yes!” Jesus Christ, the one who bids you to come and see for yourself and to experience what has been described as “a joy in the journey.”⁹

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1 Roman Missal. The Order of Mass, sec. 29.^↩
2 1 Corinthians 11:23-25.^↩
3 1 Corinthians 11:26.^↩
4 See John 21:15-19.^↩
5 Frederich Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil, Chapter V. “The Natural History of Morals;” Eugene Peterson (book title). A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.^↩
6 JRR Tokien. The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 10 "Strider" and Book 2, Chapter 2 "The Council of Elrond."^↩
7 See Luke 24:13-35.^↩
8 Romans 3:23.^↩
9 Michael Card, "There is a Joy in the Journey."^↩