V Sunday in OT – Job 7:1-4, 6-7; 1Cori 9:16-19, 22-23;
Mk 1:29-39
While the gospel
presents Jesus enthusiastically preparing for his second day’s preaching
and healing ministry, the first reading details Job’s attitude in
striking contrast to Jesus’. 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 surrenders himself, his
suffering, his work and everything he had and had lost to the greater wisdom of
God (Job 42:1-6).
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.
Joke 1: There is the funny story about a woman listening
to her pastor preaches a Sunday morning sermon about Simon Peter's wife's
mother, ill with a fever. Since it was a boring sermon the woman left the
Church after the Mass, feeling somewhat unfulfilled. Consequently, she decided
to go to Church again that day, out in the country where she had grown up. When
she arrived, she discovered to her dismay that her pastor had been invited to
be the substitute priest and again, during the Mass he
preached on the gospel of the day about Peter's mother-in-law being ill with a
fever. Believing that there was still time to redeem the day, the woman decided
to go to the hospital chapel in the evening. As you may have guessed, her
pastor was assigned to say the evening Mass there and he preached the same
sermon on Peter's wife's mother and her fever. Next morning, the woman was on a bus riding downtown and, wonders
of wonders; her pastor boarded that bus and sat down beside her. An ambulance
raced by with sirens roaring. In order to make conversation, the pastor said,
"Well, I wonder who it is?" "It must certainly be Peter's
mother-in-law," she replied. "She was sick all day yesterday."
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. It is in this context that w can best
understand the Sacrament of Healing, the Sacrament of the Sick.
JOKE:
2) Humor has great role in our
healing ministry: “Laugh and the world laughs with
you.” “Laughter is music of the spheres, language of the gods.” And
it's fine medicine. Laughter exercises the face, shoulders, diaphragm,
and abdomen. The breathing deepens, the heart rate rises, and the blood
is more oxygenated. Endorphins are released, pain thresholds are raised,
and some studies suggest that even immune systems are boosted. Norman
Cousins, in Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient, tried
laughter therapy, and found that ten minutes of hearty laughter could give him
two hours of pain-free sleep. When you laugh, others laugh too. Laughter
is a contagious, highly effective, totally organic medicine. It has no
side effects, and no one is allergic to it. Did you have your dose of laughter
today? Jesus may have burst into hearty laughter when he watched Zacchaeus climb down from the sycamore tree.
Perhaps he also had at least a mischievous smile when Peter started sinking in
his attempt to walk on water. Then why don’t we too have a hearty laugh
in the worshipping community in the real presence of our Lord?
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. In this context we understand the meaning of
Holy Eucharist.
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.
Life messages:
1) We need to be instruments for Jesus’ healing. Bringing healing
and wholeness is Jesus’ ministry even today. We all need healing of
our minds, our memories and our broken relationships. 2) We need to
live for others as Jesus did: Jesus was a man for others, sharing what he
had with others. In his life there was time for prayer, time for healing
and time for reconciliation. Let us take up this challenge by
sharing love, mercy, compassion and forgiveness with others. Instead of
considering life as dull and boring, let us live our lives as Jesus did, full
of dynamism and zeal for the glory of God.
Introduction : Today is V Sunday in Ordinary Time Message
: Job’s cry of hopelessness stands in marked contrast to the
hope of those who put their trust in Jesus, who “heals the broken hearted and
binds up their wounds”. Such are the blessings of the good news.
Saints in this week: 6th Monday : Saint Paul Miki and companions, martyrs : Paul Miki,
Jesuit scholastic, and his twenty-five companions, including two other Jesuits,
six Franciscans, fifteen tertiaries, and two laymen, were crucified by
order of the ruler Hideyoshi 5 Feb. 1597
at Nagasaki; among them the Mexican, Felipe de Jesus, first martyr from the
Americas to be beatified; protomartyrs of the Far East (canonized in 1862 by
Pope Pius IX).
8th Wednesday : Saint Jerome Emiliani; Saint Josephine Bakhita,
Virgin: Jerome
Emiliani, 1537 of the plague; Venetian soldier whose conversion led to the
founding (1534) of the Clerks Regular of Somascha, today numbering about 475
members; dedicated to the poor and the education of youth; patron of orphans
and abandoned children. Josephine
was born around 1869 in Sudan
and raised in the Islamic faith. She was
kidnapped around the age of seven buy slave traders who gave her the name, “Bakhita,”
meaning “lucky one”. She was sold to a
number of owners until she was purchased at about the age of twelve but e
Italian Consul Callisto Legnani. He
brought her to Italy and,
while serving as a nanny, was sent to live with the Canossian Sisters in Venice. There she was formally introduced to the
faith, baptized Ciuseppina, and eventually granted her freedom. In 1896 she joined the Conossian Daughters of
Charity, and for twenty-five years served her sisters as cook, seamstress, and
portress at their houses in Venice, Verona, and Schio. She was especially beloved by her students
for her sweet nature and musical voice.
After a long and painful illness she died in 1947. Pope John Paul II canonized his first
Sudanese saint 1 October 2000 as a witness to evangelical reconciliation and a
model of freedom.
10 th Friday : Saint Scholastica, Virgin : Scholastica, c.543 at Monte Cassino; twin
sister of St. Benedict; “She could do more because she loved more” (Gregory the
Great, The Dialogues); eventually interred in the same grave with her brother;
invoked against storms; patroness of Benedictine nunneries.
11 th Saturday : Our Lady of Lourdes: According to
St. Bernadette, the visionary at Lourdes in 1858, the Virgin Mary proclaimed
herself “The Immaculate Conception”; patroness of Portugal and the Philippines.
[Pope John Paul II designated 11 February as World Day of the Sick, “a special
time of prayer and sharing, of offering one’s suffering for the good of the
Church and of reminding us to see in our sick brother and sister the face of
Christ who, by suffering, dying, and rising, achieved the salvation of
humankind”. (Letter Instituting the World Day of the Sick, 13 May 1992, 3)]
No comments:
Post a Comment