Thursday, Second Week in Ordinary Time

Thursday, January 23, 2025

Second Week in Ordinary Time

USA: Saint Vincent, Deacon and Martyr; Saint Marianne Cope, Virgin

Heb 7:25—8:6/Mk 3:7-12 (Lectionary #314)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012325.cfm

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Mark reminds us again that people were coming to Jesus in droves — but mostly for the wrong reason.

Jesus couldn’t refuse to heal. He had the power and the desire to do it. His love and compassion were passionate. And as long as he was physically present and accessible, he couldn’t say no to anyone “who had afflictions.”

But he knew that every time he worked a physical cure, he was sending out the wrong message about what the Messiah came to do. There was truth in it, of course: the truth that God cares; and his miracles gave proof he was sent and empowered by God. Some may have seen in his physical healing a symbol of the spiritual healing that was his real mission. But most didn’t. “They came to him in great numbers…. for he had cured many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him.”

They still made it almost impossible for him to teach. So when “the unclean spirits… shouted, ‘You are the Son of God!’ he sternly ordered them not to make him known.” He wanted to be known, not as a faith-healer, but as a Teacher. And more than a teacher; as “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6). He came, not just to heal physical diseases, but so that we might “have life, and have it to the full.” And he defined what this life is: “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 10:10; 17:3).

Have we really heard the Good News? Do we come to Jesus, not just to learn about God, but to get to know God — as Jesus knows the Father and the Father knows him? (Matthew 11:27). What do we ask God for most often in prayer? What do we go to church for? What do we ask our pastor to do for us? What invitations from the parish do we accept? Are the opportunities for spiritual growth the activities that draw us the most?

Is it our greatest desire to “lose our lives for Jesus’ sake, and for the sake of the gospel” if only we might come to “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Mark 8:35; Ephesians 3:19)? If not, we haven’t been truly “evangelized.” We haven’t heard Mark’s Gospel.

Fortunately, God knows the value of time. Evangelization is an on-going process. (Why else are you reading these reflections?) So persevere!

Initiative: Keep reaching for more. God is “greater than our hearts” (1John 3:20).

Wednesday, Second Week in Ordinary Time

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Second Week in Ordinary Time

USA: Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children

Heb 7:1-3, 15-17/Mk 3:1-6 (Lectionary #313)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012225.cfm

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This is the only time in the Gospels that the word “anger” is applied to Jesus. (In Matthew 18:34, however, a king condemns a servant “in anger” for refusing to forgive a fellow servant). He is angry because the Pharisees refused to answer when he challenged them. They “remained silent.”

The question Jesus asked was, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?” The Pharisees didn’t listen to yesterday’s teaching about understanding God’s law as always intending good for people. They were watching to see if Jesus would cure a man on the Sabbath, “hoping to be able to bring an accusation against him.” When Jesus tried to show them what they were doing, their response was stone silence.

This attitude exists in the Church today, as in every day. Every preacher or teacher who goes beyond doctrinal narrowness or moral legalism experiences it. The truth comes under attack by those who are threatened by change. Those who challenge sincerely will dialogue and accept an explanation if it is reasonable and demonstrably true to the teaching of the Church. Others choose to remain both deaf and dumb. They keep their mouths closed against dialogue and their minds closed against truth. They keep death alive in the Church by burying their hearts alive.

The good news is that Jesus invites all of us, “Stretch out your heart,” as he invited the man in the Gospel, “Stretch out your hand.” If we do, we will be healed. For, as St. Paul wrote later, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death” (Romans 8:2). If we are truly disciples — students and learners — of Jesus, he has promised, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32).

The sad truth is, however, that freedom itself is a threat to many people. The reaction of the Pharisees was to “go out and immediately begin to plot how to destroy him.”

The good news is that their plot succeeded —and resulted in the salvation of the world! In the same way, the words of the true prophets who are stoned and silenced today will germinate in the “good soil” of those who have accepted them. Then one day, when enough hearts in the Church are sufficiently regenerated, they will rise and “renew the face of the earth.” 

Initiative: Keep stretching out your mind and your heart. Use the time-tested principles of “spiritual discernment” to test your reactions to what you hear.

Tuesday, Second Week in Ordinary Time

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Second Week in Ordinary Time

Memorial of Saint Agnes, Virgin and Martyr

Heb 6:10-20/Mk 2:23-28 (Lectionary #312) 

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012125.cfm

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For the second time Jesus is questioned about the behavior of his disciples. In response he gives a teaching about law and again says something about himself.

Jesus’ disciples were pulling heads of grain off the stalks and eating them as they walked through a field on the Sabbath. Some Pharisees said, “Look, they are working on the Sabbath! Jesus answered by reminding them that when in need David fed his hungry troops with the Temple bread “which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat.” Then he taught them how God thinks about his own laws: “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath!”

Phariseeism is defined as a religion whose focus and goal is law observance. Jesus teaches that laws are always just a means to an end, and we cannot keep any law as God desires unless we first ask what its purpose is. He goes further and teaches that the purpose of all laws is to help people. If we lose sight of this, we have lost contact with God’s mind and will. And that means we are misunderstanding God!

This is an important principle. We must always interpret laws in the light of what God reveals of himself. If we reverse the direction and form our idea of God from the way his laws are interpreted by people in our time and place, we can get a very distorted notion of God. Some have stopped believing in God because of this. And some have left the Church because they judged the Church by the blind way some Catholics, even priests, interpret her laws. God did not create people to keep his laws. He made laws to help people live “life to the full” (John 10:10). If we have a problem with some particular law of God, either we don’t understand the law or we don’t know God.

Jesus concluded from this, “so the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” Since Jesus was sent by God as Messiah and Savior of the human race, everything God created for human beings — including the Sabbath observance — is subject to him. Jesus is not just a limited human savior with a limited mission and authority. Paul will say later that “in him all things in heaven and on earth were created… all things have been created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16). The bottom line is that anything Jesus says, God backs. This may sound obvious to us who know that Jesus is God. But it is still “Good News” — especially when we feel crushed by laws that are taught as if they were ends in themselves.

Initiative: Always ask what the goal of a law is so you will understand how to apply it to particular situations.