Wednesday, First Week in Ordinary Time

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

First Week in Ordinary Time

Heb 2:14-18/Mk 1:29-39 (Lectionary #307)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/011525.cfm

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After synagogue, Simon and Andrew took Jesus home with them. There the “first thing they did” was to tell Simon’s mother-in-law about him. She was sick with a fever. Jesus went right over to her, took her hand and “helped her up.” That was the end of the fever. Then she fed them — which may have been the reason they wanted her healed!

Naturally, the word got around, and by sundown “the whole city was gathered around the door” and Jesus healed “all who were sick or possessed with demons.” But as before he didn’t let the demons identify him.

His four followers didn’t know it yet, but Jesus was teaching them something. The next morning they found out what it was. The people were back, but Jesus had gone off to a “lonely place in the desert” to pray. When they found him, they were all excited. They told him he had been such a big success the night before that “Everyone is searching for you.”  But Jesus’ answer was, “Let’s get out of here.” He wanted to move on to the “neighboring towns,” so that he could “proclaim the good news there also.” And then came the punch line:

“For that is what I came to do.”

Jesus did not want to be known as a faith healer. That is one reason why he didn’t let the demons identify him. Once people knew he could heal, they didn’t let him do anything else. The preaching was over.

The miracles Jesus worked, besides being just the response of his love to people’s suffering, were meant to give credibility to his teaching. The real reason Jesus came was to show us the Way, teach us the Truth and give us the Life of God. This was the deep and lasting cure he offered for all of humanity’s problems. But people preferred the immediate and the lesser over what was long-lasting and greater.

What if you had perfect health but nothing to do with it — nothing of eternal value, anyway? What if you just used your health to mess up your own life and that of others? Jesus came that we might “have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10). What we really need to be healed of is anything that holds us back from responding to the Good News without reserves.

To understand that is to be “evangelized.” To “evangelize” is to share it with others.

Initiative: Give priority to learning what Jesus teaches about life. Decide now on a time and place to study Scripture. Is there a group that can help you?

Tuesday, First Week in Ordinary Time

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

First Week in Ordinary Time

Heb 2:5-12/Mk 1:21-28 (Lectionary #306)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/011425.cfm

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In Mark’s Gospel, the first thing that the four men who followed Jesus saw him do was to “enter the synagogue and teach.” And the people who heard him “were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”

What was your first experience of Jesus (besides being called by him at Baptism)? When you were taught your religion, were you aware you were learning from Jesus himself? Were you “astounded at his teaching”? Or did you just take it for granted?

What would it be like not to have anyone who could teach us about God and life “as one having authority”? What if all we had were the opinions of other people, even the wisest, or the worldview of our civilization, of our particular culture? Have you ever thought of what it would be like not to have any “revelation” from God such as we find in the Bible? What if we had no Church to interpret the Bible “as one having authority,” but just had to pick and choose among the opinions of the Scripture scholars, the “scribes”?

The authority of Jesus was confirmed by his act of setting free “a man with an unclean spirit.” As the demon was driven out it cried, “I know who you are, the Holy One of God!” It felt threatened.

Is there any “unclean spirit” in you that feels threatened by Jesus? Or do you feel relieved and hopeful that he has the power — and the desire — to free you from anything that holds you back from the fullness of life and joy? And do you connect that power to free you with the fact he teaches “as one having authority”? Are you eager to know what Jesus says about everything? Do you accept it as “good news” that he has come to earth as “the Way, the Truth and the Life”? Or do you sometimes believe you will find more life by following your own way (which is really guided by your culture’s perception of truth)?

Think of how you would feel if God were not present in the Scriptures and in the Church, teaching “as one having authority”? Do you really appreciate the “good news” that he is? How do you show you do?

Initiative: Take another look at the way Jesus teaches us to live. Is there really anything he says that you don’t recognize as good and life-enhancing?

Monday, First Week in Ordinary Time

Monday, January 13, 2025

First Week in Ordinary Time

Saint Hilary, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

Heb 1:1-6/Mk 1:14-20 (Lectionary #305)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/011325.cfm

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In Mark, the headline proclamation of the Good News is, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near!” That is what Jesus preached. He invited people in response to do two things. First, “Repent,” which is the verb for metanoia, a complete change of mind, of outlook, of direction in life. The second specifies the first step in this “extreme makeover” of mentality: “Believe in the good news.”

This invites us to ask two questions of ourselves: 1. Do we believe in the Gospel as news — as something new and exciting that we wake up to every morning? 2. Do we believe it is good news? And if so, just how good is it?

The lead idea in Jesus’ proclamation of the Good News was, “The time is fulfilled!” This is to say there is a plan that God has been bringing to fulfillment in time, in human history. That in itself is good news.

How would you like to live in a world that was going nowhere — at least, nowhere with any purpose to it? A world that is just “there,” in which various human beings are trying to give directions and to shape history, but all guided by their own perceptions of reality and their own goals and desires? Would it make a difference in the way you experience your life? In the satisfaction you get from your activities?

That is a question worth spending some time on. Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” But the people of Socrates’ time sentenced him to death. It isn’t just religions that burn heretics at the stake. Anyone who calls into question the assumptions of any culture or peer group is in danger of anything from physical death to social exclusion. People like to feel secure in the house they live in, and don’t want anyone knocking about, testing the foundations.

Jesus didn’t just announce the Good News. The first thing Mark reports of him after he started preaching was that he invited four men fishing in the Sea of Galilee to get involved and help him proclaim it: He said, “Follow me and I will make you into fishers of people.” He invited them to play a part in bringing God’s plan to fulfillment by working to establish the “kingdom of God” on earth.

Every single one of us is being called today to take part in a “new evangelization.” What this is will be our focus as the readings take us through Mark’s Gospel.

Initiative: Those Jesus called “immediately left their nets and followed him.” Ask if you would have to “leave” anything to “fish for people” in your own way of life.