Fifth Saturday in Ordinary Time

Saturday, February 15, 2025

Fifth week of the Year

Mark 8:1-10; Genesis 3:9-24; Psalm 90:2-13 (Lectionary 334)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021525.cfm

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Mark wrote for Gentiles (an “audience” because they couldn’t read, but heard his Gospel read to them). His first account of the multiplication of the loaves (6:35-44, skipped in the Mass readings), was filled with details that showed Jesus was feeding a Jewish crowd. His second account shows him in Gentile territory feeding the nations. Both accounts are previews and images of Eucharist. The parallel between the words and gestures of Jesus here and at the Last Supper is obvious in both, but the second is closer to Paul’s letter to the Gentile Corinthians (see 8:6 & 1Corinthians 11:24)

What is the good news here? First, that Jesus extends to the Gentiles everything Eucharist was presented in the first account as being for the Jews: the promised “rest” (6:3 & Deuteronomy 3:20); God’s presence to them in the desert (6:31-44 & Exodus 16:1-35); shepherding and feeding his flock (6:34 & Ezekiel 34:5); leading them to “green pastures” (6:39 & Psalm 23:2); organizing them (6:40 & Exodus 18:25), as the Dead Sea scroll (1QSa) says he will at the Messianic banquet); and the promise of the messianic abundance (6:42 & Isaiah 49:10, Psalm 132:15).

Using the same word (apoluo: “send / sent them away”) at the beginning and end “brackets” the passage. In the opening Jesus does not want to send away the people lest they “give out” or “collapse” on the way. This verb is used only in Matthew 15:32; Galatians 6:9; and Hebrews 12:3,5, where it “has the connotation of slackening in one’s Christian faith.” At the end he sends them out in the spirit of the Ite, missa est at Mass. Eucharist is our strength. 

We could say that the whole of the Good News is contained in the Eucharistic celebration. There, over a three-year cycle, passages from the whole Bible are presented to feed us with the word of God. There the mystery of our redemption — Christ’s dying and rising, and our inclusion in his sacrifice through Baptism — is made present to us so that we might be reminded of its promises, reaffirm our faith and recommit with unlimited hope and love to our responsibilities as the continuing presence of Jesus on earth. And there Jesus feeds us with the new “manna in the desert,” his own body and blood, the Bread of Life. The Mass is the renewal of the Covenant, on God’s side and ours, with everything that entails.

 Initiative: Appreciate Eucharist. If you listen to the words at Mass you will.

Fifth Friday in Ordinary Time

Friday, February 14, 2025

Fifth Week of the Year

Feast of Saints Cyril, Monk, and Methodius, Bishop

Mark 7:31-37; Genesis 3:1-8; Psalm 32:1-7

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021425.cfm

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When Jesus left Tyre he went north around the Sea of Galilee into the province of Decapolis, which was also Gentile territory. There some people “brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him.”

Jesus must have thought this ironic. He was still oppressed by the fact that the leaders of his own people were deliberately deaf to what he had to say. And now some people wanted him to cure physical deafness.

He did it, of course. But he first “took the man aside in private, away from the crowd.” He didn’t want to put on a miracle show for the spectators.

Then he got very physical. He “put his fingers into the man’s ears, spat [on his finger] and touched his tongue.” Frankly, we find this a little off-putting in our super-sanitized society. A minor note of the Good News here is that Jesus is not as hung up about the body as we are, and not as afraid of physical contact with strangers. But the deeper meaning is symbolic. Jesus didn’t need physical touch or some chemical transfer through saliva to heal, any more than he needs the water, oil, chrism, bread and wine of the sacraments to give grace. But he is a human Savior, and he interacts with us in human ways, through human means of communication. That is important. In Christianity “purely spiritual” interactions with God are possible and frequent, but not typical. The typically Christian way is through human words, gestures and contact.

The people had only asked Jesus to “lay his hand” on the deaf man. This was not a gesture used for healing in the Old Testament, but some assumed Jesus had an “almost magical healing power that operated automatically on contact with him” (Jerome Biblical Commentary on 5:23,30). Jesus countered this by giving specific meaning to his touches. What was blocking his power to save was the chosen deafness of his people. So he put his fingers into the deaf man’s ears to show they are the channels for his life-giving words. It is as if he was saying that if we won’t listen, there is very little Jesus can do for us!

Often, people can’t speak because they can’t hear. And our spiritual response to God depends on our receptivity to his voice. In making the “saliva connection” between his mouth and the deaf man’s, Jesus shows that our only life-giving responses are the words we speak in union with him speaking within us by the grace of our union with him. 

Initiative: Open your ears. Read and reflect on God’s word. Take it seriously.

Fifth Thursday in Ordinary Time

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Fifth week of the Year

Mark 7:24-30; Genesis 2:18-25; Psalm 128:1-5 (Lectionary 332)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021325.cfm

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When he sent his disciples out on mission, Jesus told them, “If they refuse to hear you, shake their dust off your feet as you leave, as a testimony against them” (6:11). This may be what he was doing when, after his last frustrating encounter with the scribes and Pharisees he “went away to the region of Tyre,” a Gentile province of Syrians and Phoenicians. Or he may have just been putting some distance between himself and the “clerical triumphalist legalists” (see Tuesday’s reflection) who were bent on silencing him at all costs, even through murder (3:6).

Jesus had “entered a house,” which may mean he had friends in that area, but he was keeping a low profile, because he “did not want anyone to know he was there.” Still, a Gentile woman came in and asked him to heal her little daughter. Jesus’ response seems rude and totally out of character. “It is not right,” he said, “to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”

What was his tone of voice when he said this? Was he smiling? The words are shocking, but he was certainly leading her on. This woman was no wilting violet. Her response didn’t express any sense of being inferior because she was not Jewish. She just gave Jesus’ words right back to him. If that was the way he wanted to play it, it was fine with her: “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

If we take her words at face value, what Jesus had led her into was a profession of faith! She acknowledged that God, for whatever reason, had chosen the Jews to be his special people. That didn’t make them better than her own people; it was just a fact. And Jesus left it at that. He didn’t exhort her to change religions and become a Jew (which also would have meant, at that time, changing her nationality and culture). He just complimented her on her answer and told her that her little daughter was healed.

When he used the word “dogs,” Jesus also may have been talking almost to himself, echoing the triumphalist attitude of those he had just left, for whom being a Jew “in good standing” was to belong to a religious elite. This is what they would have said. How would she answer?

The good news here is that Jesus accepts people as they are. So should we. Having the “right” religion does not necessarily make us the “right kind of people.” Jesus looks deeper: at the faith, hope and love in one’s heart.

Initiative: Be open to the goodness in everyone, no matter how it is packaged.