Fourth Tuesday in Ordinary Time

Tuesday, February 4, 2025 

Fourth week of the Year 

Mark 5:21-43; Hebrews 12:1-4; Psalm 22:26-32 (Lectionary 324)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/010425.cfm

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Jairus the “synagogue official” is the first person Jesus cured whom Mark identifies by name, rank or status. Jesus didn’t ask who people were before doing them favors. Nor did he keep himself aloof. On the way to Jairus’ house “a large crowd followed, pushing against him,” so that a woman with an embarrassing illness was able to come up behind him in the crowd and touch his cloak, thinking, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be made well.” And she was. Jesus never evcn saw her! 

But “conscious that healing power had gone out from him” he began “wheeling about in the crowd asking, ‘Who touched my clothes?’” When the woman identified herself, he just said, “Your faith has made you well; go in peace.” 

Mark shows that Jesus was not isolated or elevated by protocol. The crowds “pressed in” on him and “hemmed him in.” Jesus was a jostled Messiah. 

People didn’t even hesitate to ridicule him. Before he reached Jairus’ house word came, “Your daughter is dead. Why bother the teacher any further?” — implying, “A lot of good he did you!” Overhearing it, Jesus told Jairus not to worry: “Fear is useless. Just trust.” 

At the house he told the mourners, “Why do you make such a commotion? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And Mark says, “They laughed at him.” 

The soldiers, priests and official interpreters of the law (“scribes”) also laughed at him when they crucified him (Mark 15:20-32). But they stopped laughing when he rose from the dead. And the mourners would have stopped laughing too when the little girl “rose” (same word) if he had not put them out of the house first. He preferred ridicule to being taken for the kind of Messiah they expected. “He strictly ordered them not to let anyone know about it.” 

But in his Gospel Mark tells all. He is writing for people who already know the “messianic secret” that the commentators find in Mark, an adapted version of which is that Jesus did not want anyone to recognize him as Messiah until after his death and resurrection, because there was no way they could have expected anything but a victorious king who would take all pain and suffering out of life in this world. 

But we, who know the whole story, need to reject all fear, trusting that nothing that happens to us on earth can keep us from true fullness of life, both now and forever. Even those who die are “not dead but sleeping” — in “life to the full!”  

Initiative: Don’t judge by appearances. Mourn life that is death, not death that is life. Remember the Good News: it’s called “Resurrection.” 

Fourth Monday in Ordinary Time

Monday, February 3, 2025 

Fourth Week in Ordinary Time 

Feast of Saint Blaise, Bishop and Martyr; Saint Ansgar, Bishop 

Mark 5:1-20. Year I: Hebrews 11:32-40; Psalm 31:20-24.(Lectionary 323) 

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/010325.cfm

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When they were caught in the storm, Jesus and his disciples were either on the way or blown off course to Gerasa (or Gadara?) in a province (Decapolis, the “Ten Cities”) the Romans had established so that non-Jews who lived there and spoke Greek could live in peace. Compare this with Isaiah 65:1-5. 

This is Jesus’ first encounter in Mark with “pagans,” and the demoniac is the only one who accepts him! One wonders if the possessed man simply made visible the unrecognized condition of the others. He visibly “lived among the tombs” and in chains, symbols of death and the domination of sin. But he, at least, knew it and was grateful when Jesus delivered him from the power of evil. His more respectable countrymen, howevcr, when “those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine” told them about it, were “seized with fear” and “began to beg Jesus to leave.”  

In this story Jesus is “begged” four times: first by “Legion” (or “Soldier,” Jerome Biblical Commentary) who beg him 1. not to send them out of their “territory” (χωρα: used to designate a “place the seasoned soldier claims for himself,” Bauer, Greek Lexicon) and 2. to let them go into the pigs; then by the Gerasenes, who beg Jesus to go out of their “boundaries” (oros); and finally by the freed demoniac, who begs to be with Jesus. A lot of “in’s” and “out’s” here! 

Perhaps the point is that the proper citizens were enclosed in the narrow “boundaries” of their fear — fear of the unknown, fear of losing their property — which by that fact became the proper “territory” of the demonic. They were sitting “in the region (χωρα) and shadow of death” (Matthew 4:16), and didn’t know it. Like the demons, they wanted to stay there. Jesus was upsetting things, so they wanted him out of their lives. But the possessed man knew where he had been, so he wanted to leave and be with Jesus. Jesus told him to go  “home” and be a missionary. 

To appreciate the Good News of Jesus it helps to appreciate the bad news of life without him. Perhaps that is why Jesus said, “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” and why he pointed out to the “chief priests and elders” who thought of themselves as exemplary Jews, “the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you” (Mark 2:19; Matthew 21:23-31).  

Initiative: Check your “boundaries.” Are you keeping Jesus out of any part of your life? Is part of the reason fear? Or do you just want to keep your pigs? 

A Link-up

Sunday, February 2, 2025

Feast of the Presentation of the Lord

Mal 3:1-4/Heb 2:14-18/Lk 2:22-40 or 2:22-32 (Lectionary #524)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/020125.cfm

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The Christmas season is over. Lent has not begun. In this feast we look backward to Christmas and forward to Lent. The Blessing of the Candles begins: “Forty days ago we celebrated the joyful feast of our Lord Jesus Christ. Today we recall the holy day on which he was presented in the temple.”

This feast has four names and a long history. It was first observed in the Eastern Church as “The Encounter.” In the Western Church it became known as “The Purification of Mary,” but in the 1970 reform of the liturgy after Vatican II the focus was restored to the “Presentation of the Lord.” It is also popularly known as “Candlemas” because we bless candles for a procession into the church that images Christ’s entrance into the temple — and into the world as Light of Life. Before Rome began celebrating Christmas on December 25, this feast was celebrated on February 14 and the “forty days” were counted from the feast of the Epiphany.

All of these names contribute to the meaning of this feast:

The “Purification” points us toward the penitential season of Lent.

 “Candlemas” reminds us that our purification reaches fullness only if we “walk in the path of goodness” — and freedom — by the “light of faith.” We look ahead: “May we who carry these candles… come with joy to the light of glory.”

“The Encounter” (linked to Epiphany in the blessing prayer) identifies the Light with Jesus: “God our Father, source of all light, today you revealed to Simeon your Light of revelation to the nations.” Our purification began when we encountered Jesus. It continues every time we encounter him more deeply. The Encounter was made possible because God the Son “became man for us” in his Incarnation, and “was presented in the temple” to be revealed to the world. He invited us in response to “present our bodies as a living sacrifice” (Romans 6:13; 12:1) together with him who “offered himself as a lamb without blemish for the life of the world (Prayer over the Gifts). This we did at Baptism, giving ourselves up with Christ and in Christ on the cross as he did for the Church, “in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the Church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle” (Ephesians 5:26-27). This feast, with its procession, reminds us that we are a “pilgrim Church,” ever moving toward greater light and love.

In this feast we celebrate the Presentation of Light offered to us in an Encounter with Jesus that leads to our Purification and the redemption of the world.

“A Refiner’s Fire.…”

Malachi 3:1-4, like many passages in the Old Testament, makes encounter with the Lord sound scary: “Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” The reason is that God purifies: “He is like a refiner’s fire…. He will purify the descendants of Levi, refining them like gold or silver.”

But we need to look to the end. With everything God does there is always a happy ending: “Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD.” We can’t help thinking of what that offering was actually going to be: “a lamb without blemish for the life of the world.” Or, in the literal translation of the first Eucharistic Prayer, “a victim that is pure, a victim that is holy, a victim that is immaculate, the holy Bread of eternal life and the Chalice of everlasting salvation.” What we have in Eucharist is worth the price of purification!

“Now… peace”

In Luke 2:22-40 we automatically assume that Simeon was an old man, because the Holy Spirit had promised him he “would not experience death before he had seen the Anointed of the Lord.” But that doesn’t follow: he could have been twenty years old! Whether he was, or whether he was eighty-four like Anna, the point is that life is not complete — for any of us — until we have met Jesus Christ. And the sooner we encounter him the better. But we need to encounter him personally, with personal faith, real hope and active love. Until we do, we cannot really “experience” either life or death in any authentic way. If Jesus is not the “main attraction” in our living and our dying, neither one can be basically satisfying, much less “filled with joy” (see Psalm 126; John 10:10; Galatians 5:22). Simeon said, “Now, Master, you can dismiss your servant in peace… for my eyes have seen your salvation.” If we are not deeply in peace, even in the midst of suffering and stress, our eyes have not seen, and our ears have not heard the Good News. In the last analysis, what more do we need in this life besides the assurance that we are in union with God “in Christ” and in present possession of everything we need to make us happy for all eternity?

The Light of Peace

Hebrews 2:14-18 tells us stress is an experience of slavery. We do forced labor — at home, in our jobs, just as citizens sometimes — out of “fear of death.” Fear of what we will lose. (Jesus said that if we are afraid to give up our lives, or anything in them, we have already lost them: Matthew 16:25). Fear that our lives will have counted for nothing in the end. (Jesus guaranteed that if we work for him our lives will “bear fruit, fruit that will last”: John 15:16). What we need to be purified of is fear! If we meet Jesus, the Light of the world, he promises: “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32).

Initiative: Think about the Bible. Can you meet Jesus there? Find freedom? Do it!