Thursday, First Week in Ordinary Time
Thursday, January 16, 2025
First Week in Ordinary Time
Heb 3:7-14/Mk 1:40-45 (Lectionary #308)
Jesus “went on throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons” (v. 39). But people still saw him as a healer. A leper came begging him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Then his disciples learned something else;
“Moved with pity,” Jesus said, “I do choose. Be made clean!” And he reached out and touched the leper. That was not something people did.
Jesus not only showed his human feelings; he established a principle: Compassion calls for contact. We don’t just help the afflicted; we go to them. And we let them come to us. Even if we cannot physically go to where the poor and suffering are, we can show authentic compassion by not ostracizing or trying to “keep our distance” from anyone. We try to avoid contact with some people. Jesus doesn’t.
Is this good news? Do you want a church, or any kind of community, that restricts itself to the “right kind” of people? Or to the affluent” Or the socially acceptable?
At the base of the statue of Liberty is a plaque with the last five lines of Emma Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus”:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame / With conquering limbs astride from land to land / Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand / A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame / Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name / Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand / Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command / The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame, / “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she / With silent lips. / “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
That is America at its best. If we lose that spirit we have lost the soul of our country and lost sight of Jesus.
Jesus begged the cured man to “say nothing to anyone,” but just to show himself to the priest as Moses commanded (Leviticus 14). Vain hope: he spread the word so widely that Jesus “could no longer enter a town openly.”
When Jesus called for deeper faith and greater love, the crowd began to thin out (see John 5:18; 6:66; 19:5-6; Matthew 16:22-23; 19:10-11 and 21-26). So what do you want: a Savior — or a Church —that makes you “feel good,” or one that challenges you to “Be perfect [in love] as your heavenly Father is perfect”?
Initiative: Make a point of making contact with anyone people tend to avoid: where you work, on the street, everywhere. Make eye contact. Smile. Speak.
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