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)
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?
コメント