Reflection written and read by Kris Veldheer.

FULL TEXT:

We are a people in a hurry. Do you keep your phone nearby even when you go to bed? Are you always available if someone needs you? Recently I came across something called a culture of urgency. A culture of urgency is the idea that people are always free and available to respond to any and all requests. Does that sound like your life? It sounds a lot like mine.  The readings appointed for this Sunday have an urgency about them too. From the emphatic questions in the Isaiah passage to Paul’s urgent opening statement in 1 Corinthians about his obligation to preach the gospel, reading the lessons appointed for the day could leave you breathless.

The Gospel lesson from Mark is no less urgent. In these eleven verses we go from synagogue to house, to a deserted place, to neighboring towns around Galilee. This is a whirlwind tour!  We aren’t even out of the first three verses when we meet the first woman mentioned in Mark’s Gospel, although we only know her as Simon’s mother-in-law. This woman stands out to us for two reasons. First, for being the only person in Mark’s Gospel who is healed by Jesus and then does something for him, by serving him. Second, Mark uses the Greek word for service- diakonein– which means to wait tables. But this was charged language and meant more than waiting tables. Mark used the same word earlier in Chapter 1 to describe the way the angels ministered to Jesus after his forty days in the wilderness.

The urgency continues even as Simon’s mother-in-law serves Jesus and the disciples while the sick and demon possessed line up at the door waiting for Jesus to cure them. There is a deep humanity in this gospel reading. We see Jesus in the thick of the day-to-day motions of living in a specific time with specific people who were drawn to him because a word or a touch from Jesus had the power to release them from the forces of chaos and to heal them. But amid all the urgency and rush, Jesus does something unexpected, he goes out to pray in a deserted place. While the whole world was at Simon’s door, Jesus shuts down for a while. But soon enough Simon and his friends find Jesus and get back to their travels, to preach the good news and cast out demons in Galilee.

Among the crush of so many people in need of healing, Jesus comes to teach us how to live in this passage from Mark’s Gospel. Even though we are very early in the book of Mark, this is a text we can claim for ourselves. Like Jesus, we may need to take time from the hurry and urgency of our everyday lives to shut down and to pull away to refocus on what God is calling us to do or be. Everyday life is overflowing with what we could and should do. Many of us are pressed on all sides by someone or something demanding our time and energy. So was Jesus, and it is vital that we, like him, find a deserted time to focus on our main task in life of answering God’s call.

Reflection written by Dianne Bergant, CSA

TEXT:

Nowadays we seem to be dissatisfied if we are considered ordinary. We seek to be the first or the best, or at least to belong to the group that is first or best. Yet, most of us are really quite ordinary people living ordinary lives. Despite this, there need be nothing ordinary about being ordinary. With this Sunday we enter the interlude between seasons. Christmas with its excitement and glitter is behind us and the sober experience of Lent followed by the glory of Easter is in the future. In the liturgical year, this is the period known as Ordinary Time. It is the time during which we reflect on the very ordinary ways that God enters our lives, thus making them extraordinary.

The first reading recounts an event in early life of the prophet Samuel. As a young boy he lived in a religious shrine, entrusted to the keeping of the old priest Eli. One very ordinary evening he went to sleep and was awakened by a very strange occurrence. Both he and Eli to whom he reported this occurrence misunderstood what was happening. He thought that Eli was calling him; Eli thought that the boy was mistaken. Who could have imagined that God was calling Samuel out of sleep? Furthermore, who would have thought that God would choose a young boy, one with no power or prestige, someone whose chief responsibility was making sure that the light in the sanctuary was kept burning? Surely there were others more qualified.

A comparable situation is described in the gospel passage. In it Jesus appears to be so unremarkable that John the Baptist has to point him out to two of John’s disciples. In this account, Jesus does nothing that will attract attention. He does not yet have a following. And, unlike his depiction in much religious art, he does not look or dress differently. He is just an ordinary Middle Eastern man. There is no miraculous healing that amazes the crowds; there is no dramatic instruction that mesmerizes his audience. He is simply passing by the people who are standing around. It is a very ordinary scene. Yet John knows who he is and informs his own disciples of Jesus’ hidden identity: “Behold the Lamb of God.” It is only after the two disciples spend the day with Jesus that they realize how extraordinary he really is.

Perhaps what Paul describes in his Letter to the Corinthians is the most startling example of the extraordinary hidden within what is ordinary. He argues that ordinary human beings, by means of faith, are members of Christ. Their human bodies, thought weak and limited, are temples wherein dwells the Holy Spirit. He further claims that since God raised Jesus from the dead, God will also raise all those who are joined to Jesus. Paul insists here on the dignity of the ordinary human body because he is condemning the licentious lives of many of the Corinthians. He is trying to show them that their immoral behavior is violating the very bodies purchased by Christ at the price of his blood.

In these three incidents, the extraordinary was not at first apparent. It takes eyes of faith to recognize it. Both Samuel and Eli initially misunderstood the voice, but when they realized that it was God calling in the night, they accepted its message. Paul rebuked the Corinthian Christians who had lost sight of their bodily dignity and were participating in illicit practices. Those who accepted his words glorified God though the morality of their lives. Initially the disciples of John saw nothing unusual in Jesus. However, they listened to John’s advice, spent the day with Jesus, and eventually became his disciples. At first, all these people saw only what was obvious. However, in each instance God called them to deeper insight through the agency of another.

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Reflection written by Ferdinand Okorie, CMF

TEXT:

Recently, I was in the crowd at a dissertation defense of a young woman whose family fled violence from her native country into the United States. For every member of her family, English language was foreign to them, except in the movies and TV shows they watched with subtitles back home. Notwithstanding the challenges of a foreign language and a culture, they were convinced of the providence of God in their successful relocation to the United States. She believed that the efforts of her family alone would not have made their relocation to the United States a reality if God was not guiding the process from the beginning through their successful resettlement. She overcame the challenges of learning a new language to earn a doctoral degree in Business Administration. When I congratulated her at the end of her successful dissertation defense, she bellowed: “God gave me this degree, and made this country a place of success for me.”

In the first reading today, God has positioned Jerusalem as the center of a new life and a new beginning for all peoples. God has made Jerusalem the place of shelter, refuge and encounter for all peoples. Jerusalem becomes a place where divine glory and splendor spread out to the ends of the earth bringing about a happy life for all peoples (Isaiah 60:1-2). The tradition identifies Jerusalem as the city of God, and the dwelling place of God on earth. God has made the city a beacon of hope, a standard of good life and human flourishing for all peoples. It is important to keep in mind that the role God has assigned the city of Jerusalem includes the inhabitants of the city, the children of Israel (Isaiah 60:4). Therefore, God has given the city and its inhabitants the mandate to make the presence of God known in the world. The splendor and the shining light of the city is amplified by the inhabitants of Jerusalem who mirror the presence of God in the world.

The same is true in the second reading as St. Paul speaks about his stewardship of the presence of the grace of God to benefit the church in Ephesus (Eph 3:2). He received the revelation of the mystery of the presence of God in the world; and he positioned himself to be the herald of God’s invitation of relationship with the gentiles, who through Paul’s ministry have been called into membership in the household of God. In other words, through the revelation of the mystery of God in Jesus Christ, gentiles have become children of the household of God with the rights to inheritance (Eph 3:6). They have become members of the same body, sharing in fellowship, equality and nobility. In Jesus Christ, God has united the human family into one divine household as the visit of the Magi revealed in the gospel reading.

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