February 7, 2021
Praise the Lord, who heals shattered hearts.
St Paul says to the Corinthians, “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel!”
The disciples said to Jesus, “Everyone is looking for you.”
Readings
First Reading
Reading the book of Job 7, 1-4. 6-7
Job spoke saying:
“Is not the life of man on earth militia, and his days like those of a day laborer?; like the slave, he sighs for the shadow; like the day laborer, he awaits his salary.
My inheritance has been wasted months, I’ve been assigned nights of fatigue.
When I go to bed I think, ‘When will I get up?’
It makes my night eternal and I’m sick of circling till dawn.
My days run longer than the shuttle, they are consuming themselves lacking hope.
Remember that my life is a breath, that my eyes will no longer see joy.”
Psalm
Come out 146, 1-2. 3-4. 5-6
Praise the Lord, who heals shattered hearts.
Praise the Lord, that music is good; our God deserves harmonious praise.
The Lord rebuilds Jerusalem, gathers the deportees of Israel. R/.
He heals shattered hearts, bandages his wounds.
It counts the number of stars, each one is called by name. R/.
Our Lord is great and powerful, his wisdom is un measured.
The Lord sustains the humble, humiliates even the wicked to the dust. R/
Second Reading
Reading St Paul’s first letter to Corinthians 9, 16-19. 22-23
Brothers:
Preaching is not a source of pride for me.
I have no choice and, oh, I do not proclaim the gospel!
If I did it for my own pleasure, that would be my paycheck.
But if I do it in spite of me, I’ve been commissioned this job.
So, what’s the pay? Precisely to make the gospel known, proclaiming it for nothing, without using the right that gives me the preaching of the gospel.
Because, being free as I am, I’ve become slaves to everyone to win as many as possible. I have become weak with the weak, to win over the weak; I’ve done everything for everyone, to win, whatever it is, to some.
And I do everything because of the gospel, to participate in his goods as well.
Gospel
Reading the Holy Gospel according to Mark 1, 29-39
At that time, when Jesus left the synagogue, he went with James and John to the house of Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told her about her. He came up, grabbed her by the hand and lifted her up. He missed his fever and started serving them.
At dusk, when the sun went down, they took him all the sick and devilish. The whole population was crowded at the door. He healed many sick people of various evils and cast out many demons; and because the demons knew him, he wouldn’t let them talk.
He got up at dawn, when it was still very dark, went to a lonely place and there he began to pray. Simon and his companions went looking for him and, upon finding him, they said:
“Everyone’s looking for you.”
He replies:
“Let us go elsewhere, to the nearby villages, to preach also there; that’s what I’m out for.”
Thus he traveled all over Galilee, preaching in his synagogues and expelling the demons.
Comment
Today’s Word of God begins by telling us about Job. Job’s heart was a broken heart. His history reveals to us that He was a good and pious man, fulfilling God’s commands, and blessed by Him with abundance. His life was happy and quiet, like that of someone satisfied with himself, with his achievements and projects, until it came time for the trial, and I get the desolation, the derailment of his plans, the failure of his projects. Everything collapsed and shattered, so did his poor, humble heart. And Job seems to lose his sense of life because he doesn’t know what course his existence is going to take. He feels his days go by like a hopeless breath of being happy again.
It is really worth reading and pondering the whole book of Job, an Old Testament book that belongs to the so-called Sapienciales, and which reflects in existential code the experience of faith in God of someone who suffers, does not understand and who does not see his dedication to God compensated in this life with peace and happiness. We all remember this typical phrase of Job—the Lord gave it to me, the Lord took it from me, blessed be the Lord—as a synthesis of his life. But acceptance of deprivation, suffering and pain was not easy for him. The harshness of life forced him to rethink his image of God and his relationship with Him.
Certainly the figure of Job and his life experience raises the question before God of the suffering, of pain, of all that we consider evil in the world. The question of “why” extends to so many negative experiences of their own or others. If God is good, why this or that happens, why I have to go through this trance, why I must suffer this disease, why they lied to me or betrayed me, why… For what… how long… Unanswered questions that haunt us can even lead us to doubt and loss of faith, if not in God, perhaps yes in the Church, or at least in institutions or people from whom we did not in principle doubt and expect solidity and reliability.
Job is each of us when we are not right to see the meaning of what surrounds us, when it seems that God has disappeared, when life becomes dark night, when we walk without seeing the end of the tunnel. We want and cannot, we search and we do not find, we pray and we find no answer.
However, the Job in each of us must be found, sooner or later, with Christ. Today’s Gospel introduces us to Jesus in Cafarnaum, coming out of the synagogue, as someone close to him who shares the daily life of his disciples, someone with power over evil, about sickness and pain, who has come to heal broken hearts and to cure any kind of sickness and ailment. He goes to Peter’s house and heals his mother-in-law. At dusk the sick and devils are slit and He heals them and frees them from their evils. Everyone is looking for Him because they have found in Him someone who helps them regain meaning and direction in their lives.
Truly Jesus appears as the bullfighter, the doctor who heals inside and out, without asking for anything in return. He surprises his disciples by getting up early to pray because, in order to carry out his mission, he needs the strength of the Spirit that comes from the Father. And it is the same Spirit who impels him not to let himself be caught by a few, to travel all of Galilee healing and expelling demons because for that he has come out of the Father, he has entered the history of mankind, to bring to all the Good News: that God loves us and forgives us always. They sought him out, we looked for him, consciously or unconsciously, but He also seeks us, goes out to meet us.
Certainly the Job who dwells in each of us needs to be enlightened and healed by Christ in all questions, sufferings, pains, and evils. The result of this encounter is that the patient and suffering Job becomes the vibrant and light-filled Paul, who shouts, “Oh to me if I do not proclaim the gospel.” Christ can change our broken hearts in a new and hopeful heart. What gospel was Paul talking about? Of the Good News he himself had experienced in his own life when he met Christ. His mission will be, from that moment on, to proclaim Christ and what Christ has worked in him. The evangelized becomes an evangelizer, the healed and healed by Christ begins his mission as a witness to the salvation that Christ has brought for all. So Paul will come to say, “It is no longer me, it is Christ who lives in me.” That is why he is able to become a slave with slaves and weak with the weak, all for all, to win, whatever it may be, some for Christ.
In today’s world, in our societies, there are many Jobs who need to meet Christ; the pandemic we are suffering, social inequalities, forgotten wars, hidden violence, oppressive systems that suppress freedom continue to engender many Jobs who continue to shout: why, Lord! How long, sir! It is the Church, as the image and presence of the living Christ, who has to go out in her search to put light in her darkness, cure her illnesses, attend to her needs; it is we, each of the baptized Christians, who, like Paul, have the difficult but inexcusable mission to evangelize, that is, to be witnesses and living presence of Christ suffering and patient who wants to continue to share the suffering and pain of all humanity, enlightening him from Christian hope and transforming it into new life, that is, making his Gospel visible and tangible.
So many times, while still feeling the anguish and pain like Job, we will have to proclaim God’s love and mercy as Paul. Oh to us if we don’t evangelize!
Prayer
Son, if you take God’s way seriously, prepare your soul for the trials to come; sit patiently at the threshold of his door, accepting with peace the silences, absences, and delays, to which He wants to subdue you, for it is in the crucible of fire that gold is purified.
Lord Jesus, since you passed through this world, having patience as a garment and a badge, she is the queen of virtues and the most precious pearl of your crown.
Give me the grace to accept with peace the essential gratuitousness of God, the bewildering path of Grace, and the unpredictable emergencies of nature.
I accept with peace the slow and zigzagging march of prayer and the fact that the path to holiness is so long and difficult.
I accept with peace the contradictions of the life and misunderstandings of my brothers, diseases and death itself, and the law of human insignificance, that is, that, after my death, everything will remain the same as if nothing had happened.
I accept with peace the fact that I want so much and power so little, and that, with great efforts, I must achieve small results.
I accept with peace the law of sin, that is: I do what I do not want and stop doing what I would like to do. I leave with peace in your hands what it should have been and I didn’t go, what I should have done and I didn’t.
I accept with peace all human helplessness that surrounds me and limits me. I accept with peace the laws of precariousness and transitoryness, the law of mediocrity and failure, the law of loneliness and death.
In exchange for all this surrender, give me Peace, Lord. Amen
(Fr. Ignacio Larrañaga)
Be the first to comment