If you are looking at a particular sermon and it is removed it is because it has been updated.

For example Year C 2010 is being replaced week by week with Year C 2013, and so on.

Friday 26 February 2021

2nd Sunday of Lent 2021 Year B

 

Second Sunday of Lent (B)

(Genesis 22:1-2; 9-13, 15-18; Romans 8:31-34; St. Mark’s Gospel 9:2-10)

 

Jesus was well aware that His disciples were, at present, rejoicing in the presence of their Lord: He was the Bridegroom and they were the Bridegroom’s most privileged friends.  However, such present, earthly, joy, though holy, would not be enough to sustain them through the trials that lay ahead of them.  And that, People of God, is something we should notice. Joy in the Lord, based largely on emotional experiences would, most certainly, not be enough for Jesus‘ disciples: their joy, their love, had to be firmly established, as must ours also, on Faith, shot-through and made incandescent, with Hope, and aspiring to a self-less culmination of love for the Person of JESUS.  Therefore:

Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was transfigured before them.

Why did Jesus take these three particular disciples with Him on that momentous occasion?

The case for Peter is clear enough since he had just -- in the presence, and in the name, of all the disciples – confessed Jesus as the Christ:

            ‘Who do you say that I am?’   ‘You are the Christ!’  (Mark 8:29)

Moreover, Jesus recognized that Peter had been personally chosen and blessed by His Father in order to make that confession; therefore, as we learn from St. Matthew (16:17), following His Father’s lead, He named Peter as the Rock upon which He would subsequently build His Church.  Peter – spokesman of the disciples, individually blessed by the Father, and chosen as the rock on which Jesus would build His Church – was indeed pre-eminently suited to accompany Jesus to the mountain top.

James the Greater, son Zebedee, would become leader of the earliest group of Jewish believers in Jesus to form the original Christian Church in Jerusalem; and for so prominent a position, and destined to become the first of the Apostles to suffer martyrdom for Jesus’ sake about the year 44 AD, he had to be extremely well prepared for a calling so demanding and controversial, and a destiny so pressing;  he became Jesus’ second choice to follow Himself along with Simon Peter.

Perhaps the reason for John’s being taken by Jesus to the Mount of Transfiguration is to be sought in the mysterious nature of his authorship of the Gospel now bearing his name.  For, strangely enough, all three Synoptic Gospels tell of Jesus’ Transfiguration though none of the named authors was present on the Mount, whereas John, on the other hand, though actually present on that unique occasion does not give us any explicit details of it!

He was quite a young man at the time, a very committed and observant, sensitive and impressionable, disciple of the Lord.  He was so deeply affected by what he experienced on the Mount of Transfiguration – an event second only to the unseen moment of Jesus’ Resurrection as testimony to His divinity – that whereas Peter (the source for St. Mark’s Gospel), a mature man of the world, would give clear and factual reminiscences of the event, John would, just as Jesus envisaged, remain (cf. John 21:22): recalling, considering and reconsidering, lovingly praying-over and contemplating, what had taken place and what had been said on those heights of Tabor, as he unremittingly sought to appreciate their purest truth and assimilate their deepest significance for his apostolic understanding of Jesus.  When he ultimately felt able/compelled to write down or hand on what had by then, for so long filled his mind, heart, and soul, His resultant Gospel would be replete, not so much with factual details of that wondrous occasion, but rather with the all-enveloping atmosphere of divine authority and saving truth engendered by Jesus’ communion with His Father in the unity of the overshadowing Spirit … a presence and communion which John knew full well was not a passing, occasional occurrence for Jesus, but rather a passing manifestation of what was the enduring character His whole life on earth: for He always lived for and in the presence of His Father: doing His will, proclaiming His truth, and promoting His glory to the utmost of His being in the power of the Spirit of Them both.

Therefore, as I have said, the faith of these individuals so very distinct and yet, as pillars of the nascent Church so mutually complementary in their endowments, needed to be made enduringly sure on the basis of the divine authority of the words and teaching of Jesus, the unquenchable hope given by the abiding presence and power of the Holy Spirit, and a sacramentally- incandescent love for the Person of Jesus in His Church.  To that end, these three men were afforded an experience that would allow them to glimpse briefly something of the teaching authority, the hidden majesty, and indeed the heavenly glory of the Lord.

First of all:

Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus.

This united witness of the Scriptures – Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets – solemnly confirmed Jesus as Lord of heaven, the long proclaimed and eagerly awaited Seed of God’s promise to Abraham, of which we heard in the first reading and as Jesus Himself said (John 5: 39, 46):

You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.

If you believed Moses you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.

Dear People of God, we must most sincerely try to love and appreciate the Scriptures aright if we would know and love Jesus in spirit and in truth, if we would remain firm and, indeed, grow even stronger in our faith through times of trial and temptation.

Then, to the yet greater awe and fear-of-the-Lord (a truly sublime virtue!) of the disciples:

A cloud came, casting a shadow over them, and from the cloud came a voice: ‘This is My beloved Son.  Listen to Him!

The heavenly Father Himself – they had no doubt of that – was impressing upon them again the authority of Jesus’ words and teaching.  But surely, there is something more, something far more intimate and personal than ‘listening’ being advised, even commanded, here; for why did the Father speak, as it were publicly, of what was most intimately Personal between Himself and His Son … that is His love for His Son: This is My Beloved?  Surely, the Father is there, not commanding, not even so much as urging, but most delicately drawing those who are initially committed to His Son, to learn from Him, the Father Himself, how rightly and fully to love their Lord:

            This is My beloved Son!

This approach is far more compelling and inviting than any command could be; it is a divine inspiration and heartfelt Personal invitation and call from the Father; it is the sublime source of those subsequent words of Jesus (Jn. 6: 44):

            No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draw him.

Now we too should turn to and prayerfully learn something from the Father drawing us to Jesus, His beloved Son, when, at Holy Mass, we prepare to welcome Him into our midst as the Father’s sacramental pledge of love for mankind; and most especially, as we receive Him into our individual hearts as the Father’s Personal Gift of Love to each one of us.  For we should recall, first of all, that Jesus is being given to us by the Father that we might love Him in the power of His accompanying Spirit of Love, and secondly that the Beloved Son we are receiving wills to live in us, and love as One of us, that He might become – in the sacrifice of Holy Mass -- our gift of love for the Father,  seeking to draw us with Himself as His gift to the Father.

Holy Communion is that doubly divine and momentous occasion when we are able and called to learn from the gifting Father how to love, better and ever more personally, His beloved Son; and also how best to allow His Son to lovingly respond to and live for the Father in and through us by the Holy Spirit abiding in and with us as Jesus’ Gift.

The disciples descended with Jesus from those heights so beautiful seen from earth and so open to heaven, with a faith now transfigured into an anticipation of Christian and Apostolic Faith.  Despite Jesus’ warning of His approaching suffering -- His rejection by the religious authorities, and resultant death lurking at the back of their minds -- they had received a faith-vision of Jesus’ heavenly glory, hidden as yet from earthly scrutiny, but something nevertheless, both beautiful and sure, that would enable them to relate aright to the Resurrection Jesus promised would follow His Death in three days. Because they would be most sorely tried by their Lord’s suffering and death, this ‘dry-dock’ work of preparation and confirmation undertaken on the Mount of Transfiguration would be sedulously pursued by the Lord as, again and again, for a second and then a third time, He clearly warned and lovingly prepared them for their time of trial and temptation.

People of God, we Catholics and Christians of today are, like the original fathers of our Faith, subject to trial and temptation throughout the world; we must, therefore, learn how to protect our Faith, our Christian civilization, and indeed our own selves.  We must ‘listen to Him’ if we would be strong in faith and love for eternal life, for our adversaries subject the Faith to great stress and savage attacks all over the world.  Our own governments, rejecting their Christian heritage, are solicitous only for their own permanence in popularity and power.  As Catholics and Christians, we are not – like many militant, pseudo-religious groups – allowed to hate and lust, be it for pleasure or for power!  How such connivance with native passions stirs up ‘religious zeal’ in all sorts of people but most especially in the young, short of understanding and emotional stability, and most eager to make their mark by doing what comes so easily and naturally if encouraged and praised by evil masters!

Our Christian strength – for we are not allowed to become ‘wimps’ ever shivering between humanism and emotionalism – our strength has to come, as Jesus taught, from our faith in Himself, and has to express itself through the power of His Spirit: faith must not be explained away by rational expediency, nor spiritual power subverted by trite and emotional platitudes meant above all to avoid trouble or emolliate opposition.

Moreover, as Jesus was so solicitous for His disciples and His future Church, we too must look to our children who need help as they try to understand their humanity and adapt to the society around them.  To those ends they should be taught morals and guided towards love of what is truly beautiful.  Of themselves, they are not ‘positively’ innocent; in infancy their relative helplessness demands that they instinctively wail and grab to satisfy their most basic needs, and they need to be loved and guided lest, as they grow stronger in body, they continue to seek and grab, no longer for what they need, but for what they fancy.  Of course, their greatest need as they are growing up is for faith and spiritual strength to withstand peer-pressure which would force them into compliance with group excitement and amusement without reference to any personal thinking or religious morals.  Of one thing we can be certain, children left to ‘find out for themselves’ will rarely find out what is good and true for themselves; they will be led, drawn along, by the examples and solicitations of others in their group, responding to nothing better than the shared exuberance of youth under the domination of passions and pride.  Because of such sharing in emotional awareness and excitement too few members of a group of friends or ‘mates’ dare to ‘go it alone’ and, following their personal conscience, to resist, or seek to control, that of which they cannot actually approve, but dare not openly disapprove.

Good Catholic and Christian parenthood is indeed demanding, but it is a most beautiful art and school of prayer with lifelong and indeed eternal rewards.

People of God, delight in the Lord Jesus; try ever to follow confidently His example; trust humbly in the teaching of His Church and her Scriptures; and never give up hoping that the goodness of God Who gives His own Son for and to us all, will lead you to share in the eternal glory of Jesus before the Father if you persevere faithfully walking with Him along life’s way to heaven’s reward.

 

Saturday 20 February 2021

 1st. Sunday of  Lent  Year B    2021

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1st. Sunday of Lent (B)

(Genesis 9:8-15; 1st. Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:12-15)

  

                          

  

The waters of the Flood had destroyed earthly life, the waters of Baptism would offer supernatural LIFE.  In between those two events -- after the Flood and in preparation for Jesus’ Baptism -- God made three covenants with His chosen people; three covenants whereby, from this Chosen People, would ultimately arise the Promised One -- the Messiah of God -- Jesus Our Lord, the Saviour of mankind: God Himself in human flesh.   All of that is contained in the opening words of Jesus:

            This is the time of fulfilment.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.

Our Gospel reading recounted how Jesus had been driven by the Spirit of God into the desert where He was tempted by Satan for forty days. We are also told how Satan, in the course of that encounter, tried and failed, to tempt Jesus by offering Him the satisfactions of worldly peace, pleasure, and pride.

That is the background to those words of Jesus which Mother Church still proclaims in His name:

            Repent, and believe in the Gospel;

words she continually recalls and proclaims because the need for such repentance is abiding.

It is commonly thought that repentance is needed in order to convert to Catholicism or Christianity, and after that, only when sin has been committed.  But such a view is by far too superficial. Repentance is, indeed, necessary in order to believe and embrace the Gospel promise of eternal life in Jesus; but such repentance – turning from the sins of this world in order to embrace the Gospel of eternal life in Jesus – only becomes an enduring reality through the power of God’s most Holy Spirit, God’s Gift to us in Jesus, actually guiding and ruling our mind and heart here on earth so that we might live a truly Christian, authentic, Jesus-witnessing, life.  Repentance and the Gift of God’s most Holy Spirit can be seen as two sides of one coin: death and Life, so to speak.  The whole purpose and meaning of our repentance is that thereby we might die to sin and be enabled to turn to Jesus and live in-and-with Him an abiding, ever-developing, relationship of obedience and love, a Gospel-witness for God’s glory and the fulfilment of our human being.

(Jesus) went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax office. He said to him, "Follow Me" so, he left all, rose up, and followed Him.  (Luke 5:27-28)

And all the Apostles, likewise, left everything to follow Jesus.

On the other hand, the rich young man /who wanted to be perfect, could not follow when Jesus said (Matthew 19:21-22):

"If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me."  But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

In his case, it is abundantly clear that, though he was living a good life -- indeed, he thought he wanted to be perfect -- love of riches would not allow him to grow in repentance, that is, would not allow him to turn to Jesus wholeheartedly, motivated not so much by revulsion with regard to sin, not so much by a merely theoretical idea of ‘religious perfection’, but by an ever-deepening and developing, indeed, an ever more absorbing and demanding love for the Person of Jesus Himself and an obedient manifestation to the beauty of His truth and teaching.

Jesus Himself made this absolutely clear when He told His disciples (Matthew 10:37-38}:

He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.  And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.

Very often, in order to promote or to popularize the Faith, it is presented as being a commitment that will make our lives more enjoyable.  That however can be wrongly understood, because Christian faith is not intended to top up our present experience of life so much as to change it altogether, to consign it to the rubbish bin, as it were, so that we can start anew, afresh, on a life of truly heavenly aspirations, as St. Paul tells us:

I count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ. (Philippians 3:8)

St. Paul is there speaking in a very emphatic manner in order to get over a most important aspect of Christian discipleship.  He did not, literally, count the advantages and blessings that had been his in Judaism -- the blessings of his careful upbringing -- as so much rubbish in themselves; but, out of love for Christ, he regarded those things as if they were rubbish, in so far as he turned away from them in order to give himself ever more completely to Jesus; and in so doing Paul was continually repenting of things past.

I count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.

He remained always proud and grateful for having been brought up a Jew and he would have given his life to help his former Jewish brethren; but when he glimpsed something of the glory of Christ, he turned away from his past, thereby repenting of it, and he never looked back again because he was always, henceforth, striving to give himself ever more completely and perfectly to Christ.

And so, People of God, “repent and believe the Gospel” are words for all time, words to be realized throughout our lives as we seek to grow in the love of the Lord.  We repent of our pride when we are suddenly enabled to see the truth about ourselves -- our weakness, our ignorance, our folly, our pretence -- and are allowed to recognize, appreciate, something of the wonder of Jesus, and to long and pray for, a humble pride-crumbling love of Him.   We likewise repent of our slothfulness and little faith when, for example, when we come to a calm and sincere appreciation of those other words of Jesus in our Gospel passage:

            The time of fulfilment, the kingdom of God is at hand,

and we seriously acknowledge that it is at hand for us if we will only prevail upon ourselves to make the necessary effort to take up the offer and work for it.  

Repentance is an ever-growing sensitivity and responsiveness to the call of God’s grace, a call that would lead us higher and further, thereby requiring us be always prepared and ready to turn away from what is below and behind and look to what is upward and to come. But repentance is only seen in all its grandeur when it fills us with gratitude: when we find that, as it enables us to see more clearly our past sins and failings, it also allows us to appreciate more fully what a debt of gratitude we owe to God for so many past blessings so long ignored during our years of repented ignorance. 

Yes, repentance is indeed a great gift of God: for the gratitude it generates is a virtue both beautiful in itself and delightful in the joy with which it fills our heart and life; while the goodness it reveals is an awesome and a humbling presage of the fulfilment to which it aspires.

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday 13 February 2021

6th Sunday Year B 2021

 

6th. Sunday of Year (B) 2021

(Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46; First Corinthians 10:31-11:1; Mark 1:40-45)

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The teaching contained in our first reading reminds us forcefully that the physical and spiritual good of society as a whole, has unquestioned priority over individual ‘rights’.

Likewise, in our second reading: the individual should, first and foremost, endeavour to serve God, the Church, and the peaceful well-being of society:

            Do everything for the glory of God, avoid giving offence.

From those two very diverse readings we may perhaps have already glimpsed something of what is a fundamental characteristic of any God-fearing, committed Catholic and Christian human-being: namely, a deep-seated, soul-satisfying, natural desire and, indeed, quasi moral imperative, to give oneself to something greater than self – not just to family, to team, or even to country – but to some great good, indeed, to the Personal Good Whom we in Jesus are blessed and sublimely privileged to know as God, our Father.  To what degree that longing develops in the course of our life depends first of all, on our recognition and acceptance of its presence in our mind and heart, and then on our correspondence to the demands it makes, of necessity, upon us individually.

Holy Mass is the supreme offering mankind can make to God in and through His beloved and only-begotten Son, Who -- being God incarnate, that is, both perfect God and perfect man -- seeks to draw us to Himself in order that He might then be able to draw us with Himself to the God Who sent Him, His Father, Who wants us to become, in and through Jesus, His own true children.

Jesus still – to this very day – helps us to make this ‘Holy Mass offering’ to His Father first of all, by His words and His teaching: therefore, the first part of the Mass consisting wholly of prayers, readings from Jesus’ Scriptures -- all of what is called the Old Testament speaks of Jesus -- and the Creed:

             

Jesus said to them, “These are My words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about Me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.” (Luke 24:44)

If you had believed Moses, you would have believed Me, because he wrote about Me.  (John 5:46)

 

Mother Church does this that we might thereby be inspired and enabled to participate more intimately and fully with Jesus in His own sacrificial commitment to His Father and Personal presence for us, on the altar and in our hearts, which is the ultimate purpose and sublime promise of the Mass.

People of God, do strive, pray earnestly, to understand and take to heart the teaching presented in the Liturgy of the Word at Holy Mass, that you might better love and unite yourself with Jesus as He offers Himself to the Father for you, and when He gives Himself to you for the Father; for that teaching and that offer of Christ, inflaming your personal response and commitment, are the whole substance of salvation.

The words used in the offertory at Mass … bread and wine which earth has given and human hands have made … show that our whole life and work, that is our whole being, is meant to be involved.  The offertory is the time when we willingly and quite deliberately offer ourselves in and with Jesus to the Father, so that we too, just as the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, may be transformed ever more completely into living members of Christ’s Body, loving temples of His most Holy Spirit, and children of God’s heavenly and eternal family.

What therefore, precisely, is salvation, the ‘work of our redemption’?   Look at our Gospel reading:

Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out His hand, touched the kneeling leper and said to him, ‘Be made clean’.

For the Jewish leaders, those public figures – Temple priests and Pharisee sect – figures regarded as learned and feared as powerful by the ordinary people -- leprosy was generally considered to be a sign of God’s punishment; and so, for them, those pathetic words the afflicted had to endlessly and loudly proclaim, ‘Unclean, unclean’, were most necessary, not only to protect others against the degrading, flesh-eating sickness as God intended, but also to protect ‘devout’ Israelites from incurring the contamination of legal and liturgical uncleanness as determined by and specified in a multiplicity of special traditions and pious practices.

By what miraculous power or process did Jesus use to heal this particular courageous victim at His feet?   By the miracle of love!  God’s divine love for us!!  And indeed, the Greek verb translated ‘touched’:

Moved with pity, He stretched out His hand, and touched him,

can also mean ‘embraced’; Jesus may, indeed, have actually embraced him!!

Saying, I do will it.  Be made clean.

What really, ‘substantially’, happened at that very moment, on that day, was that Jesus for our better understanding and appreciation of His future human life and destiny, in a symbolical, but also very real, way took the man’s leprosy onto Himself, in so far as the leper who had previously been obliged to dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp, was made clean, whereas Jesus, we are told in the Gospel reading, after His healing gesture, was obliged to:

Remain outside in deserted places, because, the man spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.

Ultimately, of course, and most literally, Jesus would – by suffering as a man in His human flesh -- take our death upon Himself, to lift from off our shoulders the curse of our sinfulness; and rising as a man in His human flesh, raise us up with Himself to a new possibility and experience of transfigured life.

Today, in our very sick and tormented world, we are the hands whereby Jesus is able to ‘touch’ sick, wounded, and needy humanity … and such contact is established whenever we try to do what Paul advised:

            Do everything for the glory of God, avoid giving offence.

However, we should never be under any illusion that we can glorify God in our own way, however well-intentioned – for example, some priests have thought that their personal popularity as a priest, might ‘brush off’, as it were, on to Jesus Himself!!  At the very best, we are but the hands whereby Jesus contacts men today, it is still His divine love and Personality which alone can make such contact salutary.  Our vocation and glory is to be in tune with the Spirit of Jesus that He might gradually form us in Jesus and guide us along His ways of humble and loving, selfless, obedience to Jesus’ teaching in Mother Church and to His, the Holy Spirit’s call and inspiration.

In total ‘opposition’ to modern popular thinking, we – as individual disciples of and witnesses to Jesus -- need to learn more and more to forget human rights accorded by men, in favour of Jesus’ need for selfless, transparent, and patient contacts with humanity today … and that is St. Paul’s prayer for us today:

            Avoid giving offence whether to the Jews or Greeks or the Church of God.

How many however, grasp human rights accorded by men to attack, or disregard Mother Church’s teaching!  How many politically embrace such rights while denying the testimony of their own conscience; or pretend that such rights allow and promote the truest and fullest exposition and understanding of love!!

 

Jesus responded, "Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: 'This people honours Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me; in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.' You disregard God's commandment but cling to human tradition.”  (Mark 7:6-8)

 

 

Friday 5 February 2021

5th Sunday Year B 2021

 

5th. Sunday, Year (B)     (Job 7:1-4, 6-7; 1st Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23; Mark 1:29-39)

 

 

Let me first give you an outline of Mark’s gospel as far as our reading today:  John the Baptist -- sent as Jesus’ forerunner -- was calling for true repentance in Israel when Jesus came to be immersed by him in the river Jordan, and then:

Immediately coming up out of the water He saw the heavens opening and the Spirit like a dove descending on Him; and a voice came out of the heavens: ‘You are My beloved Son. In You I am well-pleased.’  Immediately, the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness,

where He overcame Satan in a direct confrontation.  John was then imprisoned and Jesus returned to Galilee to begin His Public Mission by proclaiming the Gospel, His Good News of salvation; in the course of which -- going by the Sea of Galilee -- He came upon Peter and Andrew, James and John, all fishermen there: He called them to follow Him and together with Jesus:

They came to Capernaum, and on the Sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and taught.

Last Sunday you heard the effect Jesus’ preaching had on those in the synagogue that day: they were amazed at the authority of not only His teaching but also of His Person; for -- before their very eyes -- He had driven out of a man possessed an unclean spirit shouting:

Let us alone! What have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? Did You come to destroy us? I know who You are -- the Holy One of God!

And now, today’s Gospel reading continues that same story:

On leaving the synagogue, Jesus entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John.  

Though He had just left the synagogue members talking much about Him at Capernaum and, indeed, throughout Galilee, acclaimed he was not, neither as prophet nor as Holy One of God; in fact, some, in His own at Nazareth, would soon be saying somewhat antagonistically (Matthew 13:54):

‘Where did this man get all this wisdom and these miraculous powers?’  

However, here at Capernaum on leaving the synagogue Jesus went straightway to Simon’s house; and here I want to show you something of the religious significance of that apparently very ordinary happening ... following, I trust, the example of the young St. John Henry Newman writing to his mother about the religious significance of their family, financial, crisis ... an example which today’s leaders of our Church seem unable to follow with regards to our whole world’s pandemic trials: are they, is it, indeed without any religious significance?

Jesus entered the house of him who was to become Peter; and that house, the home of Peter, aptly signifies the future Church that Jesus would soon establish on the rock of Peter’s faith.  Jesus had just left the synagogue not accepted in the divinity of His teaching and Personal authority, and symbolically entered straightway the Church where His humanity manifested His Person and powers immediately,  bringing Him both acclaim and welcome:

Simon’s mother lay sick, and He grasped her hand and helped her up.  Then the fever left her and she waited on them.

There, Mark is telling us of a perfectly understandable event in which Jesus did a service for His disciple Peter by healing his mother-in-law from a fever; but the wisdom of God had far wider horizons in view and so, in this small incident at the beginning of Jesus’ career we can see encapsulated in outline the whole of His life’s work and mission: for the authority and power of Jesus’ word and the grace of His Person were destined to burst the limitations of the Law, the Temple, and the synagogue, and lead inevitably to the glory of His Universal Church. 

Let us consider what followed very closely.  Mark tells us that:

Simon's mother-in-law lay sick with a fever.  They immediately told Him about her.  He approached, grasped her hand, and helped her up.  Then the fever left her and she waited on them.

“He grasped her hand and helped her up”.  That is how we would expect it to have happened and that is how it is translated for modern readers.  But that is not how Mark literally expresses it; his order of events is slightly different, because he writes:

Having come to her, He lifted, raised, her up, having taken her hand.

Mark, you notice, put “raised her up” before mentioning that He took her by the hand.  Let me try to show you why the Spirit guided St. Mark in that choice.

The Greek word Mark uses for the raising, lifting, up of the sick woman is the same verb that he uses for the resurrection of Jesus (Mark 16:6):

The angel said to them, "Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen!  He is not here.

Likewise, St. Luke; when he tells us of Peter’s first address to the Jewish people, he uses that same Greek word again:

You killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses. (Acts 3:15)

And what is more, we also have a liturgical hymn from the very early Church, only a few years after Jesus’ resurrection, which tells us:

All things are made manifest by the light. Therefore, He says: "Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light;" (Ephesians 5:14)

and there, notice, the very same Greek word for “rise”, this time is being used for a newly-baptised person rising from sin and being illumined by Christ.

Now, perhaps, we are in a position to begin to understand why Jesus, on leaving the synagogue, symbolically went directly to Peter’s house, that is, to the Church, to “raise up” Peter’s mother-in-law: for “raising up” can only be rightly understood in the Church, because it speaks of, presupposes, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, which, through faith, empowers the waters of baptism to wash away sin and bestow new life for the salvation of mankind.  Jesus did not simply lift her up by the natural power of His right hand; no, He ‘raised’ her by an anticipatory use of the power of His own Resurrection and Ascension.

Here, dear friends in Christ, we catch a trace of the eternal wisdom of God.  For here, the Person of the Holy Spirit inspired Mark to use words whose fullness of meaning and significance he, Mark, could only partially glimpse; and how wonderful it is for us, in and through the Church by the guidance of the same Holy Spirit, to be able to gradually glimpse more and more of the fullness of God’s truth and beauty!  The Church can never come to the end, so to speak, of God’s wisdom and goodness: there will always be infinitely more truth and beauty beyond our capabilities, as it were, hidden and unspeakable, which makes up the glory of Divinity, uniting Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in a transcendent Unity of mutual love and appreciation.  We should have the utmost reverence for the Scriptures and the deepest gratitude for Mother Church: for it is only from them, in and through her, that each of us can aspire to an awareness at once both deeply humbling and supremely delightful of the saving knowledge and transforming reality of the wonder of our calling to know, love, and serve God here on earth so as to be able to live with, in, and for Him for all eternity.

Mark then went on to tell us something which greatly surprised the disciples:

Rising very early before dawn, (Jesus) went off to a deserted place, where He prayed.  Simon and those who were with Him pursued Him and on finding Him said, “Everyone is looking for You” …

Jesus left His disciples behind to go to pray.  Later on, He would do the same again, for after He rising from the dead, He disappeared from their view by ascending into heaven. And now, we all look -- as did Simon and his companions of old -- for Jesus’ return, which will now be in glory.

Finally, the letter to the Hebrews (7:24-25) informs us that in heaven:

 

Jesus, because He remains forever, has a priesthood that does not pass away.

Therefore, He is always able to save those who approach God through Him, since He lives forever to make intercession for them.

Jesus, in heaven, intercedes, prays -- just as He did on leaving Simon’s house in our Gospel reading, alone, before the Father -- now at His right hand of power, for all those raised by the Spirit to new life, through faith in Jesus’ Name.

And so, God’s wisdom and beauty has foreshadowed for us the full saving work of Jesus from beginning to end, in the events of this one day at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry as recorded for us by St. Mark!

Dear People of God, what treasures the Scriptures hold beneath the surface meaning of their inspired words!!

Finally, let us not fail to take note of what we are told concerning Simon’s mother-in-law:

Jesus raised her up having taken her hand.  Then the fever left her and she waited on them.

She did not serve just Jesus, but all of them.  Is that a prophetic picture of all those truly raised by Christ?  Do they -- and should we likewise -- serve Our Lord and our brethren in Mother Church?  I am sure you know well enough the answer to that question, and may the Holy Spirit of Jesus guide and sustain each of you, in your own work of service as His true disciples.