Dear Friends,
“Everyone is looking for you, Jesus!” In today’s gospel from Mark (Mk 1:29-39), in the early morning Simon Peter hunts down Jesus, eagerly looking to find Him after the whole town of Capernaum had been at Peter’s door the night before when Jesus had cured the sick and cast out demons, His first public healing service. When Peter finally found Jesus in a deserted place, praying, he said, “Everyone is looking for you!” Although everyone knows that it is Jesus who heals, Jesus chooses to heal others not solo but with his disciples present, telling Peter, “Let’s go to the nearby villages.”
Today, everyone is still looking for Jesus, whether they know it or not. Pope Benedict XVI put it this way: “We cannot keep to ourselves the words of eternal life given to us in our encounter with Jesus Christ: they are meant for everyone, for every man and woman. Everyone today, whether he or she knows it or not, needs this message. It is our responsibility to pass on what, by God’s grace, we ourselves have received.” [VERBUM DOMINI (The Word of the Lord), #91. 2010]. Just as Jesus wanted his disciples to accompany Him in His ministry of healing and proclamation of the gospel in Galilee, He also wants us to accompany Him in His work today by healing and proclaiming through us. And why is Jesus’ healing ministry and our involvement in it so important?
The answer lies in the deeper meaning we discover by discerning how the 1st reading (Jb 7:1-4, 6-7) connects to the gospel reading. Here we find Job—who represents every human person who suffers, ie, all of us—despondent in the midst of his suffering: “I shall not see happiness again.” (Job 7:7). But 12 chapters later Job proclaims, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth.” (Job 19:25). Job, in his desire for healing prophetically, points hundreds of years later to Jesus in the gospel beginning his healing ministry in Capernaum. The deeper meaning of today’s readings, reflected in our Responsorial Psalm, is this: “(God) heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. The LORD sustains the lowly. Praise the Lord, who heals the brokenhearted.” (Psalm 147).
God ALWAYS brings good from suffering: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him.” (Romans 8:28). In these early weeks of Ordinary time, early in Jesus’ ministry, let us have the faith of Job, confident that Jesus heals and restores in His perfect timing. Our Redeemer lives and is present to us on earth in our trials and suffering—most directly in His sacraments, and also in the loving care of others, and when we seek Him in prayer.
Peace in Christ,
Father Jim
