Cycle B - Year II:  

4 February 2018: Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time 

(Liturgical Color: Green)

Readings:

First Reading:        Job 7:1-4, 6-7

Second Reading:   1 Corinthians 9:16-19

Gospel:Please Read  Mark 1:29-39

Praying and healing!

In hot news these days.....the unrest of Mt. Mayon in Albay province, the controversies surrounding the dengue vaccine, the fires and floods in the southern part of the country..... all these are depressing news we hear or read.

How do we deal with these tragedies, and how do we heal the nation's wound, sometimes of our own making?

In his first ever visit to the Philippines to comfort the victims of the powerful typhoon Yolanda, Pope Francis said that sometimes we have no words to say amidst tragedies. And so it is alright for us to cry, the Pope said, perhaps to ease the pain, to cleanse our hearts of , despair, hopelessness and bitterness.

For we live in a world of pain, where physical, emotional and moral sufferings are realities. So we turn to God for hope and refuge in the most trying times in our lives.

The Gospel narrative from Mark this Sunday offers a glimpse of a day in the public life of our Lord Jesus Christ. St. Mark presents Jesus tirelessly preaching to large crowds and healing a mounting number of sick and suffering. On entering the house of Simon Peter, Jesus healed Simon's mother-in-law and she waited on them.

There is a lesson to learn from this incident. When Jesus heals us physically or even spiritually, the best way to thank the Lord is to serve Him in our brothers and sisters, like what Simon's mother-in-law did after being healed by Jesus. 

The Gospel narrative continues and that even after sunset, people keep bringing to Jesus all who are ill. But after this exhausting day, Jesus gets up early the next morning and goes off to a quiet place to be alone in prayer with His heavenly Father. Because in prayer and conversation with the Father, Jesus finds strength and energy in His demanding ministry. We can certainly learn from the example of Jesus as well, and make praying the primary source of our activities and actions while living in this busy, sometimes chaotic, world.

So we ask: what then is the relevance of the Gospel message in dealing with our national tragedies and hurt?

Well, the Gospel presents Jesus as the healer of the sick and suffering. He is God-made-man who is always close to those broken and suffering in soul and body. In Jesus, God comes into our world of tears and sufferings in order to transform our despair into hope, to transform death into new life. 

This is the only way we find meaning in our sufferings, national or personal, to find our way back to God, who is gracious and heals the brokenhearted.

A blessed Sunday to us all. And thank you for a moment with God.

Ad Jesum per Mariam!