1. -- Lanie LeBlanc OP
2. -- Carol & Dennis Keller
3. -- Brian Gleeson CP
4. -- Paul O'Reilly SJ
5. --(Your reflection can be here!)
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1.
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Sun. 5 B
Yes, there are days that we all feel just like Job, so close
to giving up! Yes, there are days that we all feel like
Paul, committed to preach the Gospel with vigor and
conviction. Yes, there are days that we all feel like
shouting to Jesus," Come, please come" to heal our sick,
preach to us, and drive out those demons!
Jesus was well sought after, from daybreak to sunset, it
seems. He had those moments in his non-stop ministry,
moments of tiredness and wondering, as well as times of
steadfastness and dedication. Surely "Everyone is looking
for you" weighed him down at times. Nevertheless, Jesus
persevered because "For this purpose have I come.”
Our journey , too, has so many ups and downs. Let us
persevere through prayer and fellowship to keep on keeping
on. Living our Baptismal call is not easy. It can be done,
gracefully, with Jesus along side as well as before us, and
behind us, to guide us and keep us going.
Blessings,
Dr. Lanie LeBlanc OP
Southern Dominican Laity
lanie@leblanc.one
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2.
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Fifth Sunday in Ordered Time February 7 2021
Job 7:1-4 &
6-7; Responsorial Psalm 147; 1st Corinthians 9:16-19 &
22-23; Gospel Acclamation Matthew 8:17; Mark 1:29-39
Talk about
someone having a bad day! In the first reading this Sunday,
Job lets it all out. He is lost everything: his money is
gone, his property is gone, his livestock are gone, his lush
fields of grain are forever ruined. His precious family have
all been killed in a horrible construction failure. And even
his three best friends come to explain to him why God has so
punished him for his sins. Job denies any wrongdoing, and
justifiable so. He is a man of righteousness, faith,
integrity, and kindness. In all this disaster Job has never
for an instance lost his faith. He is beaten, he is ruined,
he is without hope. But he holds onto the faith that has
been his in his good years. He never lets go of that faith
that God loves him. But even so, he finds his life tiresome
and without joy.
There is a saying about a person with exemplary patience in
adversity. That person is said to have the patience of Job.
My wife also has a saying about patience: patience is a
virtue, possess it if you can: seldom in a woman and never
in a man. You can imagine there is some contention in our
household about the later part of that saying. This
beautifully written story of a mythical person who is tested
by evil forces has a message for us. It seems in the
lifetime of many octogenarians that our life has been filled
with disasters. There have been wars, there have been riots,
there have been planned massacres, there have been cruel
despots and some who failed to achieve their despotic
inclinations. There has been disease and pandemics and near
pandemics. There have been individual and group violence
that has robbed us of friends, sons and daughters, fathers
and mothers, neighbors, and citizens whose presence added
much to our living. There have been millions who have died
in flight from terror and certain death or from corruption
that would have robbed them of possibilities. There have
been millions more who never saw the light of day because of
policies and economic repressions that made it seem
inconceivable for their birth.
It seems we are in a terrible mess religiously,
economically, socially, psychologically. It all comes down
to us individually. At times we tetter on the brink of
despair at our condition, our future, and the future of our
children and grandchildren. How does this work out in the
story of Job? It works out beautifully and provides insight
for us, if we have the patience to read and reflect on the
entirety of this wisdom story. Perhaps that could be your
homework for this week – to read and reflect on the book of
Job. There are answers there for the violence, terror, and
uncertainty of our times.
The gospel story continues the narrative from last week.
Recall that Jesus made his first presentation in Mark’s
gospel of his mission. He goes to the synagogue and assumes
the role of teacher. During his teaching – teaching as one
with authority and not merely someone interpreting – a man
possessed with an evil spirit is liberated from his
enslavement. It is a sign to the assembled Sabbath crowd
that here was present among them one who brought liberation
from evil.
After the synagogue teaching, Jesus is invited by Peter to
his home. There they discover Peter’s mother-in-law in bed
suffering from a fever. Jesus extends his hand to her and
raises her up. This is Mark’s reference to the coming
resurrection in about three years’ time. The mother-in-law
goes immediately to serving the Sabbath meal that had been
prepared the day before. The implication we take from this
incident is pretty straight forward. At the presence of
Jesus, that which lays us low becomes the springboard that
lifts us up. It lifts us up in a new living not merely for
our own pleasure and well-being. It lifts us up so that we
may serve the community in which we live. The community is
not limited to family. That community includes the assembly,
those neighbors, those who worship with us. It is within
that community that we are nourished with the Sabbath meal.
It is a meal that is not rushed but is the place where we
share not only food and drink but also conversation and
exchanges of respect, hope, and love. The presence of Jesus
causes this to happen. Presence! Oh, how we long to see his
face: how we long to feel his touch on our fevered brows!
Oh, how we desire to be liberated from what holds us back,
from what enslaves us, from what brings us to the edge of
despair! If only Jesus were present with us so we could hope
again, that we could get up out of our bed driven there by
the feverous demands on our time, our energy, our attention.
Ah, Ha! There is the story of Job: there is the story of
Peter’s mother-in-law. Even beyond these two stories, the
message of God’s presence is the entire story of the Hebrew
people, of Christianity, and of every faith throughout the
world that believes in a divine being.
There is a word in the last verse of the Job reading this
Sunday. Job says, “my life is like the wind….” That word for
wind in Hebrew is “Ruah.” That word is the one used at the
beginning of the story of creation where the “spirit of God
hovers over the chaotic waters.” It is the word used in the
most ancient story of the creation of humanity to indicate
the breath of God in the nostrils of the formed clay. It is
the meaning of the vast wind that shook Jerusalem on
Pentecost. In the creation story on the sixth day of
creation, God creates animals out of the dust of the earth.
Genesis says only that they were living beings made out of
the dirt of the earth. But it is only that clay form that
becomes Adam that is brought to life by the breath of God.
Recall as well the start of release of the Hebrew nation
from Egyptian slavery. Moses in the wilderness encounters a
burning bush. It is a speaking bush that burns but without
diminishing the bush. When asked who this bush made present,
the response is “I am who am with you!” This response
becomes the start of this people, these Israelites, on their
journey into freedom. They are quickly freed from the wiles
and perversity of Pharaoh. But it takes forty years for them
to come to the land of promise.
What takes them so long? Is there something about us humans
that requires us to learn by experience? When we read the
Hebrew Scriptures, when we study the Christian Scriptures,
when we reflect on the writings of the ancient fathers and
mothers of the Church, we conclude that God is in us, God is
for us, and God is most certainly with us. God is present
with us, in us, and for us. That gives our desperate
experiences a whole new perspective. In the book of Job God
does not cause Job’s troubles. Job’s friends argue that Job
is deserving of this disaster in his life. Yet Job
constantly argues that he has done nothing wrong. And his
three friends cannot prove Job is deserving of God’s
punishment. The disaster that visits Job comes from the
workings of the evil one, the one who goes about looking for
the seeds of evil that hide in the hearts and minds of
humanity. The evil one waters and raises up those evil
inclinations to the detriment of the person. God is present:
God is with us: God is in us: God is for us. Whatever fever
lays us flat, God is there with his helping, healing hand to
raise us up from our bed of terror, of sickness, of despair.
As we rise, there is learning, there is wisdom that comes
from experience. We, of course, can dismiss our experiences
without learning from them. But the follower of Jesus will
recall what Scripture tells us about the suffering servant –
that Jesus learned obedience by his suffering. This is not
the obedience of military orders. This is the obedience that
comes from the listening heart, that heart that is sensitive
to the voice, the wind that comes through the Spirit of God
present to us as His followers.
What we learn, by our actions, by our place in faith
communities, in civil communities, in political communities,
in families and in all the engagements of life we recognize
God’s presence in us, with us, and for us. Remember the
example of Peter’s Mother-In-Law. She rises from her
enslavement by illness, lifted up by the hand of Jesus; she
rises up to service to the household, the community. There
are times when we are the hand of Jesus: there are times
when we are the mother-in-law.
There is a wind, a Ruah, blowing through our land, through
our world. That wind is the presence of God in us, with us,
and for us. Listen with our hearts; listen remembering our
history with God; reach out hands to the Lord present in us,
for us, and with us. For the Lord is truly the Way, the
Truth, and the Life. He is hope, his life is faith, he
energizes love for self, for others, and for the
Transcendent God who is here!
Carol & Dennis Keller
dkeller002@nc.rr.com
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3.
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JESUS SMASHES THE CHAINS OF MISERY: 5TH SUNDAY B
What can Jesus save us from, and what can he save us
for?
On his way to his
office each morning, a married deacon drops into the same
café for a cup of coffee. He is always served by the same
waitress. She is a bright and breezy person who always adds
to her ‘Good Morning’ greeting, the words, ‘And how are you
today?’ in return the deacon always asks the waitress: ‘And
how are you?’ One morning not so long ago she answered: ‘OK,
I suppose, but somehow I’m not living life to the full, even
though I have the best husband in the world and a beautiful
new baby.’
That young woman was indicating mild disappointment and
dissatisfaction with her life. But she could not name just
what was missing. But her mild restlessness was nothing to
the dissatisfaction that in our First Reading today, poor
old Job is feeling. The bottom has dropped out of his world,
and his friends are no help at all. They keep teasing and
taunting him. So, he finds himself in a state of acute
depression and even thinks he’d be better off dead.
Probably we all know people who are longing and craving for
fulfilment in their lives, but who remain bundles of misery.
Their conversations are all about ‘poor me’. Perhaps, at
least sometimes, we too feel so down and depressed that we
come close to despair, and even feel we have nothing left to
live for.
It’s clear from the gospel that Jesus felt deeply for people
whose lives were so out of whack with their hopes, dreams,
aspirations and expectations, that he reached out to them
whenever, wherever, and however he could. To break their
chains of misery and give them meaning, hope and support,
was his life project, as he once said: ‘I have come that
they may have life and have it to the full’ (Jn 10:10).
Jesus himself must have been feeling tired and even
exhausted after taking part in the evening service at the
synagogue in Capernaum that day, then curing Peter’s
mother-in-law of a fever, and going on to heal the many sick
and troubled persons crowding around the front door of
Peter’s house. Yet the very next morning Jesus rises before
sunrise, and leaves the house for an isolated spot, where he
can be alone with God in prayer, and renew there his energy
and commitment. But Peter and his band of brothers track him
down even there, and beg him to go back to the house. Simply
because still more people have arrived and are clamoring for
his help!
Jesus knew, though, that it’s simply impossible to help and
heal every needy person. Yet it must have saddened and
troubled him to think that whenever he moved on, as move on
he must, he would be leaving some persons still feeling as
miserable as old Job. He would console himself with the
thought that he would keep doing whatever he could for any
needy person who came his way. He would keep telling every
distressed person of God’s ‘amazing grace’, i.e., of God’s
awesome and unconditional love for them. But as well as
telling them in powerful and challenging words about God’s
strong and constant love for them, he would keep showing
them that love. BUT HOW? By his interest in, and attention
to every troubled person pouring out their hearts in sobs
and tears! By accepting them without any condemnation, by
forgiving and encouraging them, and as much as possible, by
removing the sources of their misery!
Sometimes he set them free from their physical ailments and
disabilities. Often, he delivered them from their personal
‘demons’ - their feelings of restlessness, resentment,
worthlessness, failure, guilt and shame. Or from their
‘demons’ of bad memories of the evil and ugly things that
they had done, or of the bad and ugly things that had been
done to them. He would do all he could to put them back
together again, and to help them to start living life as
fully as they longed to do.
Our hope too is in the power and compassion of Jesus for us.
He is alive in our midst all through our prayer together
today. He is our way. Leave him and we may well get lost. He
is our truth. Ignore him and his teachings and we may mess
up our lives. He is our life. Turn our backs on him, and our
spirits, minds and hearts, might just shrivel up and die.
But perhaps we are afraid that we have let our years crackle
and go up in smoke, and have left him out of our lives for
so long, that it’s just no use coming back to him. But
surely, if we cannot bring our best to him, we can at least
bring him our mistakes, our failures, and our sins. And
surely too we can bring him our trust, our renewed trust in
him, not only as the Saviour of the world, but as our very
own personal Saviour, who is still and forever our way, our
truth, and our life! Surely, we can! Surely, we will?
"Brian Gleeson CP" <bgleesoncp@gmail.com>
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4.
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Year B: 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time
“He went all through Galilee, preaching in their synagogues
and casting out devils.”
I think we’ve all had days when we felt like Job:
“Is not man’s life on earth nothing more than pressed
service, his time no better than hired drudgery?
Like the slave, sighing for the shade,
or the workman with no thought but his wages,…
Remember that my life is but a breath,
and that my eyes will never again see joy.”
Yes, there are some very evil places in this world.
Some years ago, I was one of a group of four Jesuits who
were sent to set up a new community in the heart of Moss
Side in Manchester. This is a place which was at the time
famous for being the drug trafficking capital of the whole
of the North of England. And it has the poverty, the
lawlessness, the prostitution, the homelessness, the
street-crime and the casual violence that goes along with
drug trafficking all over the world. And when I was there
children as young as 12 years old were shot in the street in
wars between drug-dealing gangs.
We were given a disused flat in a largely abandoned and
derelict block of flats. It was supposed to have been empty
for years, but it had obviously been squatted in more
recently by some drug addicts. Written on the wall under the
title “My Life” were the saddest few lines I have ever read:
“Heat the spoon,
watch it melt,
fill the syringe
and stab yourself.”
I never met whoever it was who wrote those words, but I have
often prayed for her or him. Because those are the words of
a true addict – a man or a woman whose life is dominated by
an evil she or he cannot control – someone who feels
compelled twice a day to do something to themselves that
they know is desperately harmful and will, in all
probability, one day cause them to kill themselves. Their
entire life has become constricted to a little pool of
liquid containing heroin and to those desperate little acts
of crime they have to carry out in order to get the money to
buy themselves some more heroin.
Job – like all of us at times - is overcome by that evil.
But the Good News of today’s Gospel is that Jesus is not so
overcome. There is something about his presence and his
message that brings healing where-ever he goes. His healing
frees people from the bodily and the spiritual diseases that
afflict them. Throughout the towns and villages of Galilee –
he preaches the Good News of God’s salvation and heals those
who are sick. And we know that Jesus did not come only for
the people of his own time. He came for the people of all
times and of every place. The healing power of Jesus is
present for us in the Church forever. He tells us: ‘I am
with you always even to the end of time.’ (Mt 28;20).
Of course, our first reaction to encountering serious evil –
like those few lines of despair in Manchester - is to think
that here we cannot be the followers of Christ. We alone
cannot remove all the loneliness and fear; we cannot make a
fever go away with a simple action, as Christ could. Yet, St
Paul tells us, we have no choice – we have the
responsibility whether we like it or not. All of us can say
with him “it is a duty which has been laid on me”.
Jesus has healed us, forgiven us our sins and reconciled us
with God. He asks us now to bring his healing to others, to
become humble, persevering and patient disciples, helping
him to win others to repentance and holiness by our
imitation of him in his compassion, generosity and service
of all. As St Teresa says: “Christ has no body now but
ours.” We are his eyes, his smile, his ears, and his hands,
still mightily at work in the world. It is better to light
one candle than to curse the dark!
Let us stand and profess our Faith in Christ our Light.
Paul O’Reilly, SJ <fatbaldnproud@opalityone.net>
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5.
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