5th
Sunday of Ordinary Time – February 7, 2021
In our gospel for
last Sunday, Jesus leaves the synagogue where he taught and healed “with authority.” Because it was
still the Sabbath, when work and travel were forbidden, Jesus and his disciples
went to Simon Peter’s house, where Peter’s mother-in-law was confined to bed with a fever. Jesus immediately
healed her and lifted her to her feet. What did the good lady do? She began to
serve the needs of those in the house. She did this not because that was the
duty of a woman but because it is the duty of every Christian to serve. The
restoration of her health meant that she could once more take care, according
to her gifts, of the community.
Then, after sunset,
when the Sabbath was over, the people brought along those who were sick and in
the power of evil spirits, and Jesus healed them all. “The whole
town was gathered at the door.” Jesus is totally
occupied in putting himself at the service of people and bringing healing and
wholeness back into their lives. Jesus could have worked day and night in the
region of Capernaum, healing the broken, releasing people from whatever was
enslaving them. The life of Jesus tells us that life is for service, for
giving, for sharing. Yet, the danger to our spiritual life and growth is not
looking at the other side of the coin.
Jesus also knew the
importance of standing back from what he was doing and being alone with God, even
if it meant doing less. We find him going off to a lonely place early in the
morning to pray. When the disciples realized where he had gone, they were
clearly puzzled by this behavior of Jesus – going off like that when there was
so much work to be done. “Everyone in
Capernaum is looking for you,” they said, as much
as to say, “What are you doing out here by yourself when you could be healing
more sick people back in Capernaum?” But Jesus was not
at the mercy of the demands of others, even the demands of those he was closest
to. To do the work of the Father well, Jesus knew that he needed to be with the
Father, even though that meant doing less.
Jesus goes off to a
lonely place to pray. He needed this. He had given away so much of himself that
day that he now needed to be by himself, to “recharge his
batteries” and, above all, to get in touch with his Father, the source of all
his energy. He will come away from this quiet time truly energized and ready to
share and serve. Jesus tells his disciples, “Let us go on
to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I
come.”
There is a need of
all of us for rest but rest that refreshes and rebuilds, as opposed to pure
escapism or dissipating activity. We rest in order to come back to a life of
service not in order to avoid it or get away from it.
On the other hand,
while some might be avoiders, others might be compulsive helpers; they need to
be needed. What they do looks like service, but it is really satisfying an
inner fear of being passed over or unnoticed. Such people need to learn how to
say ‘No’ without feeling guilty, as Jesus does in today’s gospel. Otherwise, they face burnout and breakdown.
If we can learn to be
with God in stillness, then our service of others is more likely to be the kind
of service that God wants for them. It is not easy to acquire this habit of
being alone with God in quietness and stillness, because so much of our culture
today tells us that this is a waste of time, that we should be doing this, that
or the other. We pray that the example of Jesus in the gospel this morning
would inspire us to be with God, at times and in the midst of our service,
regardless of the demands made on us by life.
Fr. Don, CP